RUTH

Ruth

1:4

       Ruth was surely a beautiful lady.  She was a Moabitess which would mean she was very suspect.  Moab was one of Lots sons by an incestuous union of Lot and one of his daughters.  As a Moabitess she was under the curse of God.  In Deut. 23:3 God had said that a Moabite could not enter into the congregation of the Lord to the tenth generation, and then He said forever.  Her nation was an enemy to God's people.

       Ruth was a stranger in the land of promise.  Reaping in the field of Boaz she became the beloved by grace 2:10 "...Why have I found grace in thine eyes,..."  She was not conformed to the world 2:13 "Then she said, Let me find favour in thy sight, my lord; for that thou hast comforted me, and for that thou hast spoken friendly unto thine handmaid, though I be not like unto one of thine handmaidens."  She plead her case on the basis of her relationship to another 3:9 "And he said, Who art thou? And she answered, I am Ruth thine handmaid: spread therefore thy skirt over thine handmaid; for thou art a near kinsman."  She had followed the Jewish custom under the Law, and she had gone to the threshing floor and laid herself down at the feet of Boaz.  When he asked who she was and what she wanted, she appealed to the fact that he was her near kinsman and was obligated to marry her.

       God through all of this was working out to fulfill His covenanted plan of salvation.  His providence included 4 unlikely women in the ancestry of Jesus Christ.  First there was Tamar, a harlot, who bore a son to Jacob and named him Pharez.  This is Jacob who was the son of Isaac and the grandson of Abraham.  Then there was the harlot Rahab.  She bore a son to Salmon, and that son was Boaz 4:21.  Boaz married the Moabitess, Ruth, and she bore to him Obed 4:21.  Obed became the father of Jesse, and Jesse became the father of David.  David committed adultery with Bathsheba, and from this union was born Solomon.  The royal line of David continued through Solomon on to Jesus Himself.

       How wonderful it is that God works all things after the counsel of His own will Eph. 1:11.  No one would ever expected that four women like Tamar, the harlot; Rahab, the harlot; Ruth, the Moabitess; or Bathsheba, the adulteress would come to be in the ancestry of Jesus Christ.  Grace however does wondrous things.