Now that Boaz and Ruth are legally married, they live together and conceive a child together. "So Boaz took Ruth and she became his wife. When he made love to her, the Lord enabled her to conceive, and she gave birth to a son." (Ruth 4:13) We don't know how long Ruth was married to Mahlon the Israelite while the two of them lived together in Moab but it could not have been very long for neither she nor her sister-in-law Orpah conceived a child during their short marriages. What became of Orpah we have no idea; she disappeared from the pages of the Bible when she returned to her mother's house in Moab. It's likely she married again, since she was young and childless. She almost certainly married a Moabite man and continued living in that idolatrous culture for the rest of her life.
Let's contrast the presumed fate of Orpah with that of Ruth. Ruth forsook the idolatrous culture of Moab and gave her heart fully to the God of Israel---the one true God. Instead of remaining in Moab where another marriage would have been arranged for her by her parents, she adopted Naomi as her mother and decided to go to Israel with her where Naomi (and the Lord Himself!) arranged a marriage for her. Ruth knew what lay ahead of her if she remained in Moab, and from a human standpoint it wasn't a bad future: she had a place to live where she would be provided for and cared for until a good match could be arranged, then she'd have been provided and cared for the rest of her life by a husband and, if she outlived her husband, their offspring would have supported her until her death. But this meant living in a land where the God of Israel was not worshiped and Ruth's soul longed for a relationship with the Creator and Redeemer.
So, like Abraham, Ruth left the land of her people and set out for the unknown. The Bible tends to concentrate mostly on the stories of men but in the book of Ruth we find a woman with as much courage as Abraham. The Apostle Paul says of Abraham, "By faith Abraham, when called to go to a place he would later receive as an inheritance, obeyed and went, even though he did not know where he was going." (Hebrews 11:8) The same thing could be said of Ruth! This Moabite woman, who was brought up in a land of idolatrous worship just as Abraham was brought up in a land of idolatry in Ur, answered the call of the Lord. By faith she obeyed and went to a land she had never before seen, not knowing what to expect when she got there, but trusting that the God who called her would be faithful to provide for her. If she had not possessed this faith we would have heard no more about her, just as we heard no more about Orpah.
Naomi also had faith though she struggled with doubt and discouragement in Chapter 1, saying, "The Lord's hand has turned against me," and, "The Almighty has made my life very bitter," and, "The Lord has afflicted me; the Almighty has brought misfortune upon me." She still believed in the Lord but was angry toward Him over the losses she suffered in Moab. She didn't understand why He allowed these things to happen to her. She was so bitter that she insisted that everyone in her hometown of Bethlehem call her "Mara" instead of "Naomi" because the word "Mara" means "bitter". But, as I pointed out earlier in our study of Ruth, nowhere in the book of Ruth do we find anyone calling her anything but Naomi. The Lord always knew He would turn her mourning into dancing and He refused to call her a name that indicated bitterness of spirit. And here in the final chapter of the book of Ruth we find Him taking her bitterness away. Upon the birth of Naomi's grandson, her friends congratulate her and she rejoices in this great blessing. "The women said to Naomi: 'Praise be to the Lord, who this day has not left you without a guardian-redeemer. May he become famous throughout Israel! He will renew your life and sustain you in your old age. For your daughter-in-law, who loves you and who is better to you than seven sons, has given him birth.' Then Naomi took the child in her arms and cared for him. The women living there said, 'Naomi has a son!'" (Ruth 4:14-17a)
Naomi lost her husband and her only two children, Mahlon and Kilion, in Moab. Earlier in the book of Ruth we discussed the theory of many scholars that Naomi's family did wrong in leaving Israel during the famine. Let's think about what might have happened if Elimelek, Mahlon, and Kilion had not died in Moab. What would have been the future of this family? The fact that Naomi's sons both married Moabite wives suggests that a slide into idolatry (or at least a slide into spiritual compromise) was already taking place in the family. If Mahlon and Kilion had survived to father sons and daughters in the land of Moab, they all might have lived out their entire lives in Moab. Then their children would have done the same, and their children's children, and so on. Within just a generation or two, their descendants would have been indistinguishable from the Moabites in every way, including in their religion. This branch of the family tree would have been lost in a far worse way than it was when the three men died in Moab; it would have been lost spiritually.
Naomi was bitter over her losses when we began the book of Ruth. She was angry with the Lord. She didn't understand why these things had happened to her. It is sad that her husband and sons died but it would have been far sadder if all Naomi's descendants had integrated with the Moabites and had forsaken the Lord and become heathen idolaters. She didn't understand, at the beginning of the book of Ruth, why she'd had to endure heartbreak. But now that she has a clearer understanding of why the Lord allowed these things to happen, she is no longer bitter. Her heart still aches for her deceased loved ones, I am sure, but she has made her peace with her losses and has accepted that the Lord knows best even when she doesn't understand His reasons.
I've been angry and bitter toward the Lord when He's allowed things to happen that I don't understand. That's the spirit I was in at this time last year. But now I see that what happened was for the best and that He had bigger and better things in store for my household than the thing I was bitter about losing. Naomi was in that same spirit at the beginning of the book of Ruth but now she sees that, although difficult, the hardship she endured in Moab was better for her family in the long run because it led to her return to Israel and the continuation of her family's name and inheritance in the promised land and their spiritual inclusion in the family of the Lord. We don't want to downplay Naomi's heartbreak; she's a grieving wife and mother. But if she'd had to witness her sons, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren bowing on their knees to idols in the land of Moab, she would have found that to be far more bitter than death. The loss of a soul is worse than the loss of a life and she would have cursed the day she and her family entered the land of Moab.
Naomi's grandson receives his name. "And they named him Obed." (Ruth 4:17b) This name means "servant", which is understood to be "servant of the Lord". I don't know what Naomi's grandsons would have been named if she'd had any in Moab, but likely they'd have been Moabite names indicating an allegiance to false gods. From Obed, "servant of the Lord", comes these descendants: "He was the father of Jesse, the father of David." (Ruth 4:17c) Obed is the grandfather of King David! Naomi's family line would not have had this great distinction in Moab but, because she had the faith to return to Israel and because her adopted daughter Ruth had the faith to come back with her, these women became the ancestresses of the royal line of Israel. The Lord---the greatest Kinsman Redeemer of all---redeemed not only the ill-advised move into Moab but redeemed this whole branch of the family tree! Who would have thought Naomi would return to the land of her people, much less become the great-great-grandmother of the most famous king of Israel? Who would have thought Ruth, a woman of a heathen land, would become the great-grandmother of David and be named in the genealogy of the Lord Jesus Christ?
Ruth isn't the only non-Israelite woman named in the genealogy of Jesus Christ. Tamar, a Canaanite woman with whom Jacob's son Judah fathered Perez, is also in His genealogy. The book of Ruth concludes with the genealogy of Perez on down to King David. "This, then, is the family line of Perez: Perez was the father of Hezron, Hezron, the father of Ram, Ram the father of Amminadab, Amminadab the father of Nahshon, Nahshon the father of Salmon, Salmon the father of Boaz, Boaz the father of Obed, Obed the father of Jesse, and Jesse the father of David." (Ruth 4:18-22)
In Matthew 1 we find the genealogy of Jesus Christ, beginning with Abraham, and in verse 5 we find "Boaz the father of Obed, whose mother was Ruth". Ruth could not possibly have foreseen the inclusion of her name in the holy Bible (much less in the family tree of the ultimate Kinsman Redeemer) when she renounced the false gods of Moab and gave her full allegiance to the God of Israel. But the Lord is a Redeemer not only of souls but of the mistakes of the past. It doesn't matter who Ruth used to be: it matters only who she became in the Lord. The same can be said for you and for me today. We used to be all kinds of things. As the Apostle Paul said in his letter to the church at Corinth, the people there used to be all sorts of things and used to live in all manner of ungodliness, "But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God." (1 Corinthians 6:11) It doesn't matter where we came from, any more than it matters that Ruth was once from the heathen culture of Moab. It only matters that we, like Ruth, have given our hearts to the Lord and are moving forward into the future with Him.
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