What Does Ruth 2:10 Mean in the King James?
Then she fell on her face, and bowed herself to the ground, and said unto him, Why have I found grace in thine eyes, that thou shouldest take knowledge of me, seeing I am a stranger?
The analysis reads the King James wording.
King James Version The King James Version, first published in 1611. Selah Verse shows the standard text.
THE KEY
Hebrew binds “stranger” and “recognize me” to the same root: Ruth asks how the one marked unfamiliar has become the one Boaz acknowledges.
THE MEANING
Your unfamiliarity does not make you invisible: recognition can meet you while you are still a stranger. Favor appears here as being seen and received in another’s regard. Ruth names the surprise of being acknowledged without ceasing to be an outsider.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The belief that being an outsider makes you invisible or ineligible for favor.
THE ROOT
נָכְרִיָּה
nokriyyah lehakkireni
GROWS FROM
נכר
n-k-r
To recognize or distinguish; the same root also carries the sense of being foreign or unfamiliar.
“stranger; take knowledge” in this verse is nokriyyah lehakkireni. The word for “stranger,” נָכְרִיָּה (nokriyyah, a foreign woman), and “recognize me,” לְהַכִּירֵנִי (lehakkireni, acknowledge me), echo the same consonants נכר (n-k-r). Her question holds the tension in the language itself: how does the one marked unfamiliar become the one acknowledged?
ALSO GROWS
nokri: Someone regarded as foreign or unfamiliar.
נָכְרִי
This is the word-family that names Ruth’s outsider status.
hikkir: To distinguish or recognize someone.
הִכִּיר
This is the verb behind her question about Boaz acknowledging her; the shared root joins her foreignness to his recognition.
חֵן
chen
GROWS FROM
חנן
ḥ-n-n
To show favor or act graciously.
The KJV’s “grace” is חֵן (chen, favor): a welcome shown through another’s regard. In this verse, favor takes visible form as the stranger being noticed and acknowledged.
ALSO GROWS
ḥanan: To act toward someone with favor.
חָנַן
It makes the noun chen feel like an action expressed in how one person regards another.
ḥannun: One who acts with favor.
חַנּוּן
This related form carries the quality of chen into the character of the one showing favor.
THE PATTERN
Recognition and welcome make room for the person marked as an outsider.
He doth execute the judgment of the fatherless and widow, and loveth the stranger, in giving him food and raiment.Be not forgetful to entertain strangers: for thereby some have entertained angels unawares.Wherefore receive ye one another, as Christ also received us to the glory of God.THE THREAD
And he discerned him not, because his hands were hairy, as his brother Esau’s hands: so he blessed him.“Discerned” here and Ruth’s “take knowledge of me” use forms from נכר (n-k-r), the root that also marks someone as foreign. Genesis shows recognition failing under the force of appearances; Ruth’s question turns on recognition reaching across the boundary of unfamiliarity.
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