Boaz expected a yes. He had already given the order, and the question assured Ruth of it. Keil & Delitzsch read "touch" as "to do thee no harm." Gill takes it as an order that the young men do her no hurt or offer her any rudeness, and remarks that such behavior was too common among young people in the fields at harvest. A foreign widow gleaning among strangers had real reason to be afraid, and Boaz answered that fear before she had to ask.

Ruth answered by bowing to the ground and asking why she had found grace in his eyes, "seeing I am a stranger" (Ruth 2:10). Boaz later widened his protection, telling his young men to let her glean even among the sheaves and "reproach her not" and "rebuke her not" (Ruth 2:15-16). Naomi confirmed the danger was real: it was good to stay with his maidens "that they meet thee not in any other field" (Ruth 2:22).

The words Boaz used, and the way Naomi later spoke of other fields, show what kind of harm he meant. In Hebrew, "charged" is tsavah, to command, and "touch" is naga. The ESV renders Naomi's warning in Ruth 2:22 as "lest in another field you be assaulted," which shows the kind of harm Boaz had in mind.

Boaz also cared for her daily needs. Gill says the water in the reapers' vessels had been fetched "from wells and fountains in or near the city." Boaz offered a gleaner the same water his own workers drank.

Gleaning, gathering what the reapers left, was a right the Law gave to the poor and the stranger (Leviticus 19:9-10), but a law did not stop a young man in a field. Keil & Delitzsch note that hard-hearted farmers and reapers could put obstacles in the way of gleaners. Boaz went beyond the minimum and used his authority to make his field safe.

A few verses later Boaz prays that Ruth will be rewarded by "the LORD God of Israel, under whose wings thou art come to trust" (Ruth 2:12). His own orders in Ruth 2:9 were already one way that shelter was reaching her.