Introduction to Old Testament Studies: Deuteronomic History - Ruth: Part 24

Takes place during the time of the judges. Not part of the Deuteronomistic History not found in this section in the Septuagint, part of the writings.

Story

Elimelech - From Bethlehem. Takes his wife Naomi to Moab to live during a time of famine in Israel.

Naomi - Jewish woman. Elimelech’s wife.

Malhom and Kilion are Elimelech and Naomi’s Sons.

Elimelech dies in Moab. Leaving Naomi raising two sons. The two sons eventually marry two Moabite women, Orphah and Ruth.

Not long after the two son’s dies. Leaving no one to look after them.

Naomi decides to return to Israel to be among her own people. The daughters-in-law were determined to go with her. She tries to persuade them to return to their own people.

Orphah does and Ruth Refuses and goes with Naomi. Naomi changes her name to Marah, Bitter.

Ruth 1:16–18 LEB

16 But Ruth said, “Do not urge me to leave you or to return from following you! For where you go, I will go, and where you lodge, I will lodge. Your people will be my people and your God will be my God. 17 Where you die I will die, and there I will be buried. So may Yahweh do to me, and even more, unless death separates you and me!” 18 When Naomi saw that she was determined to go with her, she said no more.

Words usually said to a husband at wedding ceremony not a Mother-in-Law. At the time of the barley harvest they arrive in Bethlehem. Elimelech has rights to ancestral property there. Naomi had no rights to the property. Whoever assumes the responsibility of the property gets to take care of Naomi and Ruth. Elimelech’s property is suppose to go to the nearest male relative

Boaz - A wealthy land owner at Bethlehem was a relative of Elimelech. There is another who is of closer kin. Naomi takes Ruth to the barley fields to glean scattered heads of grain left by the reapers for the poor. Ruth is gleaning in Boaz’s field when he notices her. When she tells him who she is he orders extra grain scattered so she could find it. And follow close to the reapers so she wouldn’t miss it. She is also allowed to drink from Boaz vessel.

Upon hearing this Naomi begins to plan. She is to clean up. Put on her nicest perfume. Prettiest clothes. Then she is to go down to the threshing floor where Boaz was threshing grain. This work would be done late in the afternoon when the breezes arose. When Boaz had finished eating he laid down to sleep. Ruth then was to go up and lie at his feet, pulling his cover over her. This was a woman’s way of proposing to a man. He is surprised to find her there when he awakes. He is an older man. To answer her he gives her a sack full of grain to carry home.

Before he can wed Ruth, Boaz must get through the nearest relative. He finds him at the gate where all legal transactions take place. When the man hears of the property he is glad to take the inheritance, however when he hears of the two women he decides he doesn’t want it any more. Boaz becomes the Go’el

Boaz marries Ruth.

Ruth is the Great grandmother of David, a foreigner. Seen as the Redemption of the Moabites

Go’el

Kinsmen redeemer

Blood vengeance

Purchase out of bondage / Purchase property

Provide a male heir

Scrolls of The Megilloth – Five Festival Scrolls

Passover - Song of Solomon

Pentecost - Ruth

Ninth of Ab - Lamentations

Feast of Tabernacles - Ecclesiastes

Purim - Ester

Hyperlinks

This is a good place to stop and talk about Hyperlinks in the Bible

The opening line of the book of Ruth is "Now it came about in the days when the judges were judging, there was a famine in the land."

What's that first sentence doing?

The story could have started by saying, "Now, it came about in the land of Israel that there was a famine in the land." But that line right here, it's a retrospect.

It’s a Hyperlink. Like on a web page. You have a front page, but then there are all these sub-pages within sub-pages. There is usually glowing icons or words that we call hyperlinks that get you from one page to another, to another, back referencing and what not. Hyperlinking.

This first sentence of Ruth is a hyperlink.

What does the first sentence hyperlink you to?

Judges. The book of Judges.

So, it's situating me in the narrative world of Israel before the kings.

What is Judges all about?

It's before the king. What I'm being asked to do right here is upload the design and message of the book of Judges. We already looked at the beginning of Judges, which begins with "Joshua passed away, this generation becomes unfaithful."

Another important design feature about the book of Judges is its conclusion.

Judges 21:25 LEB

25 In those days there was no king in Israel; each one did what was right in his own eyes.

So we are supposed to think about the Judges and all that means, FORD. We are supposed to think of the idea that there is no king so everyone did what was right in his own eyes, which as we saw was not good.

This is also supposed to lead us to Samuel the last of the Judges, which we haven’t talked about yet and into David through the failure of Saul. The book of Judges is this prophetic reflection on this chaotic period of Israel's history. And the story of Ruth takes place right in all that Chaos.

The Story is about an Israelite family, who because there's a famine in the land, they moved to the land of Moab. Self-imposed exile from the promised land, And then all the men die there. It's the story about these widows, about Naomi, and Ruth, who's a Moabite, and then Orpah who is also a Moabite. These three women. Orpah takes off. Ruth is like, "Yahweh becomes my God.  It's a story about this righteous Moabite woman. And then she goes in and she just happens to be getting barley from the field of a great ancestor of King David, a guy named Boaz.

Go to the end of the book of Ruth. Look at the last word of the book of Ruth. Boaz and the Moabite woman get married and they have a child, a guy named Obed.

The story ends in chapter 4, verse 17.

Ruth 4:17 LEB

17 And the women of the neighborhood gave him a name, saying, “A son has been born to Naomi.” And they called his name Obed. He was the father of Jesse, the father of David.

And then right tagged on the end here is a genealogy. And the genealogy takes you all the way from the sons of Judah in the book of Genesis. And what's the last word of the book? David.

Judges and then you get Samuel. You can just see the ending of Judges in the beginning of Samuel. And what Ruth is, Ruth is a separate composition, that by its beginning, and last words are hyperlinked to go right in between Judges and Samuel.

The location of Ruth, in between Judges and Samuel in the Christian ordering makes perfect sense, because that's where the hyperlinks at the beginning and end.

However, this is not the only place that you can hyperlink the book of Ruth to. When Boaz and Ruth are meeting up and they have this meeting the nighttime threshing floor—it's kind of the suggestive scene—Ruth goes to meet Boaz and essentially invite him to marry her and to take on Naomi and the family land as part of his responsibility. To be a kinsmen redeemer. In Ruth chapter 3, Boaz calls Ruth—an eishet chayil, in Hebrew—a woman of valor.

A woman of valor.

Now, this is interesting. It's an interesting phrase. Boaz was called a man of chayil, a man of valor. They're the hero and the heroine of the book. But this phrase, "a woman of excellence," appears only one other time in the Hebrew Bible. It's a rare phrase. That's Proverbs 31.

Proverbs 31, which is a poem that comes from the mom of a guy named Lemuel. Mom taught him a poem about how, "Listen, you know what king shouldn't do? They shouldn't drink too much because they'll forget justice, and they shouldn't be caught up with wealth." And then you get a poem about an eishet chayil—a woman of noble valor. And you read Proverbs 31 and you feel like you're reading a memorial to Ruth. Ruth is the narrative embodiment of the woman of valor. Now all of a sudden the book of Ruth also is connected in to Proverbs. Remember this is chapter 31. But remember Proverbs, if you know about Proverbs, Proverbs has nine chapters of poetry from a father to a son. And one of the most important figures is this figure called Lady Wisdom that the father is saying, "Embrace divine wisdom." And wisdom is depicted as this elegant royal woman who searched for her and find her.  If you start getting out of concordance, what you see is eishet chayil is like a narrative embodiment of Lady Wisdom, with the same vocabulary of the poems of 1 through 9. All of a sudden, now, Ruth becomes this Lady of Wisdom

This is what I mean by hyperlinking. Every book of the Hebrew Bible is full of this from beginning to end.

This is why the Ketuvim is so cool because they're like little mini commentaries on the themes and ideas that work elsewhere within the collection.