It is hard to imagine how Naomi felt when she told her daughters-in-law to go back to their families: widowed, childless, with no hope of a future in a foreign land. It is in this moment of total loss that Ruth refuses the easier path.
Ruth was a Moabite, from a people who were neighbors to Israel and often hostile toward it. She married one of the sons of Elimelek and Naomi, Israelites who had fled to Moab because of a famine. Within ten years, Elimelek and both sons died, leaving three widows without protection or heirs.
When Naomi decides to return to Bethlehem, she urges Ruth and Orpah to stay in Moab, among their own people. Orpah agrees, and no one would blame her for it. Ruth clings to Naomi and declares: “Don’t urge me to leave you or to turn back from you. Where you go I will go, and where you stay I will stay. Your people will be my people and your God my God” (Ruth 1:16).
In Bethlehem, Ruth supports the two of them by gleaning leftover grain behind the harvesters, work reserved for the poorest. The field belonged to Boaz, a relative of Elimelek, who had already heard of her loyalty and blesses her: “May the LORD repay you for what you have done. May you be richly rewarded by the LORD, the God of Israel, under whose wings you have come to take refuge” (Ruth 2:12).
Following the custom of the time, Naomi instructs Ruth to ask Boaz to act as kinsman redeemer, the relative who could redeem the family’s land and marry the widow to preserve the dead man’s name. Boaz agrees, resolves a legal obstacle before the elders of the city, and marries Ruth.
Obed is born of this marriage, the grandfather of David. A foreigner with no claim whatsoever on Israel’s promise becomes a link in the lineage that would produce the greatest king of Israel, and later the Messiah. Ruth’s quiet faithfulness, shown without signs or miracles, was woven by God into the very story of salvation.
