The Moabite widow who became great-grandmother of David
Ruth occupies four short chapters between Judges and 1 Samuel — a quiet book in a violent canonical neighborhood. Judges ends with civil war and the line "In those days there was no king in Israel. Everyone did what was right in his own eyes." 1 Samuel opens with Hannah weeping for a son the priesthood has stopped believing she will have. Between them sits Ruth: a story about chesed — covenant loyalty — that the LORD is using to set up the line that will eventually produce the kings the canon needs.
The setup is grief. Naomi, an Israelite woman, has lost her husband and both sons in Moab. The two sons left two Moabite widows: Orpah and Ruth. Naomi releases them — go back to your mothers' houses, find new husbands, the LORD bless you. Orpah goes. Ruth refuses with words that will outlive every poem in the canon: "Where you go I will go, and where you lodge I will lodge. Your people shall be my people, and your God my God. Where you die I will die, and there will I be buried." (Ruth 1:16–17) Ruth is a Moabite — a member of the people Israel has been told (Deuteronomy 23:3) is excluded from the assembly of the LORD even to the tenth generation. She is choosing covenant identity she has no birthright claim to.
The gleaning narrative (Ruth 2) shows the Torah working as it was meant to. The Mosaic law required landowners to leave the edges of the field and the dropped grain for the poor, the widow, and the foreigner (Leviticus 19:9–10). Ruth shows up to glean in the field of Boaz — "as it happened," the narrator says, deadpan — and Boaz turns out to be a kinsman of Naomi's dead husband. The Hebrew word *go'el* — kinsman-redeemer — is what holds the rest of the book together. The go'el's job under the Torah is to buy back land sold in distress, redeem family members sold into slavery, and (in the levirate provision) marry the widow of a dead kinsman to raise up an heir.
The threshing-floor scene (Ruth 3) is one of the boldest acts in the Hebrew Bible. Naomi instructs Ruth to wash, anoint herself, dress for a wedding, and go down to where Boaz is sleeping after the harvest. She is to uncover his feet and lie down. Boaz wakes in the middle of the night to find her there. Ruth speaks first: "I am Ruth, your servant. Spread your wings over your servant, for you are a redeemer." (Ruth 3:9) The Hebrew *kanaph* — wing, corner of a garment — is the same word the prophet uses for the LORD's protection. Ruth is asking for marriage in the language of covenant cover. Boaz, an older man, recognizes the gift and protects her.
The legal scene at the city gate (Ruth 4) settles the redemption. Boaz negotiates with a closer kinsman who has the prior right of redemption. The closer kinsman waives. Boaz marries Ruth. The child of that marriage — Obed — fathers Jesse, who fathers David. The Moabitess who attached herself to Naomi out of love is in the genealogy of the messianic king. Matthew opens his Gospel with her name in the line of Christ (Matthew 1:5).
The Christian reading of Ruth has held the book as a typology of Christ-and-his-bride. Christ is the kinsman-redeemer; the Gentile-by-birth bride is brought into the covenant family by the redeemer's free initiative; the redemption is not deserved but is given. The reading is patristic and obvious. But it is also worth holding Ruth on her own terms: a foreign widow whose loyalty to a bitter mother-in-law was treated by the LORD as the loyalty he honors above ethnic boundary.
The book's quietest theological move is in its second-to-last line. The women of Bethlehem, blessing Naomi over the newborn Obed, say: "Blessed be the LORD, who has not left you this day without a redeemer." (Ruth 4:14) The redeemer is the baby. The chesed of one Moabite widow has, three generations later, set up the throne the Messiah will inherit.
Related entries: Bethlehem, David, Mary (Mother of Jesus)