Old Testament · History
רוּת
Loyal love in famine and loss, a Moabite widow grafted into the family line of David.
Four short chapters set during the judges, and a deliberate counterweight to them: while the nation tears itself apart, an ordinary family in Bethlehem quietly does the right thing. A Moabite widow refuses to leave her mother-in-law, gleans in a field whose owner has left its corners unharvested exactly as the law commands, and is redeemed by a kinsman who does more than the law requires. Two things repay attention. First, Ruth is from Moab, a people Deuteronomy explicitly excludes, so her inclusion is a problem the book handles by simply telling the story. Second, the genealogy at the end is the whole point: this foreign woman is David's great-grandmother, and Matthew names her in the line of Jesus. It is read at Shavuot, in exactly the harvest season it describes.
If you remember one thing
Four short chapters with no miracles, no prophets, and no battles, and the whole line of David runs through them. Ordinary faithfulness turns out to be how the story gets carried.
“Where you go, I will go; and where you stay, I will stay. Your people shall be my people, and your God my God.”
Ruth 1:16
Ruth 3:1-9
The threshing floor at night, uncovering Boaz's feet, and the deliberate ambiguity of the language. Interpreters differ on how much is implied, and the narrator seems content to leave it suggestive.
Deuteronomy 23:3
No Moabite may enter the assembly to the tenth generation. Ruth is a Moabite and is David's great-grandmother, and the book never explains the tension.
Named here rather than skipped. Where Christians read a passage differently, we say so instead of choosing for you.
Everyone here has a write-up, drawn from the same records that explain the names while you read the text.
Laban's elder daughter, given to Jacob by substitution on his wedding night. Unloved, and the mother of six of the twelve tribes including Levi and Judah, from whom the priesthood and the kingship come.
Tamar's twin sons and their descendants, the line that runs from Judah to Boaz to Jesse to David. Perez's name refers to the breach he made in being born first, out of the expected order, which by now is a Genesis habit.
The genealogy that fills 1 Chronicles 2 to 4, running from Judah through Perez and Hezron to David and beyond the exile. It is the longest single family record in Scripture, and it is placed first because the Chronicler is writing to a community that needed to know the royal line survived.
The twelve leaders named at the census in Numbers 1, who bring identical offerings over twelve days in Numbers 7 and are recorded in full each time, and the twelve spies of Numbers 13.
A Moabite widow who refused to go home. When Naomi told her daughters-in-law to return to their mothers' houses, Orpah went and Ruth would not, answering with the speech that has outlived everything else in the book: where you go I will go, your people will be my people, and your God my God.
A woman of Bethlehem who went to Moab with her husband Elimelech and two sons during a famine and came back ten years later with none of them. She told the town not to call her Naomi, which means pleasant, but Mara, which means bitter, because the Almighty had dealt very bitterly with her.
A landowner of Bethlehem who let Ruth glean in his fields, protected her from harassment, and then acted as kinsman-redeemer to marry her once a nearer relative declined. Their son Obed was the grandfather of David.
The whole book, with the people and places explained as you read. Available in WEB and KJV. Chapters marked ✦ carry a verse the New Testament takes up.
A quiz for Ruth is on the workbench. In the meantime, the games for the judges, the kings, and the prophets are open.
