A humble woman brings hope to the world.
Against the dark spiritual backdrop of Judges, Ruth’s faith shines as a brilliant point of light. Her story encourages us that no matter how bad things get, God never abandons us and He always carries out His purposes. Even when our faithfulness in following the Lord feels futile and insignificant, the Lord is using us, sometimes in ways we cannot see.
The Book of Ruth opens with a story that seems headed for an unhappy ending. A famine has struck Bethlehem. A man named Elimelech (“My God Is King”) journeys to the foreign land of Moab to find bread, only to die there. His wife Naomi is left a single parent to two sons, who eventually marry Moabite women, Orpah and Ruth. After ten years the sons also die, leaving the three women to fend for themselves.
Naomi resolves to return to Bethlehem. Orpah stays behind in Moab while Ruth follows Naomi, declaring her steadfast devotion to her mother-in-law and to the Lord. Once in Israel, Ruth meets Boaz, who takes her as his wife. Through their union a son is born, the grandfather of David, God’s answer to Israel’s need for a king. And through David the King of kings will one day descend, God’s answer to the world’s need for a Savior.
Ancient tradition held that Samuel wrote the Book of Ruth, but an exact identification of the author cannot be made. The brief genealogy at Ruth 4:18–22 sets the book’s events around 1050 B.C., toward the end of the period of the judges. David’s father Jesse was old enough to have fathered several military-age sons by the time Samuel had ended his role as judge of Israel and Saul was installed as king (1 Sam. 16:5–11). This suggests that Jesse’s father Obed was perhaps Samuel’s age or slightly older, so that Boaz and Ruth may have been contemporaries of Samuel’s parents Elkanah and Hannah.
The story of Ruth begins in Moab, a land on the eastern shore of the Dead Sea, and ends in Bethlehem, a city of Judah five miles south of Jebus, later known as Jerusalem.
Key People in Ruth
• Elimelech (“My God Is King”), a Hebrew from Bethlehem who journeys to Moab with his family (Ruth 1:2).
• Naomi (“Pleasant”), Elimelech’s wife, who endures the deaths of her husband and two sons (Ruth 1:2).
• Mahlon (“Sickly”), Elimelech and Naomi’s older son, who dies in a foreign land (Ruth 1:2).
• Chilion (“Wasting Away”), their younger son, who joins his brother in death (Ruth 1:2).
• Orpah (“Neck”), a woman of Moab and the wife of Chilion (Ruth 1:4), who chooses to remain in her home country.
• Ruth (“Friendship”), a woman of Moab and the wife of Mahlon, who leaves her home country to cling to Naomi, her people, and her God (Ruth 1:4).
• Boaz (“Strength”), a male relative of Elimelech who provides for and marries Ruth (Ruth 2:1).