A famine, a bad decision, a foreign widow gleaning at the edge of somebody else’s field — and God is quietly working out the line of the Messiah through all of it. The theme of this book is the grace of God. It is set in the time of the Judges, and our last study showed the general apostasy of those days.

Famine has come to Judah and to the family of Elimelech. Elimelech decides to go to the land of Moab. It was a sensible move if you look at it only in terms of avoiding famine. But he was leaving the land where God had promised His blessings, and becoming part of a society that demanded idolatry from its citizens. He was stepping outside of God’s provision to find his own. Deuteronomy 28 · Leviticus 26

The author does not comment on the death of the husbands or the sons as being linked to this step. The purpose of the book is to show the grace of God in Naomi’s life even after the family chooses involvement with pagan idols.

Ruth and Naomi

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1:1–5  Famine and death. The family leaves Bethlehem for Moab, and Naomi loses her husband and both her sons.

1:6–22  Leaving Moab for Bethlehem. Ruth’s choice to return with Naomi must be seen as a choice concerning God. She was deliberately leaving the gods of Moab for the true God of Israel.

God’s provision

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The law of Israel made deliberate room for the poor: the corners of the field and whatever the harvesters dropped were to be left for the widow, the orphan and the foreigner. Ruth was all three. Leviticus 19:9 · Leviticus 23:22 · Deuteronomy 24:19

The grace of God led Ruth to the fields that belonged to Boaz, so opening the door for everything else that is going to take place. She gathered an ephah of barley that first day — roughly fifty pounds. Ruth 2:1–23

The law of the kinsman redeemer

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Note especially verse 20, where Naomi recognizes Boaz as a near relative. In Hebrew this is Goel, for which we do not have a word in English. It means one who is my close kinsman, from whom covenant demands care and protection for me. Each member of a Hebrew family was bound by covenant to protect the others: none could be lonely or destitute.

The Goel runs all through the Law. He redeems land his kinsman has lost, buys back a kinsman sold into slavery, avenges his kinsman’s blood, and raises up a family line that would otherwise die out. Leviticus 25:25 · Leviticus 25:47–55 · Numbers 35 · Deuteronomy 19:6 · Deuteronomy 25:5–10

Boaz, the redeemer

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Boaz was a shadow of the Lord Jesus Christ, who would not only be his descendant but also the Goel — the Kinsman Redeemer of mankind.

Look at what the shadow requires of him. He has to be a kinsman, near enough to have the right. He has to be willing, and there is a nearer relative who is not. And he has to be able to pay. Christ meets all three: He takes our humanity in order to have the right, He comes willingly, and the price is His own life.

The ancestor of David

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The book closes with a genealogy, and that is the point of the whole story. Ruth the Moabitess becomes the great-grandmother of David, and so stands in the line through which Jesus comes.

Sit with that for a moment. That is the grace this book is about — the sentence at the top of this page, arrived at the long way round.