Having alighted upon an easy task, Ruth knew it. "So she kept fast by the maidens of Boaz to glean unto the end of barley harvest and of wheat harvest: and dwelt with her mother-in-law."
And yet it seems the gentleman did not propose. So Naomi and Ruth talked it over together, for by this time his infatuation was the talk of the city, and sentimental, romantic old Naomi, who must have been a charming woman in her day, was interested in this love affair. For no matter how old a woman or man may be, the perennial stream of love and sentiment flows on in the heart, although hid 'neath white hairs and wrinkles, and bound by the wintry shackles of age and custom; still it is there, and often breaks the icy barriers of the years and betrays itself by a late marriage, or in the matchmaking proclivities of all elderly women.
And Naomi gave Ruth some instructions which we blush to think of, but she followed them implicitly. And the middle-aged Boaz was caught. We suppose he was forty-five or fifty from the fact that he called Ruth "my daughter," and commended her because she didn't run after the gilded youths of society, but preferred him above them all. And Boaz and Ruth were married, and like most marriages between widows and old bachelors it proved a happy one.
But Ruth's shrewd scheming and successful venture as related in the inspired records confirms our belief that it was Boaz the "mighty man of wealth," and not Naomi's love or Naomi's God that induced Ruth to emigrate to the city of Bethlehem.
We are told that Jezebel, unknown to her husband, "wrote letters in her husband's name and sealed them with his seals," and had a man stoned to death without his knowledge, not the man's, but her husband's.