The Kinsman Redeemer: A Study Of The Book Of Ruth. Day 1, Introduction

We begin studying the story of Ruth today which took place during the era of the judges. Ruth is a woman from Moab who once was the young wife of an Israelite man whose family sojourned in Moab during a famine. But as the story opens she is now a young widow. After the death of her husband she chooses to travel to Israel with her widowed mother-in-law rather than returning to her parents' home. She chooses the God of Israel over the gods of her own nation. Because she makes these life-changing and soul-changing decisions, her direct descendants will include men such as King David, King Solomon, and Jesus of Nazareth.

"In the days when the judges ruled, there was a famine in the land." (Ruth 1:1a) We are not told who was judge of Israel during the days of the famine. The common consensus is that the events of the book of Ruth occurred toward the end of the era of the judges, in the times when "everyone did as they saw fit", as the author of Judges (believed to be Samuel) phrased it. Samuel is believed to be the author of the book of Ruth as well.

We aren't provided with any details regarding the famine but if the events of the book of Ruth took place when everyone was doing as they saw fit, it explains why the famine came. The Lord had said that if the people remained faithful to Him in the promised land, they would always enjoy bountiful harvests. The fact that they are not enjoying bountiful harvests at the beginning of the book of Ruth tells us that something has gone wrong from a spiritual standpoint and that the Lord allowed the famine as a corrective measure. This lines up with the gradual decline in godly behavior that we witnessed as we studied the book of Judges. The Lord has the right---indeed, the responsibility---to correct waywardness in anyone who belongs to Him. Because He is a good Father, He is always looking out for us, and sometimes that includes sending hardship when we have not repented on our own or responded appropriately to gentler corrective measures. 

During the famine, a man from Bethlehem takes his wife and children and temporarily moves into the territory of Moab. "So a man from Bethlehem in Judah, together with his wife and two sons, went to live for a while in the country of Moab. The man's name was Elimelek, his wife's name was Naomi, and the names of his two sons were Mahlon and Kilion. They were Ephraimites from Bethlehem, Judah. And they went to Moab and lived there." (Ruth 1:1b-2) As we learned in our study of Genesis, the Moabites were related to the Israelites. Moab was one of the sons of Abraham's nephew Lot. By this point in the Bible the Moabites have long been polytheistic idolaters; the author of Judges informed us of that in Judges 10:6 by referencing "the gods of Moab". 

Some Bible commentators display a lot of scorn for Elimelek for leaving Israel during the famine. However, he is not the only man of the Bible to have done such a thing. Abraham also left the promised land, when it was still the land of Canaan, and went down to Egypt during a famine. Jacob and his sons and their families did the same thing during a famine. Should Elimelek have remained in Bethlehem in faith that the Lord would provide for his family or was he in the will of God when he decided to "live for a while" in Moab? I don't know but I'm going to give him the benefit of the doubt. He was responsible for a wife and two sons and they were hungry. He probably had money with which to buy food but there just wasn't enough food to be had or inflation had increased so much due to the shortages that his money simply wasn't going to last long enough to get them through until times were better. Whether he was in the Lord's will when he went to Moab or whether he wasn't, we will see as we study the book of Ruth that the Lord is a redeemer not only of souls but of mistakes. 

"Now Elimelek, Naomi's husband, died, and she was left with her two sons." (Ruth 1:3) This is another verse that some scholars have used to bolster their theory that Elimelek was wrong to leave Bethlehem. They think it was the judgment of God upon him that he died in a foreign land. But he could have died of natural age-related causes because we don't know Elimelek's age when he left Bethlehem. We have reason to believe he wasn't a young man since, as we'll see later this week, the widowed Naomi says she is too old to remarry to bear more children. If she's past childbearing age in Chapter 1, she's somewhere over fifty and Elimelek could very well have been a decade (or two or three decades) older than her.

Elimelek's sons don't marry until after his death. "They married Moabite women, one named Orpah and the other Ruth. After they had lived there about ten years, both Mahlon and Kilion also died, and Naomi was left without her two sons and her husband." (Ruth 1:4-5) These women are now in dire straits. Women of their time who had no husbands or grown sons to provide for them had to depend largely on charity, which wasn't always forthcoming in some cultures. It must not have been forthcoming in the Moabite culture because these women's circumstances will prompt them to pick up stakes and move out in tomorrow's passage of Scripture.

Orpah will return to her own family and as a result we will hear no more of her. But Ruth will choose to go to Israel with her mother-in-law. She will say, "Your people will be my people and your God will be my God." That's why we still know Ruth's name and Ruth's story in 2022. Her decision to serve the God of Israel put her on the path to a great destiny.