Ruth 2:2

2. Let me now go to the field To this course she is prompted by love and care for her mother in law: and by gleaning she hopes to provide subsistence for them both in their loneliness, for they were doubtless poor and needy. She sees not now that this labour, undertaken in love, is to lead her to blessing and honour.

Glean Gather up what the reapers leave behind them. The right to glean was a legal privilege of the poor in Israel: “When ye reap the harvest in your land, thou shalt not make clean riddance of the corners of thy field when thou reapest, neither shalt thou gather any gleaning of thy harvest; thou shalt leave them unto the poor, and to the stranger.” Leviticus 13:22. See also Leviticus 19:9, and Deuteronomy 24:19-22.

Ears of corn Corn is in Scripture the generic word for grain of any kind, as barley, wheat, or rye. In Scotland the use of the word is restricted to oats, in America to maize or Indian corn. Ears of corn, as used of barley or wheat, means the heads, or seed ends, of the stalks.

After him in whose sight I shall find grace As yet she knew nothing of Boaz; she proposes to glean after him, whoever he may be, who will generously allow it. Though the law secured to the poor the right to glean, the owner of the harvest field had a right to nominate the persons who might glean after his reapers; otherwise the right to glean might have been carried to serious inconvenience and injury to the owners of the harvest.