A grandchild is born
This week's verses are Ruth 4:13-15:
These verses come near the end of the book of Ruth, where she gets married and lives happily ever after. But things are even better for her mother-in-law Naomi, whose future went from hopeless to more or less guaranteed.
When Ruth's husband, Naomi's son, died, Naomi was left without a retirement plan. The thing that would have normally happened was that Ruth would marry a man from another family, probably a foreigner, and forget all about Naomi. Naomi, being essentially an illegal refugee in a foreign land at that point, would be out of options and reduced to begging or prostitution to make ends meet. When she decided to return to Israel, it wasn't out of any sense of patriotism. It was for fear for her future prospects. People tend to take care of their own before they take care of foreigners, so her hope was that she'd find some relative back in Israel willing to be charitable to her when her resources ran out.
Ruth had every reason to cut Naomi loose, but she didn't. Her faithfulness to her married family was unusual. She'd already compromised a bit by marrying a foreigner instead of someone of her own ethnicity. This was her chance to course-correct and solidify her family's connection. Instead she moved to a foreign country with the dead weight of her mother-in-law working against her. That's selfless dedication.
Imagine being Naomi at the moment her sons have died without leaving heirs. Your future is gone. There's nobody to take care of you when you're old. Nobody to protect you. Nobody to talk with or share stories with. There's no social welfare system, no 401k, nothing. Your last hope is six feet under. God is the only hope you have left at that point.
We've probably all had some variant of that story. People get fired. The stock market crashes. Relationships are ended. Diagnoses are given. Friends and relatives turn on us. The car breaks down and we have no money. Your hopes and your plans evaporate in front of you and there's nothing as far as you can see. That part is familiar to us, even if we didn't get it as bad as Naomi had it. And like Naomi, some part of us knows God is out there, the wildcard, that force somewhere that loves us and will help. So we cry out. There are no atheists in foxholes, right?
Not only does Ruth come along with Naomi, but she manages to find the one man who is best positioned to help, and ends up marrying him. And not only that, she gives birth to a son! Her first marriage was childless. If she'd married and remained barren, would there have been as much favour for her and Naomi? Probably not. At best, Boaz would have married a second wife and poured his resources into her instead. At worst, she would probably have been shoved aside entirely as damaged goods, a foreign girl, no longer a virgin at marriage, and unable to produce an heir.
And that child wasn't just a life changing gift for Naomi and Ruth, but for us as well. He grew up to be one of the ancestors of king David, who was one of the ancestors of Jesus on earth. As the ladies in Naomi's village said, "May the Lord be praised because he has not left you without a guardian today!" They could say the same thing to us all.
So Boaz married Ruth and had sexual relations with her. The Lord enabled her to conceive and she gave birth to a son. The village women said to Naomi, “May the Lord be praised because he has not left you without a guardian today! May he become famous in Israel! He will encourage you and provide for you when you are old, for your daughter-in-law, who loves you, has given him birth. She is better to you than seven sons!”
These verses come near the end of the book of Ruth, where she gets married and lives happily ever after. But things are even better for her mother-in-law Naomi, whose future went from hopeless to more or less guaranteed.
When Ruth's husband, Naomi's son, died, Naomi was left without a retirement plan. The thing that would have normally happened was that Ruth would marry a man from another family, probably a foreigner, and forget all about Naomi. Naomi, being essentially an illegal refugee in a foreign land at that point, would be out of options and reduced to begging or prostitution to make ends meet. When she decided to return to Israel, it wasn't out of any sense of patriotism. It was for fear for her future prospects. People tend to take care of their own before they take care of foreigners, so her hope was that she'd find some relative back in Israel willing to be charitable to her when her resources ran out.
Ruth had every reason to cut Naomi loose, but she didn't. Her faithfulness to her married family was unusual. She'd already compromised a bit by marrying a foreigner instead of someone of her own ethnicity. This was her chance to course-correct and solidify her family's connection. Instead she moved to a foreign country with the dead weight of her mother-in-law working against her. That's selfless dedication.
Imagine being Naomi at the moment her sons have died without leaving heirs. Your future is gone. There's nobody to take care of you when you're old. Nobody to protect you. Nobody to talk with or share stories with. There's no social welfare system, no 401k, nothing. Your last hope is six feet under. God is the only hope you have left at that point.
We've probably all had some variant of that story. People get fired. The stock market crashes. Relationships are ended. Diagnoses are given. Friends and relatives turn on us. The car breaks down and we have no money. Your hopes and your plans evaporate in front of you and there's nothing as far as you can see. That part is familiar to us, even if we didn't get it as bad as Naomi had it. And like Naomi, some part of us knows God is out there, the wildcard, that force somewhere that loves us and will help. So we cry out. There are no atheists in foxholes, right?
Not only does Ruth come along with Naomi, but she manages to find the one man who is best positioned to help, and ends up marrying him. And not only that, she gives birth to a son! Her first marriage was childless. If she'd married and remained barren, would there have been as much favour for her and Naomi? Probably not. At best, Boaz would have married a second wife and poured his resources into her instead. At worst, she would probably have been shoved aside entirely as damaged goods, a foreign girl, no longer a virgin at marriage, and unable to produce an heir.
And that child wasn't just a life changing gift for Naomi and Ruth, but for us as well. He grew up to be one of the ancestors of king David, who was one of the ancestors of Jesus on earth. As the ladies in Naomi's village said, "May the Lord be praised because he has not left you without a guardian today!" They could say the same thing to us all.
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