Naomi wanted to know how the night had gone. She had sent Ruth out the night before and was waiting to hear how her plan had turned out. Her words are the same two Hebrew words Boaz used in Ruth 3:9, mi at, "Who art thou?" But Keil & Delitzsch explain them as "as what person, in what circumstances dost thou come?" and say the real meaning is "What hast thou accomplished?" Gill adds that the word can also be taken as "how," asking how things had gone, which is how the ESV renders it. Barnes and Gill both allow that in the dim light Naomi may not at first have been sure who it was. So the question may begin with who, but it is really about what happened.

Ruth told her everything. "She told her all that the man had done to her" (Ruth 3:16). She showed the barley and repeated Boaz's words: "Go not empty unto thy mother in law" (Ruth 3:17). Naomi understood what it meant: "Sit still, my daughter, until thou know how the matter will fall: for the man will not be in rest, until he have finished the thing this day" (Ruth 3:18).

Ruth came home while it was still too dark to recognize faces. She rose "before one could know another" (Ruth 3:14), which fits Barnes's note about "the dim twilight."

Commentators differ on how much barley she carried. Barnes takes the six measures as six seahs, "twice as much as she gleaned," but Keil & Delitzsch call that reckoning "certainly incorrect," since Ruth could not have carried so much barley home. The exact amount matters less than its meaning: either way, Keil & Delitzsch call it a present, and they say Naomi drew from the gift the hope that Boaz would surely carry the matter through. The word "empty" in Ruth 3:17 is reqam, the same word Naomi used of herself in Ruth 1:21.

The barley is a sign that Naomi's emptiness is being reversed. Naomi had said, "the LORD hath brought me home again empty" (Ruth 1:21). Now Boaz sends Ruth home with the instruction "Go not empty unto thy mother in law" (Ruth 3:17), using the same Hebrew word, reqam. Naomi reads the gift that way, sure that Boaz will finish the matter "this day" (Ruth 3:18).

Naomi's question also marks the turn from planning to waiting. Matthew Henry notes that Ruth had done all that was fit for her to do and must now patiently wait. The answer came at the gate, where Boaz bought all that was Elimelech's and took Ruth as his wife (Ruth 4:9-10), and the women blessed the LORD, "which hath not left thee this day without a kinsman" (Ruth 4:14).