“But wait!” said Boaz. “Whoever buys the land must take Naomi with it, and Ruth her daughter.”
“That is too much for me,” said the kinsman, and he took off his shoe to show that he would not buy.
“Then the land is mine,” said Boaz. And the next day he married Ruth amidst the rejoicings of all the people of Bethlehem. And by and by there was a little boy named Obed, and he became the father of Jesse, and Jesse became the father of David.
XXVI
“SAMUEL! SAMUEL!”
NE time, in the hill country, among the mountains of Ephraim, there lived a farmer named Elkanah. He and Hannah his wife were comfortably rich. They had fields of wheat and vineyards of grapes, and flocks and herds, and plenty of hay in the barn; but in one way they were poor,—they had no children. Sometimes Hannah cried because the house was so empty and still, and there were no voices of children in it. Sometimes she was so sad and lonely that she could not eat, and though her husband tried to comfort her, and said, “Hannah, am I not better to you than ten sons?” still she was full of grief. For children are the best gift which God gives to man, and all the cornfields and vineyards and sheep and oxen in the world are not to be compared with them.
One day, Hannah went in to town, to Shiloh; and as she passed the church she stopped and knelt down on the steps and prayed with all her heart that God would give her a son. And Eli, the minister, was sitting on a bench by the church door. Eli was an old man, and his two sons, Hophni and Phinehas, who had become ministers in his place, were not only bad ministers, but bad men, so that many people had stopped going to church. In those days, when people went to church, they carried sheep with them, or other animals, to offer to God. This they did that they might show God that they truly loved Him: they gave Him the best they had. But when they came with their sacrifices, and the meat was in the pot cooking over the church fire, Hophni and Phinehas would send their servants, each with a great three-pronged fork in his hand, and they would thrust their forks into the pot, and whatever they brought up they would carry away to their masters. “Give us meat,” they said, “for the priests.” And if anybody objected, the servants answered, “If you will not give it, we will take it from you by force.” Thus Hophni and Phinehas had plenty to eat, and grew rich, and became more wicked day by day, but the number of persons who came to church grew less and less. So when Eli saw Hannah praying at the church steps he was surprised. Nobody had been to church to pray for a long time. He could not believe, at first, that she was really praying; her lips moved, but she made no sound. And because he was old and his eyes were bad so that he could not see well, he thought that she was some drunken person.
