No Ammonite or Moabite or any of their descendants may enter the assembly of the Lord, not even in the tenth generation.
—DEUTERONOMY 23:3 UPDATED NIV
By far the most common qualification for a good wife found within the pages of Scripture is that she not be a foreigner. Endogamy was a recurring concern in the narrative of Israel’s history, the writers of Scripture insistent that the descendants of Abraham eschew any form of assimilation to foreign customs and gods. Of all the threats to national security, beautiful foreign women were seen as the most surreptitious, blamed, at least in part, for everything from King Solomon’s downfall to the Babylonian captivity.
The Law includes a command that when God delivers a nation to Israel, the Israelites must “destroy them totally. . . . Do not intermarry with them,” it states. “Do not give your daughters to their sons or take their daughters for your sons, for they will turn your children away from following me to serve other gods, and the Lord’s anger will burn against you and will quickly destroy you” (Deuteronomy 7:2–4 UPDATED NIV).
Foreign wives, young Israelite boys were warned, were seductive, idolatrous, and the demise of kings. For the sake of their lives, they must stay away.
And so it is ironic, perhaps even poetic, that the Bible’s exemplary daughter-in-law and one of the most celebrated women in Jewish and Christian history is a Moabite by the name of Ruth.
Ruth, like so many of the Bible’s heroines, was a widow. In the violent and uncertain days when judges ruled Israel, a woman named Naomi and her husband, Elimelech, left a famine in Bethlehem for the hill country of Moab, where their sons married Moabite women—Orpah and Ruth. Tragically, both Elimelech and his sons died, leaving Naomi and her childless daughters-in-law with no male family members to protect their future and preserve their name. Grief-stricken and penniless, Naomi decided to journey back to Bethlehem. On the way, she urged her daughters-in-law to leave her.
“Go back, each of you, to your mother’s home,” she said. “May the Lord grant that each of you will find rest in the home of another husband” (Ruth 1:8, 9).
The women wept together, and Orpah took her leave. But Ruth refused to go back home.
“Where you go I will go, and where you stay I will stay,” she declared. “Your people will be my people and your God my God” (V. 16).
It was a bold declaration of both loyalty and liberation, for Ruth would not concede their future to despair simply because of an absence of men. When Naomi saw that she could not convince her daughter-in-law to leave her, she allowed Ruth to come along, and the pair finally reached the city of Bethlehem, just as the barley harvest began. The narrative continually refers to Naomi’s companion as “Ruth the Moabite.” (See, for example, Ruth 1:22 and 2:2.)
Perhaps the only thing more surprising than Ruth’s stubborn loyalty to her mother-in-law is her unconventional love story.
Once settled in Bethlehem, Ruth went to the nearby fields to glean the barley left behind by the reapers for the poor to gather, a provision stipulated by Jewish law (Leviticus 19:9). Ruth found herself working a field owned by a wealthy and respected man from Bethlehem, named Boaz. When Boaz came out to greet his harvesters one day, he took notice of Ruth and asked his workers about her. They told him that she was a Moabite and companion to Naomi who gleaned from the field each day, working tirelessly for long hours.
Intrigued, Boaz spoke to Ruth, encouraging her to continue gleaning in his field and to avail herself of his water and the help of his servants. He invited her to share lunch with him, and warned the men working in the field not to harm or harass her in any way.
And so Ruth gleaned daily from Boaz’s field until the barley harvest was finished. One night, Naomi pulled Ruth aside. She told her daughter-in-law that Boaz was a close relative and may therefore function as a go’el, (often translated “kinsman-redeemer”), a male relative who would undertake a levirate marriage, so family property remained in the family and the widows wouldn’t be forced to enter into slavery.
“Tonight he will be winnowing barley on the threshing floor,” Naomi divulged. “Wash, put on perfume, and get dressed in your best clothes. Then go down to the threshing floor, but don’t let him know you are there until he has finished eating and drinking. When he lies down, note the place where he is lying. Then go and uncover his feet and lie down. He will tell you what to do” (3:2–4 UPDATED NIV).
Naomi offered a rather brazen plan, for uncovering a man’s feet was a euphemism for uncovering his genitals, and the threshing floor was commonly associated with extramarital activity (Hosea 9:1). But Ruth agreed, prepared herself as Naomi had suggested, and at midnight, after Boaz had enjoyed much to drink and fallen asleep, she sneaked down beside him on his bed of barley. He awoke, startled, and Ruth asked him to spread his cloak over her. (In contrast to her mother-in-law’s instructions, Ruth told Boaz what to do.)
Boaz was overjoyed, but confessed that he was not technically Naomi’s closest relative.
“Stay here for the night,” Boaz said, “and in the morning if [the closest kin] wants to do his duty as your guardian-redeemer, good; let him redeem you. But if he not willing, as surely as the Lord lives I will do it. Lie here until morning” (3:13 UPDATED NIV).
Ruth slept at Boaz’s feet until morning, and left before the sun rose, so she wouldn’t be recognized. When she told Naomi what happened, Naomi wisely noted, “The man will not rest until the matter is settled today” (V. 18).
For all her wisdom, charm, and hard work, Ruth’s fate was left to a group of men. Fortunately, Boaz skillfully negotiated the terms of the redemption with his relatives and acquired Ruth, along with some property left to the family, for his own. The townspeople rejoiced, blessing Ruth and Boaz with high hopes, saying, “May the Lord make the woman who is coming into your home like Rachel and Leah, who together built up the family of Israel” (4:11 UPDATED NIV). Their praise welcomed Ruth, the Moabite, fully into the family of Abraham. She was called eshet chayil—a woman of valor!
The two married and had a son named Obed. But Obed is referred to as Naomi’s son, for Ruth had successfully negotiated her own version of the law of levirate, allowing her mother-in-law to live in hope of leaving a distinguished family legacy once again.
The book of Ruth, one of only two books of the Bible named after a woman, concludes with a genealogy that reveals Ruth and Boaz’s son Obed to be the father of Jesse, and Jesse the father of King David. In Matthew’s genealogy of Jesus, Ruth is one of the five women mentioned, four of whom, the keen reader might notice, were foreigners.