Ruth 3:7

7. When Boaz had eaten This was the evening meal, taken after the labours of the day were over.

His heart was merry He was cheerful and happy over a bountiful harvest, and probably also with the drinking of wine.

At the end of the heap of corn The winnowed grain was left over night lying in a heap, and this exposed the threshingfloors to the danger of being robbed. See 1 Samuel 23:1. “We have on various occasions,” says Thomson, “seen the summer threshingfloors in the open country, and the owners sleeping at them to prevent stealing.” And Captain Postans remarks: “Natives of the East [usually] care little for sleeping accommodations, but rest where weariness overcomes them, lying on the ground. They are, however, careful to cover the feet, and to do this they have a sheet of coarse cloth that they tuck under the feet, and, drawing it up over the body, suffer it to cover the face and head. An oriental seldom changes his position, and we are told that Boaz did so because he was afraid; the covering of the feet in ordinary cases is consequently not disturbed. I have frequently observed, when riding out in a native city before dawn, figures with their feet so covered, lying like monumental effigies in the pathway, and in the open verandahs of the houses.”