And now is not Boaz, with whose young women thou wast, our relatives. Naomi opens her case. She had been studying Boaz all through the harvest season. She had been studying Ruth too. She saw unmistakable evidence of mutual responsiveness and attachment.
And now she had a matured scheme in her head. Hence she brings up Boaz's name at once, and says, "Is he not our relative?" מוֹדַעַת, an abstract term used concretely, meaning literally" acquaintance," but here "relative," or "kinsman" (see Ruth 2:1).
Lo, he is winnowing barley on the threshing-floor tonight. Literally, "Lo, he is winnowing the threshing-floor of barley." The Hebrews could idiomatically speak of "the threshing-floor of barley," meaning "the threshing-floor-full of barley."
The barley lay heaped up in Boaz's threshing-floor, and he was changed in winnowing it. He threw up against the wind the mingled mass that was on his floor, after the stalks had been carefully trodden or beaten.
"Not far," says Dr. Horatio Hackett, "from the site of ancient Corinth, I passed a heap of grain, which some laborers were employed in winnowing. They used for throwing up the mingled wheat and chaff a three-pronged wooden fork, having a handle three or four feet long".
"The winnowing," says Dr. Kitto, "was performed by throwing up the grain with a fork against the wind, by which the chaff and broken straw were dispersed, and the grain fell to the ground. The grain was afterwards passed through a sieve to separate the morsels of earth and other impurities, and it then underwent a final purification by being tossed up with wooden scoops, or shorthanded shovels, such as we see sculptured on the monuments of Egypt".
In some of the Egyptian sculptures the winnowers are represented as having scoops in both hands. הַלַּיְלָה, tonight (Scotticé, "the nicht"). The agriculturist in Palestine and the surrounding districts would often carry on his winnowing operations after sunset, taking advantage of the evening breeze that then blows.
The Chaldee Targumist makes express reference to this breeze, explaining the word tonight as meaning in the wind which blows by night.