Fourth Day of Christmas: Ruth, the Ancestor of Jesus

The third woman listed in Matthew’s genealogy of Jesus is Ruth the Moabite. The story of Ruth receives its own short novella in scripture, and is the closest to a love story that the Bible offers.

During a famine, Naomi, a woman from Judah, left her home with all her family and emigrated to Moab, a neighboring country. They lived there for years, long enough for her sons to marry local women. Naomi’s husband and then her sons died, and she was left alone with her daughters-in-law. One daughter-in-law, Ruth, decided to return with Naomi to Judah. Her famous words to Naomi were:

Where you go I will go, and where you stay I will stay. Your people will be my people and your God my God. Where you die I will die, and there I will be buried. May the LORD deal with me, be it ever so severely, if anything but death separates you and me.

In a harsh and disappointing world, Ruth has found a home with her mother-in-law, and she will not be separated from her. Ruth loves and trusts Naomi, and puts her fate entirely in Naomi’s hands.

Naomi was a loving schemer. She decided to get Ruth married off to Boaz, a wealthy kinsman who had noticed her. Boaz was impressed by the story of Ruth’s faithfulness to Naomi, and her apparent youth probably didn’t hurt. So Naomi persuades Ruth to dress up and wear perfume and visit Boaz at the scene of a big party, after most people have fallen asleep.

Ruth sneaks in and lies down on the floor next to Boaz, where she “uncovered his feet.” Some interpreters read that euphemistically, pointing to other ancient near eastern uses of “feet” as a euphemism for genitals. I am not entirely convinced by this, but certainly Ruth’s behavior is sexually charged. Consider: Boaz gets drunk with his buddies (that’s what the party at the threshing floor is all about), and wakes up to find a woman lying beside him. What do you think he assumed?

Ruth has hazarded her future in this act. She is a poor immigrant, vulnerable in a society historically hostile to Moab. If Boaz rejects her and shames her, her life will become immeasurably worse. But Boaz is flattered that she chose him, and is concerned for her safety and reputation. He orders his men to pretend they did not see her, and he rushes about, trying to get the details done that would allow him to marry her.

The book of Ruth is somewhat misnamed. The largest character in this story is Naomi, the crafty orchestrator who sizes up exactly what kind of man Boaz is and how best to appeal to him.

Matthew’s genealogy for Jesus mentions Ruth obviously for her scandalous behavior at the threshing floor. She is another ancestress tainted with sexual impropriety. Matthew is introducing the story of Mary’s suspicious conception of Jesus, and he wants to remind his readers that, when it comes to God’s redemption of his people, God uses people without regard to the niceness of a woman’s reputation. Ruth is the great-grandmother of King David; through her, God brought about the birth of the greatest king of Israel.

Through Mary and her untimely conception, God brought the birth of a new and eternal king.

Like Tamar, Ruth is profoundly faithful. Like Rahab, she is an outsider, a foreigner who chose to become part of the community of Israel. But Ruth is also a risk-taker. For the sake of a loving future, she is willing to give up everything she knows. In hope, she risks everything.

This is the heart in which Jesus can be born again. Ruth is an example of the person willing to lose everything to gain what is most precious. This is both the sort of person whom Jesus came to save, and also the way that Jesus saved them. In hope and faith, he hazarded everything at the cross, to save what was most precious to him: us.

For the joy set before him, he endured the cross, scorning its shame…