Last week, I wrote about the courage of Esther; today, it’s the kindness of Ruth, the only other female biblical character to have a book named after her. Another biblical short-story worth reading. (Only four chapters!) A subtitle might be, “Hey, What about Ruth?” More on that below.
“Ruth” is the story of a young Moabite widow, whose Israelite mother-in-law, Naomi, graciously encourages her and her widowed sister, Orpah, (Oprah’s mother spelled it wrong!), to stay in their homeland where they would be more comfortable and where they would have the love and support of their own race, culture, and religion. Naomi was also a widow, and she had decided to return to her homeland, Israel. Unlike her sister, Ruth elects to go with Naomi. Thus the familiar verse to many old-timers: “Intreat me not to leave thee, or to return from following after thee: for whither thou goest, I will go; and where thou lodgest, I will lodge: thy people shall be my people, and thy God my God.” [Ruth 1:16, KJV].
Kindness reciprocated; one act of kindness begetting another. And this, between a young woman and her mother-in-law, though often a close relationship, frequently a traditional butt of jokes. Like the man who spent a huge sum of money to have his mother-in-law’s body shipped back to the U.S. for burial after an untimely death in Jerusalem. “Why not have her buried here in the Holy Land?” he was asked. “Well, there’s this story of a young man who died there many years ago,” he replied, “and on the third day rose from the dead? I’m not taking any chances!”
Ruth’s kindness and concern for Naomi was full of chances. Women in that day without a man to support them were in great jeopardy. Enter Naomi, again, with a proposal that a cousin, Boaz, might allow her to glean his crops. That meant his workers, as was Jewish custom, would not do a perfect job of harvesting each season’s crops, but would leave something behind for the poor to pick for themselves. They might do so with a special nod to Ruth. Maybe Boaz might even do the duty of a next of kin, another Jewish custom of the day, to take Ruth as one of his wives, bearing children by her, who would then become heirs of her late husband’s family’s land. Done. Costly kindness again.
But there’s a deeper message in this story. As Rabbi Israel Bettan, who taught preaching at Hebrew Union College in Cincinnati, said of the Book of Ruth: “[It’s about] the law of kindness which transcends national boundaries and makes all [people] kin.” It’s likely a main reason that the story made it into the Hebrew Scriptures. Note the way the story ends, with a genealogical declaration at the birth of Ruth’s son, Naomi’s grandson: “A son has been born to Naomi. They named him Obed; he became the father of Jesse, the father of David.” Ruth, a Moabite, like her mother-in-law before her was an immigrant and in a line of succession from Abraham and Sarah, the parents of Israel, down to the great King David. Written centuries after David’s rule, at a time when Judean exiles were coming home from captivity, where intermarriages had taken place, men were being told to separate themselves from their Babylonian wives. In the context of a new particularism and a return to racial purity, here comes our story significantly shouting, “Hey, what about Ruth?” Ruth – the great-grandmother of Israel’s greatest king – was an outsider – a foreigner!
For Christians, it goes even farther. Add twenty-five more “greats” to that great-grandmother genealogy and guess where it ends? The son of Mary and Joseph, Jesus of Nazareth! Interesting, too, the parallel between this statement from the beginning of the Book of Ruth, describing Naomi and Ruth traveling home from Moab: “The two of them went on until they reached Bethlehem,” [1:19] and this, from the beginning of Luke’s Gospel: “Joseph also went up,… .to the city of David, which is called Bethlehem, because he was of the house and lineage of David, to be enrolled with Mary, his betrothed, who was with child.” [2:4,5]
It starts with acts of kindness, reciprocated, begetting other acts of kindness. It puts down people’s preoccupation with a racist particularism and prejudice. It ends by asking, “Hey, what about Ruth?”
It may even ask us, in our day, to make our culture kind again!
Jim Graham is a retired Presbyterian minister.
This weekly column is provided to the News Journal on a monthly rotation basis by members of the Wilmington Area Ministerial Association.
