Ruth
The Moabitess who chose Israel's God
Where Scripture records this person
- Ruth 1:1-18
- Ruth 2:1-23
- Ruth 3:1-18
- Ruth 4:13-17
- Matthew 1:5
Who this person is in Scripture
Ruth is a Moabite widow with no reason left to stay with her Israelite mother-in-law, and every reason to go home. Her answer in Ruth 1:16-17 is one of the clearest confessions in the Old Testament: your people will be my people, and your God my God. She binds herself with an oath in the name of the LORD.
The rest of the book shows what that costs and what it becomes. She works in the fields of a stranger through harvest, is spoken well of by the whole town, and is finally and married. Naomi, who had said call me Mara, ends the book with a child on her lap.
Family, as Scripture gives it
- Spouses
- Mahlon, who died in Moab, Boaz
- Children
- Obed
Ruth 1:4 names Naomi's sons; Ruth 4:10 identifies Ruth as Mahlon's widow.
Promises and covenants this life carries
- A woman from a nation kept at a distance in the law becomes David's great-grandmother by God's kindness.
What this teaches
- Ruth's faith is stated as a decision about God and about a people, made when there was nothing visible to gain.
- Scripture puts a Moabite woman's loyalty on record as an example to Israel, and then puts her in the 's ancestry.
Read further in Scripture
- Ruth 2:12
- Isaiah 56:6-8