Herman G. Stuempfle wrote of Ruth in his hymn “for all the Faithful Women” (LSB 855 &ELW 419).
For Ruth, who left her homeland
And ventured forth in faith,
Who pledged to serve and worship
Naomi’s God till death,
We praise You, God of Israel,
And pray for hearts set free
To bind ourselves to others
In love and loyalty.
The author of Ruth, David’s great grandmother and forebear of Jesus, grips us with the first sentence of this four chapter book sandwiched between Judges and I Samuel. “In the days when the judges ruled there was a famine in the land, and a man of Bethlehem in Judah went to sojourn in the country of Moab, he his wife and his two sons.” However, in about ten years Elimelech (God is my King) and his two sons die leaving his widow, Naomi and her two daughters-in-law widows. Naomi has no choice but to return home to Bethlehem and seek support from her family. Though she encourages her daughters-in-law to stay with their own people, one, Ruth, persists and insists on accompanying her mother-in-law saying, “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.”
So begins a story of two widows, using the wisdom of God and of women to attract the eye of Boaz, a relative of Naomi’s husband. Boaz redeems Ruth in the name of her late husband and marries her. If the first sentence of the book grabbed our interest and pushed us to read this biblical short story, then the last sentence pushes us into the next books of Samuel and Kings and beyond. Ruth 4:21b & 22; “Boaz fathered Obed, Obed fathered Jesse fathered David.”
Ah, God in his wisdom and grace seems to be up to something. And the something God is up to is revealed in the first chapter of Matthew. When we look at the genealogy of Jesus Christ, we find in 1:5 & 6 “and Salmon the father of Boaz by Rahab and Boaz the father of Obed by Ruth, and Obed the father of Jesse, and Jesse the father of David the king.” The genealogy ends, “and Jacob the father of Joseph the husband of Mary, of whom Jesus was born, who is called Christ.”
“For us and for our salvation,” the Moabitess, Ruth, became part of the story that would lead to our Savior, even Jesus Christ, our Lord.
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