intercourse? Did she hope that a pregnant Ruth, like Tamar (Gen 38), would force Boaz’s hand into marriage? Or does a similar practice found among the Bowa in Mali that involves no physical contact suggest that the sexual innuendoes in this chapter are meant only to tease?8 Perhaps the Victorian minister who simply sidestepped such questions by asserting that what happened on the threshing floor is “too beautiful, delicate, dangerous, and sublimely virtuous, to be recited here” was right, and questions