Ruth goes gleaning. At that moment, she apparently doesn’t yet know whose field she’s going into, but she does make it clear to Naomi that they need mercy. They have returned to the land destitute and dependent on the favor of others. In the future, Israel will also come to realize their dependence on their Redeemer.
Ruth 2
3 So she went, and she came, and gleaned in the field after the harvest workers. And by chance she came to a part of the field belonging to Boaz, who was of the family of Elimelech.
by chance
By chance, that is, coincidence, Ruth came to Boaz’s field. “There’s no such thing as coincidence,” people sometimes say, but we encounter it several times in Scripture (2 Sam. 1:6; 20:1; Luke 10:31). Not because things just happen, but because God makes them happen. God directs and arranges events in a special way.
Saul
Saul has lost his donkeys and goes looking for them, where he happens to meet Samuel, who anoints him king over Israel (1 Samuel 9). But God had already told Samuel the day before that He would find a man from the tribe of Benjamin that day, whom he was to anoint as king (1 Samuel 9:15-16).
Joseph
Joseph’s brothers had thrown him into a pit, planning to kill him. Coincidentally, a caravan passed by, to which they sold him, and he ended up in Egypt. There, through a series of seemingly random events, he ended up in prison, where Pharaoh’s cupbearer and baker happened to be imprisoned at the same time. They had both had dreams, and Joseph interpreted their dreams. When Pharaoh later had a dream and no one could interpret it, the cupbearer remembered Joseph, and this set in motion a series of developments that ultimately led to Joseph becoming viceroy and the savior of his family during a famine.
Of course, we could cite many more examples of this. What appear to be chance events are actually guided by God according to His will and plan.