Ruth’s Kindness Pays Off

When the men of Moab died leaving their wives widowed, Naomi returned to Israel and encouraged her daughters-in-law to remarry and began again. One does, but the other does not. Ruth was the young woman who stayed behind with her mother-in-law. Most people would have said, "when the husband goes, so does his family", but Ruth had a devotion unlike any other.

Naomi and Ruth returned to Israel hungry and impoverished. Knowing that the law instructed farmers to leave small sheathes during harvest time for the poor, Ruth goes to find wheat in Boaz’s field. Boaz, hearing of Ruth’s kindness to his relative Naomi, treats her with kindness and allows her to drink water with his workers.

Once Naomi hears of Boaz’s kindness to Ruth, she encourages her daughter-in-law to remind Boaz of his obligation. Ruth obeys the instructions and goes to see Boaz in his threshing room. As Boaz sleeps, Ruth lay down next to him and uncovers his feet. Boaz awakens and asks for an explanation. Ruth explains her predicament to Boaz that her dead husband left no heirs relinquishing the family line, but he does not immediately respond. Instead, he tells Ruth that a closer relative than himself must marry her and continue the bloodline. Ruth’s closest relative declines her hand in marriage.

Later, Boaz and Ruth marry and she bore a son whom they named Obed. This young child would later grow up and become the grandfather of King David. David, a descendant of Ruth, would later meet Goliath, the Giant, descendant of Orpah on the battlefields between the Philistines and the Israelites.

Ruth’s story is about a relationship of great love, loyalty, and devotion, which develops between two women. It is also a story of loss. Loss, any kind of loss- rejection, abandonment, divorce, death is a shocking, numbing, grey thing that at the outset at least, freezes the heart. It also changes one’s life forever. Such loss was not the story of Ruth. Although she lost her husband, she gained more than she had before including being a descendant of an Israelite king.

Through Ruth, God filled the emptiness of Naomi with the birth of her son, Obed. Through Boaz, the blessings of God were given to Ruth and Naomi. Consider the following conversation between Boaz and his future bride.

And Boaz answered and said unto her, " It hath fully been shewed me, all that thou hast done to thy mother-in-law since the death of thine husband: and how thou hast left thy father and thy mother, and the land of thy nativity, and art come unto a people which thou knowest not heretofore. The Lord recompense thy work, and a full reward be given thee of the Lord God of Israel, under whose wings thou art come to trust Ruth 2:11."

This is the story of Ruth, the Moabitess. Though she lost a husband, she still became a true patriarch in the Biblical annals of history.

By Naomi J. Brown