Ruth

Ruth’s story is set “in the days when the judges ruled” (Rut.1.1), probably the twelfth or eleventh century BC. A famine in Judah had driven Elimelech and Naomi from Bethlehem east across the Jordan to the highlands of Moab, where their two sons married Moabite women, Orpah and Ruth. Within a decade Elimelech and both sons were dead; Naomi resolved to return home. Orpah turned back, but Ruth spoke the most famous declaration of loyalty in the Hebrew Bible: “whither thou goest, I will go … thy people shall be my people, and thy God my God” (Rut.1.16–17, KJV). The two widows reached Bethlehem at the start of the barley harvest; Ruth went out to glean in the fields and “happened” on the property of Boaz, a wealthy kinsman of Elimelech. Boaz protected and provisioned her through the harvest. At Naomi’s instruction Ruth approached Boaz at the threshing floor at night and asked him to act as goel — kinsman-redeemer, with the duty to marry a deceased relative’s widow and preserve his name and inheritance. A nearer relative declined the obligation; Boaz redeemed the field and married Ruth. Their son Obed was the grandfather of David (Rut.4.17, Mat.1.5).