As already noted, verse 17 concludes the account of Ruth’s gathering grain in the field of Boaz. It begins with a particle translated So, which indicates result and which may be translated in some languages “As a result,” “And so at the end,” or “And thus finally.”

Until evening is most generally rendered “until the sun went down,” “until the sun could be seen no longer,” or “until the sun had disappeared.”

The Hebrew verb translated beaten … out occurs elsewhere only in Judges 6.11 and in Isaiah 28.27, where it has this same literal meaning of threshing out small quantities of grain by knocking them loose from the stalk by means of a curved stick, club, or wooden hammer. See Dalman, op. cit., III, page 92. One ancient version makes the instrument explicit by translating “she beat with a stick what she had gleaned.” So Septuagint in using the Greek verb rabdizo. Another translation makes explicit both the instrument and the two events of hitting the heads of barley and driving out the grain: “she beat with a stick what she had gleaned and drove out the grains.” So the Vulgate reading: et quae collegerat virga caedens et excutiens. The latter translation is an excellent descriptive model for those languages which lack a technical term for “beating out.” In some instances, however, one must use a causative expression, such as “cause to fall out” or “cause to become loose.”

Though there is no indication of precisely where this threshing takes place, it no doubt was done in the field. Compare P. Perdrizet’s remark in Syria, 1938, page 48: “Les moissonneurs de Syrie ne ramassent pas les gerbes en meules; ils battent le blé sitôt coupé au moyen de rouleaux de pierre ou de traîneaux garnis par-dessous de silex tranchants; ou, si la récolte est minime, avec une baguette, comme on le voit faire dans la Bible à Ruth la Moabite pour les épis qu’elle avait glanés.” The Hebrew expression which is rendered in Good News Translation as nearly twenty-five pounds is literally “about an ephah of barley,” but there is no certainty as to what this measurement implied. Some scholars believe that it was approximately 40 liters; See R. G. Bratcher, “Weights, money, measures and time,” The Bible Translator 10 (1959):169, 173; J. Trinquet, “Métrologie biblique,” Dictionnaire de la Bible, Supplément, Paris, 1928- , t. 5, col. 1221-1238. others agree that the ephah was approximately 40 liters during the Hellenistic period, but cannot say what it was earlier. So, e.g., R. Tamisier, op. cit., ad loc.; A. G. Barrois, Manuel d’archéologie biblique, I, II, 1939-1953. The reference here is to II, page 250. Archaeological findings may some day provide us with reliable information, See R. de Vaux, op. cit., pages 306, 307. Our lack of knowledge condemns “tout essai de donner, pour la période de l’Ancien Testament, un tableau d’équivalence avec notre système moderne” (page 306). but with the information now available it is impossible to give an exact equivalent of the ephah of the time of Ruth. The translator, however, must employ something in his text, and there are three major possibilities: (1) he may simply transliterate the Hebrew measure, with or without some explanatory note; (2) he may employ a receptor-language term which represents a measure more or less equivalent to the Hebrew term; or (3) he may use a combination of the source-language term as well as some receptor-language equivalent, as was done in one of the ancient versions. So Vulgate: invenit hordei quasi oephi mensuram id est tres modios. In keeping with the first procedure, he would simply use “ephah” in the text (see New American Bible), with possibly a footnote or a symbol to show that it is explained in a table of weights and measures or glossary. In keeping with the second procedure, the translator could use a second term such as “bushel” (see New English Bible and Moffatt). Following the third procedure, he would use an expression such as “it was about an ephah, that is to say, a basketful of barley.” In this case the term for “basket” would have to be a measure essentially equivalent to an ephah in the Hellenistic period, that is about 40 liters or 40 quarts. For many speakers of English the term “bushel” is a rarity, and quantities of grain are more often described in terms of weight rather than bulk. For this reason Good News Translation uses the expression nearly twenty-five pounds. In some instances translators may simply employ a rendering which implies that the amount of grain was considerable: “a good measure of grain” or “a lot of grain.” That would emphasize the fact that this was an abundant result for the day’s work. Such a translation has interesting ancient support. The Syriac version states, in a qualitative way, “a full measure.”

Quoted with permission from de Waard, Jan and Nida, Eugene A. A Handbook on Ruth. (UBS Helps for Translators). New York: UBS, 1978, 1992. For this and other handbooks for translators see here .