Book of Ruth

Where you go I will go, and where you lodge I will lodge. Your people shall be my people, and your God my God.

— Ruth 1:16

Overview

The book of Ruth is a short narrative history set “in the days when the judges ruled” (Ruth 1:1), following one Israelite family’s loss and restoration during that unsettled period.¹ Though its events belong to the era of the judges, Jewish tradition and the Hebrew canon’s arrangement place it among the Writings rather than with Judges itself.² Barrows called it “a beautiful sketch of domestic life,” but held its place in the canon rests chiefly on what it records: Ruth the Moabite’s faith in Israel’s God, a faith that made her the ancestress of David and, through him, of Christ.²

Timeline

Famine drives Elimelech to Moab: A famine forces Elimelech, Naomi, and their two sons to leave for Moab. The sons marry Orpah and Ruth. Within ten years, Elimelech and both sons die (Ruth 1:1-5).
Ruth clings to Naomi: Naomi decides to return to Bethlehem and tells her daughters-in-law to stay in Moab. Orpah kisses her goodbye, but Ruth stays with Naomi and her God (Ruth 1:6-18).
Naomi and Ruth reach Bethlehem: The two widows arrive as the barley harvest begins. The women of the town ask, “Is this Naomi?” She answers that God has treated her bitterly (Ruth 1:19-22).
Ruth gleans in Boaz’s field: Ruth gathers leftover grain to feed Naomi and ends up in the field of Boaz, a relative of Elimelech. Boaz notices her loyalty and treats her kindly (Ruth 2).
Ruth appeals to Boaz at the threshing floor: Following Naomi’s plan, Ruth asks Boaz by night to marry her as her kinsman-redeemer. He agrees, but a nearer relative must decide first (Ruth 3).
Boaz redeems Ruth at the gate: Before the elders, the nearer relative gives up his right to Elimelech’s land and to Ruth, sealing it by removing his sandal. Boaz then redeems both himself (Ruth 4:1-12).
Obed is born and the line to David unfolds: Boaz marries Ruth, and she gives birth to Obed. The women bless Naomi. The book ends with a line from Obed to David (Ruth 4:13-22).

Author and Date

The book does not name its own author.² Jewish tradition attributes it to Samuel, the same tradition that assigns him the book of Judges.¹ Elijah Barrows judged that internal evidence supports only a narrower claim: the genealogy closing the book (Ruth 4:18-22) shows it was written after David’s accession to the throne, but “further than this we have no certain knowledge respecting its date; nor can its author be determined.”² The book’s style and diction gave nineteenth-century interpreters no reason to place its composition in a later age of Hebrew literature than that of Judges and Samuel.³

Historical and Literary Context

The narrative opens with a famine that drives Elimelech of Bethlehem, with his wife Naomi and two sons, to sojourn in Moab (Ruth 1:1-2). Moab lay across the Dead Sea from Judah, and Israelite law barred a Moabite from entering “the assembly of the LORD… even to the tenth generation” (Deut. 23:3), a restriction rooted in Moab’s history of hostility toward Israel during the wilderness years (Num. 22-25). Against that backdrop, Ruth’s declaration of loyalty to Naomi and to Naomi’s God (Ruth 1:16-17) marks a decisive crossing of the boundary the law drew, one Barrows called “the sublime faith of Ruth the Moabitess, which led her to forsake her own country and kindred to trust under the wings of the Lord God of Israel.”²

The period of the judges itself, as the book of Judges (Judg. 21:25) and Ruth’s own narrator agree, was one without a king in Israel, a time of covenant unfaithfulness and its consequences.² Ruth’s quiet, covenant-keeping household stands against that wider setting: Barrows described the book of Judges as unfolding “sin, and oppression by the surrounding nations; repentance, and deliverance by God’s immediate interposition,”¹ while Ruth narrates one family’s steadfastness within that same era.

Structure

The book’s four chapters move in a single arc from loss to restoration:

Famine and loss (ch. 1): Elimelech’s family goes to Moab; Elimelech and both sons die; Naomi resolves to return to Bethlehem, and Ruth binds herself to Naomi and to Naomi’s God.
Ruth’s loyalty and provision (ch. 2): Ruth gleans in the fields of Boaz, a worthy man of Elimelech’s clan, who shows her favor.
Boaz as kinsman-redeemer (ch. 3): Naomi instructs Ruth to appeal to Boaz’s duty as a near kinsman; Boaz agrees to act, pending the claim of a nearer kinsman.
Redemption and genealogy (ch. 4): the nearer kinsman relinquishes his right; Boaz redeems the family’s inheritance and marries Ruth; the book closes with the genealogy from Perez to David (Ruth 4:18-22).

Major Themes

Hesed, loyal love

Ruth’s pledge to Naomi, “your people shall be my people, and your God my God” (Ruth 1:16), and Boaz’s later commendation of her kindness to Naomi (Ruth 2:11-12) exemplify hesed, the covenant loyalty that binds Israel’s God to his people and that his people are to show one another.⁴ The book’s whole plot turns on characters who go beyond bare legal obligation out of this loyal love, from Ruth’s refusal to abandon her mother-in-law to Boaz’s provision for a gleaner he was not yet bound to marry.

The kinsman-redeemer as a type of Christ

Under Israel’s law, a man unable to act for himself could be represented by a near relative, his goel, a Hebrew term rendered variously “kinsman” and “redeemer” in the Old Testament (Num. 5:8; Ruth 3:12-13; Prov. 23:11; Isa. 47:4).⁵ Thomas Boston set out four duties belonging to this office, the first of which Ruth herself invoked: “he was to marry the widow of his deceased kinsman, to raise up seed to his brother,” the very claim Ruth pressed on Boaz (Ruth 3:9).⁶ A kinsman-redeemer could also decline the office, as the nearer kinsman in Ruth 4:6-8 did, drawing off his own shoe as a sign of his refusal and yielding his right to Boaz.⁵

Boston read Boaz’s role as a picture of Christ’s own undertaking as Kinsman-Redeemer: “Christ the second Adam saw sinners, his ruined kinsmen quite unable to act for themselves. Not one of them all was able to redeem himself, and far less his brother.”⁵ Where every other possible redeemer failed or declined, Christ alone did not draw off his shoe.⁵ Job’s confession, “I know that my Redeemer liveth” (Job 19:25), belongs to the same goel vocabulary and gave Boston a name for this office as Christ himself fulfills it.⁵

God’s providence

Naomi’s bitter assessment on her return to Bethlehem, “I went out full, and the LORD hath brought me home again empty” (Ruth 1:21), gives way across the book to God’s quiet ordering of Ruth’s path to Boaz’s field and to marriage.⁷ The book nowhere records a miracle; its account of God’s hand runs instead through Ruth’s own decisions and Boaz’s own kindness, an ordinary providence of the kind Barrows found throughout the historical books, where “the presence of God and his supremacy… were gloriously manifested” even without a miracle recorded.⁸

The inclusion of a Moabite in Israel’s and Christ’s line

Ruth’s Moabite origin, set against the law’s exclusion of Moabites from Israel’s assembly (Deut. 23:3), makes her presence in the genealogy that closes the book (Ruth 4:18-22) and later in Matthew’s genealogy of Christ (Matt. 1:5) a marked instance of a foreigner grafted into the covenant people.⁹ Micah McCormick observed that the book’s own genealogy, tracing ten generations from Perez to David, echoes the shape of the Adam-Noah and Shem-Abraham genealogies in Genesis, carrying forward God’s promise of an obedient seed even as “he incorporates foreigners into his plan.”⁹ Barrows likewise tied Ruth’s inclusion directly to the ancestry of David and of Christ, calling the book “supplementary to the history of his family.”²

Related Doctrines

References

Elijah Porter Barrows, Companion to the Bible (New York: American Tract Society, 1867), 246: “In the history of redemption, the book of Judges has a well-defined place. It unfolds to our view the operation of the Theocracy in the first stage of the nation’s existence… Sin, and oppression by the surrounding nations; repentance, and deliverance by God’s immediate interposition, this is the oft-repeated story of the book of Judges.” ↩ ↩² ↩³
Barrows, 247: “The incidents of the book of Ruth belong to the period of the Judges, so that it may be regarded as in some sort an appendix to the book of Judges, though probably not written by the same author… It records also the sublime faith of Ruth the Moabitess, which led her to forsake her own country and kindred to trust under the wings of the Lord God of Israel (ch. 2:12), and which was rewarded by her being made the ancestress of David and of the Lord Jesus Christ. Thus the book connects itself immediately with ‘the house and lineage of David,’ and may be regarded as supplementary to the history of his family. It was evidently written after David was established on the throne. Further than this we have no certain knowledge respecting its date; nor can its author be determined.” ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶ ↩⁷
Barrows, 244: “Nothing in the style and diction of this book, or in that of the two following books of Judges and Ruth, indicates that they belong to a later age of Hebrew literature.” ↩
See Hesed. ↩
Thomas Boston, A View of the Covenant of Grace (Aberdeen: George and Robert King, 1853), 413: “Under the law, when a man was not able to act for himself, to assert and use his own right, one that was akin to him, had a right to act for him… And such a one was called his Goel; which properly signifies a Kinsman-redeemer… Howbeit, such a one might refuse to do the kinsman’s part; as Ruth’s kinsman-redeemer did, who resigned his right to Boaz, and in token thereof drew off his own shoe, and gave it him, Ruth iv. 6, 7, 8. Now, Christ the second Adam saw sinners, his ruined kinsmen quite unable to act for themselves. Not one of them all was able to redeem himself, and far less his brother.” ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵
Boston, 414: “There were four things the kinsman-redeemer was to do for his kinsman, unable to act for himself; all which Christ the second Adam undertook in the covenant. 1. He was to marry the widow of his deceased kinsman, to raise up seed to his brother. Hereof Boaz was put in mind by Ruth, chap. iii. 9.” ↩
Thomas Watson, “A Believer’s Privilege at Death,” in A Body of Practical Divinity (1692), citing Ruth 1:20: “Call me not Naomi, call me Mara: I went out full, and the Lord hath brought me home again empty.” ↩
Barrows, 241: “In both the growth of the national power under the Theocracy, and its decline, the presence of God and his supremacy, as well over the covenant people as over the surrounding nations, were gloriously manifested, and their training for the future advent of the Messiah was steadily carried forward.” ↩
Micah John McCormick, “Messiah’s Obedience for Eternal Life Foreshadowed,” in “The Active Obedience of Jesus Christ” (PhD diss., The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, 2010), 198: “The book of Ruth concludes with a genealogy reminiscent of Adam-Noah (Gen 5:1-32) and Shem-Abraham (Gen 11:10-26). God’s promise of an obedient seed to come has not been forgotten, and he incorporates foreigners into his plan.” ↩ ↩²