Ruth, the Moabitess, is one of four women cited in Matthew’s genealogy of Jesus. Orpah, Ruth’s country-woman and sister-in-law, does not appear.
Ruth’s story is told in four limpidly clear chapters in the Old Testament. The family of Elimelech, including his wife Naomi and his two sons Mahlon and Chilion, journeyed to the land of Moab to seek relief from the famine ravaging Israel. While there the sons took Moabite brides, Orpah and Ruth. In time Naomi lost her husband and both sons and, stricken with great sorrow, resolved to return to the land of her fathers. She urged her daughters-in-law to stay in their native land. Orpah consented, but Ruth refused to leave her mother-in-law, saying: “Entreat me not to leave you or to return from following you; for where you go I will go, and where you lodge I will lodge; your people shall be my people, and your God my God; where you die I will die, and there will I be buried. May the Lord do so to me and more also if even death parts me from you.”
After Ruth and Naomi departed, Orpah returned to her land, and she does not appear again in the record. When Ruth and Naomi returned to Israel, Ruth urged herself upon Naomi’s wealthy relative, Boaz. In a daring ploy Ruth went at night during the harvest season to warm Boaz’s feet with her own body, thereby proposing that Boaz raise up children through her for the house of Elimelech. When an unnamed Israelite, next-of-kin to the widowed Ruth, refused to exercise his legal right to marry Ruth, Boaz deigned to love her and take her in marriage. Naomi and Ruth, who had returned from Moab in poverty, were now securely settled. Naomi’s joy was completed when the union of Ruth and Boaz produced a son. Naomi, who had changed her name to Mara (bitterness), was again called Naomi (pleasantness). The grandson of this son became King David, who was beloved of God. And it is in the line of David that the Saviour of all men was born.
NARRATOR: If, beyond the grave,
exist reflection, memory,
subjection to the craving
to recall a vanished history;
and if the lives beyond
all dying still may sense somehow the earth—
detached, pristine, not causing it—
ancestors of the Christ may
have been there, might have seen
the sight that night
when God enslaved himself by birth.
Winding out in whispers, spirits lurking
in the dank and dripping corners of the cave
breathe their wonder
at the Father’s finally worded nave,
His gentle gauntlet laid down to the world.
In the chorus move the strains
of joy, of high fulfillment, or of mortified chagrin—