We’re tempted to chase the short-term. Ruth shows that ordinary, costly obedience today becomes God’s long-term change tomorrow.

Ruth 4:11–12 “We are witnesses. May the LORD make the woman who is coming into your home like Rachel and Leah, who together built up the family of Israel. May you have standing in Ephrathah and be famous in Bethlehem. Through the offspring the LORD gives you by this young woman, may your family be like that of Perez, whom Tamar bore to Judah.”

• Three-fold blessing:
  
  • Ruth like Rachel and Leah — outsider made matriarch (cf. Deuteronomy 23:3).
  • Fame in Bethlehem — ironic reversal of Mr. “So-and-So.”
  • Family like Perez through Tamar — God’s pattern: outsiders folded into redemption.
    
    

Grace for outsiders — From banned to beloved

• Ruth the Moabite (outsider) now blessed as a builder of Israel’s future.
• Gospel echo: God makes strangers family (Ephesians 2:12–13, 19).
  
  

Fame that fades vs. honor that lasts

• Nearer redeemer = “so-and-so” (anonymous, Ruth 4:1) tried to protect his name—forgotten.
• Boaz risked reputation to protect the vulnerable—remembered in Scripture and in Messiah’s line.
• Principle: Those who seek self-preservation lose their name; those who practice hesed receive a name (cf. Proverbs 10:7).
  
  

Ruth 4:13–17 “So Boaz took Ruth and she became his wife … the LORD enabled her to conceive … The women said to Naomi, ‘Praise be to the LORD, who this day has not left you without a guardian-redeemer.… He will renew your life and sustain you in your old age.…’ Then Naomi took the child in her arms … The women said, ‘Naomi has a son!’”

• God’s agency: “the LORD enabled her to conceive.” Quiet providence goes explicit.
• Naomi’s reversal: from “empty” (1:21) to full—renewal, sustenance, praise to God.
• ”Better than seven sons” — Ruth’s hesed outstrips cultural ideals.
  
  

Ruth 4:17b–22 “They named him Obed. He was the father of Jesse, the father of David.… Salmon the father of Boaz, Boaz the father of Obed, Obed the father of Jesse, and Jesse the father of David.”

• Shock ending: Ruth becomes great-grandmother to King David.
• Zoom out to Matthew 1:5–6, 16 — line extends to Jesus.
• Takeaway: Their small fidelity became the hinge of salvation history.

Study Notes

(4:13—17) EVEN THOUGH THIS epilogue is brief, its importance to the story is similar to that of its counterpart the prologue (1:1—6), for the resolution to the death and emptiness that have afflicted Naomi are truly resolved in these few verses. In staccato style, the story compresses about an entire year into a few verses in order to bring resolution to the book’s main problem: Naomi’s emptiness. In contrast to the ten years of infertility in Moab, Yahweh “enables” Ruth to conceive; she does so almost immediately (4:13). While Naomi’s “children” died in Moab, a “child” (yeled) is born to Ruth and Boaz in Bethlehem (4:16). The epilogue (4:13—17) is also strikingly parallel to Scene 2 of Act 1 (1:19b—22). In the epilogue the women of Bethlehem joyously celebrate the son born to Ruth and Boaz as the one who restores life and fullness to Naomi. This is parallel to 1:19b—22, where the women of Bethlehem joyously greet Naomi only to hear her bitter lament of bereavement and emptiness. –Younger

In Christian tradition, of course, Ruth thematically anticipates another devout handmaiden, Mary, who bore Jesus (Luke 1:38). Small wonder that Matthew extends David’s royal line and its foreign female members (Tamar, Rahab, Ruth, Uriah’s wife) down to Jesus (Matt. 1). As Ap-Thomas notes, this extension by Matthew means that “without this Moabite girl, Christianity would be without its Founder; Israel and the world would be immeasurably the poorer.”56 Thus, it joined the book of Ruth, already concerned about peoples outside Israel, with God’s gracious dealings with the whole world. – Hubbard

The third blessing invokes the case of Perez, the offspring of Tamar and Judah, who in spite of the machinations of his father and mother (Gen. 38)28 proved to be a gracious blessing from God. This blessing subtly speaks to the parallel of Ruth and Tamar as non-Israelites included in the tribal delineation. Like the story of Boaz and Ruth, the story of Judah and Tamar is a story of family continuity achieved by the determination of a woman, though the story of Boaz and Ruth is also a tremendous contrast to the tale of Judah and Tamar. –Younger

The narrator has one last artistic touch for us: this ending or epilogue is exactly seventy-one Hebrew words, the same as the beginning or prologue. The seventh and the tenth names in a Hebrew genealogy are usually the most important. Boaz is the seventh and David is the tenth. Ruth is the founder of the greatest dynasty of Israel. “Suddenly, the simple, clever human story of two struggling widows takes on a startling new dimension. It becomes a bright, radiant thread woven into the fabric of Israel’s larger national history.”  When David was fleeing for his life, he sent his family to Moab. Ruth was possibly written during David’s or Solomon’s lifetime in order to dispel rumors that David was a Moabite and to show God’s design in David’s heritage. “That the greatest king of Israel should trace his roots to a destitute widow, her Moabite daughter-in-law, and an aging bachelor from the humble town of Bethlehem is . . . a supreme divine accomplishment.” This biblical pattern of strength from weakness, glory from brokenness, was written long before another humble woman from the same insignificant town of Bethlehem was the head of another royal dynasty. The cheering begins with Boaz standing by himself in the field. By the end of the day, he has drawn his workers into his enjoyment of Ruth. Two months later, at the end of the harvest, the village has quietly joined Boaz. A year later when the baby is born, all the village women, in awe of her love, celebrate the work of God in Ruth. The circle continues to widen when her great-grandson is crowned king of Israel. Then the spiritual leaders of Israel honor Ruth’s hesed when they place Ruth in the Bible. Now millions of us stand in her greatest Son’s shadow, entering into his hesed of us and extending a chain of hesed to the nations. Like Ruth, we want to quietly disappear as we turn our eyes on him. – Miller

More than anyone else in the history of Israel, Ruth embodies the fundamental principle of the nation’s ethic: “You shall love your God with all your heart” (Deut. 6:5) “and your neighbor as yourself (Lev. 19:18). In Lev. 19:34 Moses instructs the Israelites to love the stranger as they love themselves. Ironically, it is this stranger from Moab who shows the Israelites what this means. – Block

Pastor Sam Sutter //Sam@bbcconline.org

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