The Message Bible (TMB) claims that Ruth crawled under the sheets with Boaz "to signal her availability for marriage." You can look that up for yourself (Ruth 3:7 TMB). In my opinion, TMB has it all wrong because I believe Ruth had a much shorter term goal in mind, namely getting laid. The Bible contains tales of real people who deal with the same primal urges every day as you and I do. It does a disservice to the humanness of Biblical characters to sanitize their actions. To set the record straight, the fictional Dead Sea Scroll Scholars, who first appeared in The Tamar Scroll, have discovered another unknown scroll among the Dead Sea Scroll Fragments that provides the truth about Ruth.
Dr. Francis Lajeunesse walked alongside the easel examining the assembled fragments of a scroll. It took months to put together the various fragments but now the scroll was complete. The Israel Antiquities Authority obtained the bits and pieces of the scroll through the shady Bedouin antiquities dealer, Bashir ibn Sharmuta. From the completeness of the scroll, Dr. Lajeunesse concluded that ibn Sharmuta's network of antiquity thieves was still intact and functioning. Ibn Sharmuta's ethics might be debatable but the scoundrel's work was world-class quality. Aside from some deterioration at the top and bottom edges of the scroll, Dr. Lajeunesse noted that the text was recoverable in its entirety. Moving to the beginning of the scroll, Dr. Lajeunesse began dictating in Hebrew to her tape recorder. What follows is an English translation of the scroll made by Dr. Lajeunesse and the eminent scholar, Dr. Aviatar Altman.
There was an economic recession in the land of the Israelites during the days of the Judges. Elimelech the Ephratite was a landless hireling in the territory that the LORD had allotted to the half-tribes of Ephraim and Manasseh. Without land of his own, the recession left Elimelech without employment and completely shekeless. Consequently, he returned south to his home town of Bethlehem of Ephratah in the territory allotted to the tribe of Yehuda. The Ephratites were descendents of Calev, the servant of the LORD who gave a true report of the land.
Elimelech found no more work in Bethlehem than in the territory of Ephraim but he met the spinster Naomi. God gifted Naomi greatly with olive groves and fig orchards but had just as abundantly shorted the woman in beauty. Naomi, like Elimelech was an Ephratite and still single. Unlike Elimelech, Naomi possessed lands. There was no issue from her parents other than Naomi, so her father's lands became her patrimony upon his demise. Without immediate prospects of employment, Elimelech wooed and married the rich spinster Naomi.
Elimelech was astonished to discover upon his wedding night that Naomi's libido was of even greater magnitude than the extent of her properties surrounding Bethlehem. Within nine months of unlocking Naomi's suppressed desires, Naomi provided Elimelech with his first-born son, whom they named Mahlon. Elimelech applied himself to the growing and crushing of olives as faithfully as he applied himself to the growing of his member and the pounding of Naomi's loins. By day, Elimelech dressed the figs in the orchard and, by night, he undressed Naomi in the bedroom. Elimelech's labours produced abundant fig cakes and numerous clay jars of olive oil. Naomi produced another son, whom they named Chilion.
Yea, Elimelech, Naomi and their small family prospered in Bethlehem for a time but their prosperity proved fleeting. The cereal crops in the land of Yehuda failed. Even the coarsest meal disappeared from the Bethlehem market. The people spurned the oil of Elimelech and Naomi crying "Of what use to us is your oil when we have no meal with which to bake bread?" Yet, Elimelech's business head deserted him not. "We will pledge the olive and fig groves and the inventory of oil to Zalman ben Zonah the moneylender. We will move to the land of Moab where there is meal and oil aplenty. Ben Zonah will make an arrangement with his correspondent moneylender in Beit Baal-Peor and we will start our lives anew there."
So, Naomi and their two sons followed Elimelech to Moab and the chief city of Beit-Baal-Peor. Landless again, Elimelech employed the skills he honed in Bethlehem to purchase the choicest olives on the Moab Commodities Exchange. He then processed the olives in the factory he constructed with the funds from Naomi's pledged lands. He became the richest oil merchant in Moab and the lands surrounding the Great Sea. Elimelech Brand Olive Oil sold in the upscale marketplaces of Egypt and in Phoenicia as far North as Tyre.
For twenty years, Elimelech, Naomi and their sons prospered in the land of Moab. Their sons adopted the customs but not the religion of Moab, ultimately marrying Moabite women. Mahlon married Ruth, a woman twenty-something years old. Despite her maturity, Ruth was unworldly, naïve and sexually innocent at the time of her marriage. Her red hair and freckles served to accentuate Ruth's childishness. Chilion married Orpah whilst she was yet a teenager. Orpah was a sultry brunette, well experienced in intimate matters and wise beyond her years in the ways of the world. She was like unto her sister-in-law only in her great beauty. Mahlon and Chilion, having inherited their parents' sexual genetic makeup, did pleasure their Moabite wives most lustily and most often.
The house of Elimelech and Naomi resonated nightly with the groans and sighs of their sons and daughters-in-law in the throes of passion. Although neither Mahlon nor Chilion had heretofore displayed any trace of monogamy, the two young men behaved unusually attentive to their wives after their marriages. This change in her sons' conduct aroused Naomi's curiosity. Since Orpah was more outgoing than Ruth, Naomi decided to approach her younger daughter-in-law so she could discern the reason for her sons' newfound devotion.
Orpah eagerly provided an answer to Naomi's problem. "The women of Moab possess a secret technique that we practice upon our husbands. My mother passed the secret on to me on my wedding night as, presumably, did Ruth's mother when she wed Mahlon. I needed to employ the secret only once on Chilion and, behold, he is now at my beck and call. My mother learned the secret from her mothers and she learned it from her mother who learned it from, well you get the idea. Suffice it to say that Moabite women have been practicing this technique from antiquity."
"Now I get it. This secret possessed by your women is why the LORD, through our Prophet Moses, forbade the men of Israel to consort with the women of the land when the Children of Israel entered the territory of Moab. Moses was concerned lest the men of Israel become enchanted by the secret held by the women and turn away from the One True God to the abominable gods of Moab. I beg of you, Orpah, to teach me this secret. Elimelech has not come in unto me for many months because he spends so much time on his business."
"I don't see any reason why you shouldn't learn the secret of Moab. You're family, you're married and you're not getting enough. This will truly get Elimelech's attention. The next time he comes to you in the night……."
Armed with the precious secrets of a Moabite woman, Naomi satisfied once more the lusts Elimelech had awakened in her loins twenty-five years earlier. She jumped the bones of the willing Elimelech ever more frequently and energetically. Elimelech was, by this time, well advanced in years. One night during an extremely intricate set of maneuvers, Elimelech's heart failed him. So, Elimelech went to sleep with his fathers.
Naomi was exceedingly sorrowful at the death of her husband and the loss of his services. To add to Naomi's distress, she bore the shame of burying Elimelech in the same pose in which he met his demise. His still-erect weapon of his own destruction required that he be buried in a casket with a prominent codpiece on the lid. To all who mourned at Elimelech's funeral, the distinctive coffin recounted without words the manner of his death.
Dr. Lajeunesse pulled out her Daytimer and made the following note: "Call Habibi tomorrow at the Jordanian Department of Archaeology and enquire whether any anomalous sarcophagi have been discovered on the Jordanian side of the Aravah."
Upon completion of the seven days of mourning for their father, Mahlon and Chilion pored over the books of their father's business. Upon discovering how profitable their father's business was, both young men came to the same conclusion. The business should forthwith be expanded so that the market for their cruses of virgin olive oil would expand to the west as far as the gates of the Great Sea and as far east as the Indus Valley. The abundant olive crops of Moab would be entirely processed in the efficient factory of Elimelech & Sons (1073 BCE) Inc.
Whilst Mahlon busied himself cornering the olive market on the Moab Commodity Exchange, Chilion installed larger olive presses to process the increased volume of olives. He then imported labourers from Cush to operate the new machinery. Upon arrival in Beit-Baal-Peor, the Cushite workers angered the men of Moab. The Cushites enamored themselves to the women of Beit Baal-Peor to such an extent that they utterly dominated Moabite women's favours in the same manner that Mahlon monopolized the Moab Commodity Exchange in olives. So many young women and not merely a few of the more mature women of the city were finding pleasure with the Cushites that the priests and priestesses of Chemosh and Ishtar were only able to recruit quite elderly widows or extremely homely women to perform the annual fertility rites in their respective temples.
The elders of Beit-Baal-Peor learned of their citizens' displeasure with the actions of the sons of Elimelech. The elders had long been jealous of the foreigners' wealth but now their anger burned exceedingly hot upon discovering that the Cushite men had usurped even their own wives' affections. The elders of Beit-Baal-Peor summoned Mahlon and Chilion to a Council in the gates of the City. The elders and the sons of Elimelech did argue heatedly for an hour. Mahlon countered every accusation of monopoly with a detailed explanation of the trickle-down effect. Chilion arose to declare that, forthwith, the working day of the Cushites would be extended by two hours. This would ensure that the Cushites would have no time for pleasure with the women of the city. The Potters' Guild of Moab and Edom supported Mahlon and Chilion as the production and profit of clay cruses had risen simultaneously with the production and profit of olive oil. The elders conferred and seemed inclined to release Mahlon and Chilion until the High Priest of the Temple of Chemosh arose and pointed accusingly at the two men.
