Ruth

The Argument

The book of Ruth is a literary masterpiece in four chapters — a pastoral narrative set against the larger canvas of Judges, the darkest period in Israel's history. It is a story about loyalty, providence, redemption, and the crossing of ethnic and religious boundaries in the service of covenant love. Ruth is a Moabite, from a nation that Israelites were prohibited from marrying. Her inclusion in the genealogy of David, and through David in the genealogy of Jesus, is a theological argument embedded in a story.

Ruth's declaration to Naomi is one of the most quoted passages of loyalty literature in Western culture, and it is frequently quoted outside its theological context. The declaration is not romantic. It is covenantal. Ruth is adopting a people and their God simultaneously, and the two are inseparable.

The book's ending — Ruth in the genealogy of the Messiah — is the payoff of the whole narrative. A Moabite woman's faithfulness to a bereft mother-in-law is woven directly into the line that produces the Savior of the world. Providence works through the specific and the ordinary.