The book of Ruth is a Love story. It’s somewhat amazing, because it was set in a time of strict cultural rules and arranged marriages, and yet, Boaz and Ruth were able to work within the Jewish culture and it’s traditions and still came out together.
It starts off with Naomi and her husband, and they have two sons, and their two sons marry two gals. One of the gals is Ruth. A famine hits the land and Naomi’s husband and their two sons all die. Naomi tells her daughters in law to go back home and that their family’s will have to take care of them.
The daughters in law are from different religious & cultural backgrounds, and it was assumed that they would go back to those backgrounds even though they had been Jews when their husbands were alive.
The one girl leaves, but Ruth stays. She says to Naomi “I will make your people my people and your God my God.” And so the two of them go back to Ruth’s home town of Bethlehem.
In their culture, the farmers left some of the crop out in the field so that the poor could go and gather it for themselves. So Ruth went out into a field to gather some corn for the two of them.
The field she went into belong to Boaz, who had been the kinsmen (brother) of Namoi’s husband.
Boaz sees her out in the field and asks his servants who she is. And when he finds out, he tells them to be extra nice to her and leave some extra harvest behind for her. Boaz talks to Ruth and tells her not to go to any other fields, just stay at his. He lets her eat with his reapers when they eat a meal.
At the end of the day Ruth goes back to Naomi and tells her what’s happened and Naomi is pretty happy about everything. They go on like this for a while and Ruth takes care of Naomi.
Naomi and Ruth both knew what a kinsmen redeemer was but I didn’t. Basically, when a woman’s husband would die, his brothers, his kinsmen, would often marry the woman and take care of her. They “redeemed” her from the life of a widow. (It was a lot worse in their culture than in ours.)
So Naomi explains to Ruth the proper way in their culture to tell Boaz that she’d like to marry him, she’d like for him to be her kinsmen redeemer, and Ruth goes and does it. And Boaz makes Ruth a promise. He tells her that while he is kinsmen there was a brother nearer than himself. Basically in their culture, the nearest kinsmen had to have to first chance to marry the widow, then if he didn’t, the next kinsmen, Boaz, was then was allowed to. So Boaz promises Ruth that if the other kinsmen won’t marry her that he will.
The next day Boaz goes into town and gets to gather the other brother (the nearer kinsmen) and a number of the elders of the town. Boaz points out to his brother that he has this opportunity to marry Ruth. And at first the brother says he’s going to do it, but Boaz talks him out of it.
Boaz points out that the brothers inheritance for his children will have to be split among Ruth’s children too. The brother decides he doesn’t like that so much, so he gives up his opportunity to marry her. Then Boaz announces in front of everybody that he will be the kinsmen redeemer for Ruth.
So Boaz and Ruth get married and have a son. A few generations down the tree, David comes out of their bloodline, one of the greatest kings ever. The book of Samuel calls David “A man after gods own heart.” And a number of generations after that Jesus Christ comes out of their bloodline.
If you’d like to read it for yourself, here’s Ruth 1 in The King James version, and here it is in the somewhat easier-to-read New International Version
The Christian Family Fellowship also sells a class by Rev. Wayne Clapp that goes into the book of Ruth in far more detail than I possibly could. I just got myself a copy and started going through it. The class is $30.
This synopsis was written by fellowlaborer Nathan Friedly and is also available on his blog.
Comments(2)