R2-5: How Practically Every English Bible In The World Translates This Verse WRONG!

“She said, ‘Please, let me glean and gather what falls from the sheaves behind the reapers.’ So she went and has kept at it from morning until now, except for a little rest in the shelter.”-Ruth 2:7

Take a look at these three English words:

LIVE

RESUME

TEAR

Now what do you think these words have in common?

The answer is they’re all heteronyms.

What’s a heteronym?

A heteronym is a word that in spite of being spelled the same has two different meanings and pronunciations.

For example:

“I live in Japan” versus “That live concert was great“

“I’ll resume my studies later” versus “I updated my resume“.

“A tear drop” versus “Tear open the envelope”.

See how BOTH the pronunciation and meaning of the above words change even though their spelling remains unaltered.

It’s only the surrounding context that lets us know which is which.

Well, the exact same phenomenon exists in the Hebrew language.

In fact, it’s even more challenging with Hebrew because as you know the ancient form of this language had no vowels.

So “tear” would have been spelled tr.

“Live” would have been spelled lv.

And “resume” would have reduced to rsm…

Which means paying special attention to the context was all the more important.

So what the heck does this have to do with our studies in Ruth?

I thought you’d never ask homies.

Notice where Ruth says…

“Please, let me glean and gather
what falls from the sheaves
behind the reapers.”

I’ll tell you right now that contextually that makes no sense.

Why?

Because the “sheaves” were the stalks of grain that had ALREADY been chopped down and bundled up by the reapers.

They were the final product of all hard work done by the field workers.

Or another way to put it was that…

…the “sheaves” were the harvest.

And they were the property of the owner.

Imagine if Ruth had really asked to glean “among the sheaves” as many English Bibles mistakenly have translated this verse?

Could there have been anything more disrespectful?

Considering Ruth’s humble character, I doubt she would’ve ever made such a request.

That would be like me telling my boss I wanna get paid the same as everyone else in my company but I don’t wanna do any of the hard parts of the job.

He’d fire my butt in a second.

But again, Ruth asking this doesn’t make any sense anyway because “among the sheaves” is NOT where the gleaning took place.

So what gives?

Well, that’s where we go back to the point I just made about heteronyms.

Take a look at the two Hebrew words:

MARYM

MIRYM

MARYM means “sheaves”…

However, MIRYM means “stalks”.

“Sheaves” were the product that resulted after the field workers did all their cutting, gathering and bundling work.

“Sheaves” were also the product that resulted after the poor folks did their gleaning.

“Stalks” on the other hand were either the cut or uncut long stems lying on the ground unbundled.

Remember per the Torah command, the workers didn’t gather up every last stalk and bundle them into sheaves.

And remember, minus the vowels, in the original Hebrew, these two words would’ve looked something like this:

MRYM

MRYM

I’m using English letters here but I think you get the point.

Now tell me whaddaya think makes more sense?

That Ruth arrogantly asked to glean among the already bundled up “sheaves” or MARYM when gleaning didn’t even take place “among the sheaves”?

Or that she humbly requested to glean among the “stalks” or MIRYM which makes infinitely more sense contextually and fits Ruth’s character?

I rest my case.