Repairing Communities

Buried in the fading decades of the “judges” is the story of Ruth, a Moabite woman who crossed national boundaries to experience and express covenantal love in her adopted war-torn country of Israel. Her love story comes at a time of personal loss, political unrest, and famine as violence cancers its way through Israel (Judges 18-21). But Ruth’s commitment, her sweet and dedicated acts of kindness shown first to her husband, then her mother-in-law, and then eventually her adopted town of Bethlehem, breeds hope. This soon fans a romantic love with Boaz. It is a feel-good story that packs practical advice for healing communities and a deeper theological punch line that is radical in love and hope. 

As I trace its love themes, I encourage you to read Ruth now—it takes only 10 minutes. I leave out details in order to trace two overlapping threads: practical ways covenant improves community and the deep theological message in the covenant love revealed in the kinsman-redeemer of God’s redemptive work in judgment. According to J. M. Hamilton, Jr., this last point is the number-one theme of Scripture: “God’s glory revealed in salvation through judgment.”[1] Ruth and Boaz show us how God’s covenant love works in judgment, but along the way it also shows us how to bring that covenant love as a force of generosity that recalibrates our anxiety, bitterness, and xenophobia, toward sweetness.

Familial Love

The book starts with a nation and family in crisis. A man named Elimelech from Bethlehem feels compelled to escape the violence and famine in Israel. We understand this famine to likely be local, as he flees to Moab, which is only about 50 miles (80 kilometers) away. Most likely this political famine is the remnants of the civil conflict that escalated from spiritual confusion, moral division, where two sides in moral outrage flamed into violence (Judges 17-21).

While in Moab, Elimelech dies, his sons marry, but then they also die. Naomi and her daughters-in-law, Orpah and Ruth, are left grief-stricken, and Naomi faces destitution, as most of the economy of that time channeled through males. First traumatized by national disaster and now by personal disaster, Naomi sinks deeper into depression, as her odds as widow look bleak. Despite her haze of depression, she calculates that it would be better for widows back in Israel, as covenant “rules” protect them (Ex. 22:22; Deut. 14:28, 29; 24:19; 26:12, 13), and kinfolk can watch out for them in Bethlehem. Then on the way home she realizes that her Moabite daughters would likely fare better in Moab, given Israel’s history of xenophobia. Despite laws protecting foreigners (Ex. 23:9; Lev. 19:34; Deut. 10:17-19; 14:28, 29; 16:14; 26:11; 27:19), Israel’s violence had likely stirred Israel’s xenophobia even more toward outsiders.

The greed of the first in line ends in a loss of the best in time.

This is where we get the first glimmer of hope. Ruth steps up. Her line to her mother-in-law, Naomi, echoes the theme of the book: “Do not plead with me to leave you or to turn back from following you; for where you go, I will go, and where you sleep, I will sleep. Your people shall be my people, and your God, my God. Where you die, I will die, and there I will be buried. May the Lord do so to me, and worse, if anything but death separates me from you” (Ruth 1:16, 17).[2] Powerful words, redeeming words, sweet words. 

Ruth’s sweet talk is rooted in a loving heart and manifested in kind deeds. Once back in Bethlehem, Ruth risks a lot as a young foreign woman to venture out to glean grain in nearby fields to provide for their needs (Lev. 19:9, 10; 23:22; Deut. 24:19-21). The violence in Israel is still smoldering. She providentially falls on the farmland of a good man: Boaz. Boaz is gracious to Ruth, and the covenant loves starts to grow.

Neighborly Love to Strangers Into Romantic Love

In fact, chapter 2 is so full of sweet talk and kind deeds, one could forget that Israel is still embroiled in violence. Boaz is kind to his workers, and the workers share sweet talk to Boaz (Ruth 2:4). Boaz is kind to Ruth and Ruth to Boaz (verses 8-14). Even Ruth is shocked by all this amazing kindness: “Why have I found favor in your sight that you should take notice of me, since I am a foreigner?” (verse 10). But we know this is the exception, unfortunately, and not the rule in Israel. “Listen carefully, my daughter. Do not go to glean in another field; furthermore, do not go on from this one, but join my young women here” (verse 8). Naomi later confirms that Boaz’ warning “to stay close to my servants” (verse 21) is the exception as Ruth is at risk for rape, abuse, or killing “in another field” (verse 22). Boaz has created a work culture that valued workers, hired and trained men to work hard, which included respecting and protecting women. This is in contrast to a nation gripped by sexualized violence of women (Judges 19). This culture of respect and protection, kind talk and sweet acts, even to foreigners, speaks to a covenant generosity that alone breeds economic stability and prosperity.

As Ruth recounts the generosity and protection she has received, Naomi’s own heart starts to open from her pain. Naomi, who has spent most of the first part of this book stuck as a victim from famine, border crossings, suffering, death and grief, and likely depression, is now rallied by covenantal love, and sees also something deeper potentially for Ruth and Boaz. “May he be blessed of the Lord,” Naomi told her daughter-in-law. He “has not withdrawn his kindness from the living and from the dead” (verse 20). “That man is our relative; he is one of our redeemers” (verse 20). As Noami lets the sweetness and kindness soften her bitterness, she starts to emerge from her depression and sees the faint outline of the kinsmen-redeemer judgment.

In chapter 3 we see Naomi finding her old self: the woman of strategy. Nourished by the sweet talk and kind deeds she is hearing about, as well as a pantry full of grain, her mind blends ancient laws, motherly intuition, and feminine moxie as she hatches a plan: “ ‘Now then, is Boaz not our relative, with whose young women you were? Behold, he is winnowing barley at the threshing floor tonight. Wash yourself therefore, and anoint yourself, and put on your best clothes, and go down to the threshing floor; but do not reveal yourself to the man until he has finished eating and drinking. And it shall be when he lies down, that you shall take notice of the place where he lies, and you shall go and uncover his feet and lie down; then he will tell you what you should do.’ And [Ruth] said to her, ‘All that you say I will do’ ” (Ruth 3:1-5).

Ruth follows the plan. Boaz is ecstatic when he realizes the plan includes his marriage to Ruth. But details have to get worked out, so Boaz now becomes the strategist.

Here Boaz steps into Naomi’s vision, and in chapter 4 carries the vision forward in a complex legal business deal that includes marital bliss. It is absolutely genius. Blending kinsmen-redeemer laws (Lev. 25:9, 23-28) and levirate rules (Gen. 38; Deut. 25:5-10) and maybe a hint of jubilee (Lev. 25 and 27) and some inheritance protocols, Boaz finds the nearest relative who has the “right” to buy back the land to keep it in “the family or tribe.” The first in line is eager to add to his property collection until he realizes he has to marry Ruth and leave his own inheritance. He can’t afford such a deal. Boaz rushes in, gets what he really wants, Ruth, and the property too. The greed of the first in line ends in a loss of the best in time. Soon the community celebrates the marriage to Ruth, the care for Naomi, the legacy of Boaz, and the birth of Obed.[3]

And something more hides in this ending. This is where the story goes off Hollywood script to sophisticated theology of covenant clarity. Boaz’s vision is motivated by Ruth and Naomi, but also a deep love of three dead men:

“Then Boaz said to the elders and all the people, ‘You are witnesses today that I have bought from the hand of Naomi all that belonged to Elimelech and all that belonged to Chilion and Mahlon. Furthermore, I have acquired Ruth the Moabitess, the widow of Mahlon, to be my wife in order to raise up the name of the deceased on his inheritance, so that the name of the deceased will not be eliminated from his brothers or from the court of his birth place; you are witnesses today.’ And all the people who were in the court, and the elders, said, ‘We are witnesses’ ” (Ruth 4:9-11).

While to the reader Elimelech, Chilion, and Mahlon are characters long lost in the narrative, they are not lost in covenant love. The dead will rise in this kinsmen-redeemer transaction. This is the everlasting gospel of judgment. It so easily goes missing in our calculations of God’s work of judgment on our behalf. Covenant love prevails: in violent communities, in depressive and economic hardship, and even in raising the dead to new life.

Judgment protects, restores, and heals.

Conclusion and Application

This story calls us deep into God’s love. To settle into a covenant relationship with Him that spills over in sweet talk and kind deeds to those around us, but especially to those in need and foreigners. The Christian should readily connect the dots from this story, to connect type to antitype in Jesus’ strategy of love as in Ephesians 2: “And you were dead in your offenses and sins,” “indulging the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature children of wrath. . . . But God, being rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in our wrongdoings, made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved), and raised us up with Him, and seated us with Him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the ages to come He might show the boundless riches of His grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus” (verses 1-7).

Boaz’ work of judgment gives us a better vision of what God’s judgment is like. The legal maneuverings and the laws of the land and possessions are just part of divine strategies for full redemption. Judgment protects, restores, and heals. It is God standing up for His people (Dan. 12:1), sealing and solidifying the everlasting covenant and gospel in how He relates to His people (Rev. 14:6-12), ensuring communion and censoring the greedy and the Babylonish ways of abuse.

This theology has deep societal implications. First, it gives us a source of everlasting streams to feed sweet talk and kind deeds to others and ways to recover from dark days. It also shows us shalom is always the best business strategy.[4]  

Once we see how God has treated us better than we deserve, not only now but in the final judgment, and has raised us from the dead, we are motivated to treat others better than they deserve. That grows love and economies.

This Bethlehem love story sets our hope always in the reality of our undeserved Bethlehem Christmas, that gift of Calvary and the triumph of the resurrection and how the deep reality of the everlasting gospel of kinsman-redeemer is ours in the final judgment (Rev. 14:6-12). We are loved. We can love others.

[1] J. M. Hamilton, Jr., God’s Glory in Salvation Through Judgment: A Biblical Theology (Wheaton, Ill.: Crossway, 2010).

[2] Unless otherwise noted, all biblical quotations are from the New American Standard Bible.

[3] Brad Embry, “Legalities in the Book of Ruth: A Renewed Look.” Journal for the Study of the Old Testament 41, no. 1 (2016): 31-44.

[4] For one of the best explanations of shalom as business strategy, see Michigan State University’s Kent D. Miller, “Reorienting Strategy to Shalom,” Christian Scholar’s Review 53, no. 4: 29-50, posted Aug. 26, 2024, at https://christianscholars.com/reorienting-strategy-to-shalom/.