Ruth: Some Vital Lessons

When I am asked which part of the Bible I return to most often, there is only one answer: the Book of Ruth. It has fascinated, encouraged and challenged me for decades.

For many Christians, it is remembered as a gentle story about loyalty, kindness, and, eventually, romance. Ruth refuses to abandon her mother-in-law Naomi after both women have been widowed. She follows Naomi back to Bethlehem, gathers leftover grain from the fields to provide food for them both, meets a generous landowner called Boaz and eventually marries him.

The story ends with a child, a restored family, and one of those endings that seem to tie everything together beautifully.

It contains one of the most quoted expressions of loyalty anywhere in the Bible:

“Where you go, I will go, and where you stay, I will stay. Your people will be my people and your God my God.”

It is easy to understand why Ruth has become associated with faithfulness and devotion. Yet recently I noticed something about the story that makes it considerably more uncomfortable than the version many of us remember.

The narrator constantly reminds us of something we already know.

Ruth is a Moabite.

Not simply Ruth.

Ruth the Moabite.

And once you understand what that description would have meant to an Israelite reader, the whole story begins to look rather different.

The Detail the Story Refuses to Let Us Forget

Ruth’s nationality is established almost immediately.

Naomi and her husband leave Bethlehem during a famine and travel to Moab with their two sons. The sons marry Moabite women, Ruth and Orpah. Eventually, Naomi’s husband and both sons die, leaving three widows facing an uncertain future.

Naomi decides to return to Judah. Orpah eventually stays behind, but Ruth refuses to leave her. By the time the two women reach Bethlehem, therefore, nobody reading the story could possibly have forgotten where Ruth comes from.

Yet the narrator tells us again.

“So Naomi returned from Moab accompanied by Ruth the Moabite, her daughter-in-law.”

Later, Boaz hears about “the Moabite woman who came back from Moab with Naomi.”

Again and again, Ruth’s ethnicity remains visible.

Scholars have noticed that this repetition appears to be doing more than simply helping readers keep track of the characters. The label creates tension because Moab carried a complicated and often hostile history within Israel’s Scriptures.

To understand just how much tension, we have to leave Ruth for a moment and turn to Deuteronomy.

That is where things become awkward.

The Law About Moab

Deuteronomy contains a remarkable instruction:

“No Ammonite or Moabite or any of their descendants may enter the assembly of the LORD, not even in the tenth generation.”

Exactly what “the assembly of the LORD” means has been debated. Some commentators understand it as participation in Israel’s formal public and worshipping assembly, rather than a complete ban on Moabites living among Israel or worshipping Israel’s God. So it would be misleading simply to say that every Moabite was forbidden from living among Israel or worshipping Israel’s God.

Even so, the restriction is obviously severe.

The reference to the tenth generation is often understood as a way of saying that the exclusion was effectively permanent.

Then Deuteronomy explains why.

Moab had failed to meet Israel with bread and water during Israel’s journey from Egypt. Moab was also associated with the attempt to have Israel cursed through the prophet Balaam. The text concludes with language that sounds remarkably strong:

“Do not seek a treaty of friendship with them as long as you live.”

Whatever precise legal boundaries were intended, the message is difficult to miss. Moab was not simply another neighbouring country.

Moab carried baggage.

And now Ruth walks into Bethlehem carrying that name with her.

So What Is Ruth Doing Here?

This is where the story becomes fascinating.

Because the more closely you read Ruth alongside Deuteronomy, the more the Book of Ruth appears to reverse the very accusations associated with Moab.

Deuteronomy remembers Moab as a people who failed to meet hungry travellers with bread and water. The story of Ruth begins with an Israelite family travelling to Moab because they are starving.

There is famine in Bethlehem, a name that means something like "house of bread", yet food is found outside Israel, in the land of Moab.

That irony is only the beginning. When Ruth eventually arrives in Bethlehem with Naomi, she goes out into the fields to gather leftover grain.

Why?

To feed herself and her Israelite mother-in-law. The Moabite becomes the person providing food for the Israelite. That alone is a notable reversal, but the theme continues.

Ruth enters the field belonging to Boaz, who learns what she has done for Naomi. He instructs his workers not to harm her and tells them deliberately to pull additional grain from their bundles so that she can gather more.

Then, at mealtime, Boaz invites Ruth to sit with his workers and gives her bread. She eats until she is satisfied, and there is food left over. Ruth takes those leftovers home to Naomi.

A story that begins with Moab remembered for failing to provide bread becomes filled with bread passing backwards and forwards between an Israelite and a Moabite.

That seems rather difficult to dismiss as a coincidence.

The Moabite Who Behaves Nothing Like Moab

The reversal goes deeper than food.

Deuteronomy remembers Moab not only for withholding hospitality but also for hostility. Moab had attempted to bring a curse upon Israel. Yet when Boaz meets Ruth, he does the opposite. He blesses her.

“May the LORD repay you for what you have done. May you be richly rewarded by the LORD, the God of Israel, under whose wings you have come to take refuge.”

The Moabite who comes seeking shelter among Israel receives a blessing rather than a curse. And Ruth herself demonstrates the quality that lies at the heart of the entire book: hesed.

The Hebrew word is difficult to capture with a single English equivalent. It can mean loving-kindness, faithfulness, loyal love or committed kindness. Whatever translation we choose, Ruth embodies it.

She could have remained in Moab after her husband died. Naomi actually encouraged her to do precisely that. Ruth had no obvious obligation to accompany an ageing widow to a foreign country where her prospects were uncertain. Yet she goes. She leaves her homeland, her family and everything familiar in order to remain with Naomi.

She works so that Naomi can eat. She places Naomi’s future alongside her own, and, remarkably, the foreign woman begins to look like one of the most faithful people in the entire story.

That is when the repeated label “Ruth the Moabite” starts doing something extraordinary. Every time we hear it, we are reminded of what we might have expected.

And then Ruth behaves differently.

When a Person Stops Fitting the Category

I think this is one of the most powerful things happening in the story.

Human beings love categories.

They help us make sense of a complicated world. We place people into groups according to nationality, religion, politics, background, morality, class, culture and countless other things.

Sometimes those categories contain important information. Israel’s history with Moab was not imaginary; there had been genuine hostility, conflict and painful memories.

The Book of Ruth does not pretend otherwise. Instead, it does something much more interesting. It introduces us to a person. Suddenly, Moabite is no longer simply a category. It has a face, and her name is Ruth. Yet she behaves nothing like the category suggests she should.

The people of Bethlehem could have looked at Ruth and seen only what she represented. A foreigner, A Moabite, and an outsider. Someone whose people had once treated Israel badly. Yet the story keeps forcing us to watch what Ruth actually does.

She feeds.

She serves.

She loves.

She remains faithful.

She seeks refuge under the God of Israel.

At some point, the label simply stops being enough to describe the person standing in front of us.

Did Ruth Challenge the Law?

Biblical scholars disagree about exactly how Ruth relates to Deuteronomy.

Some scholars think Ruth is deliberately challenging the way this law had come to be understood. Others are more cautious. They point out that Deuteronomy also tells Israel to love and care for foreigners, so perhaps Ruth is showing what happens when those two ideas come face to face with a real person.

That tension did not disappear later in Israel’s story. Books such as Ezra and Nehemiah show that people were still arguing about who belonged, who could marry whom and how Israel should relate to outsiders.

Ruth seems to add another voice to that conversation. Instead of giving us another rule, it gives us a woman. Deuteronomy tells us something about Moab. Ruth introduces us to a Moabite who behaves nothing like the picture we might have expected.

Readers have wrestled with that ever since.

Later Jewish teachers even argued that the restriction in Deuteronomy applied to Moabite men but not to Moabite women. Whatever we make of that explanation, it shows that Ruth’s presence in the story was never as straightforward as we sometimes imagine.

Ruth has been making readers think about the boundaries of belonging for a very long time.

Then Comes the Final Surprise

If Ruth simply became an accepted member of the Bethlehem community, the story would already be remarkable.

But it does not stop there.

Ruth marries Boaz and gives birth to a son called Obed. Obed becomes the father of Jesse. Jesse becomes the father of David, and the Moabite woman becomes the great-grandmother of Israel’s greatest king.

Think about that for a moment.

The person who begins the story carrying one of Israel’s most difficult ethnic labels becomes woven permanently into Israel’s royal story. And centuries later, Matthew does something equally interesting when he opens his Gospel with the genealogy of Jesus.

He names Ruth.

He could simply have followed the male line, as ancient genealogies usually did. Instead, he reminds his readers that Ruth is there.

The outsider has become part of the story through which Christians believe God entered the world.

The Question Ruth Leaves Us With

Perhaps that is why this ancient story still feels surprisingly contemporary.

We still inherit categories, and we still inherit stories about those people. Sometimes those stories arise from genuine experiences. Sometimes they arise from fear, prejudice or memories handed down through generations. Often, they contain some mixture of all three.

The problem begins when the category becomes more important than the person.

Ruth forces us to confront that possibility. Deuteronomy remembers something about Moab. Ruth asks us to look at a Moabite standing in front of us, and once we do, things become considerably more complicated.

She does not erase the history. She simply refuses to be defined by it.

Perhaps that is one reason the narrator keeps calling her Ruth the Moabite for so much of the story. The label remains in place while everything we associate with it is slowly overturned.

Then, near the end, something subtle happens.

Ruth is simply Ruth.

By then, perhaps, that is enough.

The book has taught us to see the person rather than merely the category.

Perhaps Scripture is still trying to teach us the same thing.