As part of my journey through the Tanakh, I recently came across the book of Ruth. I want to share some things from this book and its surroundings that really stood out to me afresh.
The Surrounding Context of Scripture
In the Tanakh order of books, Ruth is directly preceded by the book of Proverbs. The last chapter, Proverbs 31, talks about the “woman of noble character”. And in Ruth 3, Boaz interestingly calls Ruth such an “woman of noble character” (he is using the exact same Hebrew word for “noble” as in Proverbs 31). This alone starts showing how it’s not about being an Israelite in the first place that gives you God’s recognition but by placing your full trust in Him. We will see in a moment how Ruth is an example of this.
The book directly after Ruth in the Tanakh order is the Song of Songs. One of the main themes is how the woman and the man seek and chase each other. Ruth in this story is not chasing any human lover however — she goes after God. This sets the scene wonderfully to show how even the seemingly most earthly-romantic book in Scripture is not just about humans, it’s also about humans together with God: We as Jesus’ bride are to seek Him and chase after Him in all that we do.
Ruth Puts Her Trust In God
When Ruth and her sister-in-law Orpah rise to accompany their mother-in-law Naomi back to Israel, Naomi tells them to leave for a better future in their homecountry, Moab. Orpah leaves but Ruth proclaims her loyalty to Naomi:
Don’t urge me to leave you or to turn back from you. Where you go I will go, and where you stay I will stay. Your people will be my people and your God my God. Where you die I will die, and there I will be buried.
This alone does not make it look a lot like Ruth would put her trust mostly in God. But a few verses later, Boaz nails it by speaking out what was deep in Ruth’s heart (2:12):
May the Lord repay you for what you have done! May you be richly rewared by the Lord, the God of Israel, under whose wings you have come to take refuge!
That’s right:
- Ruth did not come to take refuge under Naomi’s wings:
- This embittered mother-in-law, blinded by her self-centered grief, unable to care for herself as a widow, was in no way a future prospect for Ruth.
- Leaning unto this woman when you just lived through a tragic loss yourself was certainly not an easy task and one that you needed to rely on Someone Else.
- Ruth would not come to take refuge under the wings of the people of Israel either:
- Going to Israel and trying to live there she would certainly face ostracism and poverty because she was a foreigner, and a widow at that!
I suspect that during the 10 years she was married to Mahlon, Ruth got to know the God of Israel intimately when she experienced the life of a Jewish family through the course of each day, week, and year.
Clinging
We read that Orpah leaves Naomi, but Ruth “clings to her”. The Hebrew word for “clinging” here, dabaq, is interesting:
- It’s the same word used in Genesis 2 about how a man who will leave his parents and “cling to his wife” with the two becoming one.
- It’s also used for something that “sticks” to you like glue, just like stains on your hands or your tongue to the roof of your mouth.
- But it’s not passive: The Philistine army “sticks to the heels” of the Israelites, and Ruth is also told to “stick to the maids” of Boaz.
This kind of “clinging” is the action of attaching yourself to someone and therefore being very close to that person, up to intimacy, and by being that close, automatically following them. For me, this is the kind of “glueing myself” to Jesus that I want to live more every day, just like David says in Psalm 63:
My soul clings to You; Your right hand upholds me.
If we not only draw near to Him from time to time but instead live with Him and stick to His heels, obedience to His words and conformance to His loving character will follow as a natural fruit, just like we read in 2 Corinthians 3:18:
We all, as we contemplate the Lord’s glory with unveiled faces, are being transformed into His image with ever-increasing glory. This transformation comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit.
The Shortsightedness Of All The Others
Elimelech only saw a famine and tried to secure physical survival for his family by moving to Moab — tragically, he and his sons died in spite of his best intentions.
Naomi only sees her loss — although she later recognizes and praises God’s hand moving in favor of her and Ruth.
The nameless “closer redeemer” only sees his own possession and tries to secure his family’s inheritance and prosperity by relying on his riches.
But Ruth and Boaz see something far greater. Their eyes are on God first.
Ruth seems to have no problem in trusting God to completely take care of her in a foreign country with (from a human perspective) the outlook of a dim, impoverished existence at the margins of society. She does not feverishly spring into action nor does she just sit back and do nothing. Out of her trust in God, she faithfully gathers grain for her mother-in-law and herself throughout every working day, all day long, all the months of the harvest. And it’s only when Naomi suggests Ruth approach Boaz about the redeemer thing that she does it instead of doing it on her own account.
Boaz does not venture on frantically either: He understood all along that God was moving here and that he could fully trust Him to bring everything together at the right time. When Ruth asks him to redeem them, he is not even afraid of the “closer redeemer”.
They both see God is at work in everything: In the famine, in the deaths of Ruth’s husband and other family men, in the whole harvest season, in the redemption story — and even beyond what they are going to see with their own eyes! They see God at work and willingly intertwine their actions with God’s movements.
And Boaz does not even “endanger his family inheritance” like the “closer redeemer” feared. He gets something far, far better: A place in the family line of King David and ultimately Jesus, the Son of Man and Son of God. Now that is a family inheritance!