40 Minutes In The Old Testament - Ruth 3:10-4:21 (Episode 223)

Episode Date: July 3, 2020

Chad and Daniel wrap up the book of Ruth in this episode. Boaz responds to Ruth's proposal and explains that there are some things to be taken care of before it can go forward. As things come to close we find Naomi becoming the focus of the story again and the name of a king is spoken. Have a listen! 1517 Podcast Network 1517 YouTube Donate

Welcome to another episode of 40 Minutes in the Old Testament. 40 Minutes in the Old Testament is a 1517 Podcast Network podcast. You can go to 1517.org slash podcast. Check out all the other podcasts that are living over there. And check out all the other things that are living over there. All the articles, Craft of Preaching. You can check out the videos that are over there. You can go to YouTube, check out all the videos that are going on over there as well.

Always new series. Chad releases a video every week. We've got new series dropping all the time. So check out that stuff. Subscribe, ring the bell. Chad, we're still in the Book of Ruth. Things got a little weird last episode. We did some translation work.

Ruth made a bold move, and we're waiting to see what Boaz is going to do. How is he going to respond? Yeah, the moment of truth has arrived. Yeah, I mean, there's lots of different directions this could have gone. Some good and some not good and some really bad. So, I mean, that's what made it a bold and risky move on the part of Ruth and Naomi to decide that, yeah, this is the way we're going to kind of force Boaz to make a decision. Yeah, well, it's interesting because the harvest is over and they just had a big old party because they had a famine.

So then now you have the they had this great harvest. They get out, they bust out the wine. Everyone's feeling good. But what this also means is that gleaning in those fields is over. so this so this sort of uh redeemer light thing that's going on where ruth and naomi have this not just food but sort of a a little means of of income or whatever else they're doing with all this this grain that they're getting well that's that's going to be coming to a close and so it makes sense that naomi's like well now it's time to make a different move now you could

try to come up with some other plan but Naomi seems to be reading the tea leaves a little bit here and she thinks that this guy is a little bit interested in Ruth but he might not be the make a first move kind of guy and so yeah so she she tells Ruth uh it's now or never yeah I think that's kind of what's going on and and I pick up on some of that from the way that he does respond that yeah yep I think undoubtedly he was interested in her but he probably was thinking ah she's not interested in me you know i'm too old for her or whatever it might be i think i think it was all one-sided like he thought that yes he was interested in her but he thought she probably would be looking elsewhere and so yeah or maybe

that just was his personality you know some guys just you gotta you gotta you gotta you gotta push him in that direction you know girls have to kind of make the first move in that way and maybe this is different if she's a if she's an israelite i mean there's obviously a component here where maybe he's interested but he's got a you know he's got a little bit of cold feet not just because they were uncovered but just like he's a guy with cold feet in general and because he's like yeah i'm interested in that woman but i mean she's a moabite and you know as we said before she might have still had all her widow stuff on and so maybe too soon to make a move should i make a move at all whatever other people gonna think it's not it's not exactly what people would expect me to

do yeah i mean we've seen all this stuff play out before what is mom gonna think you know yeah exactly exactly yeah so so ruth ruth uh it was gonna take ruth being aggressive and maybe like making him an offer he can't refuse yeah yeah i mean and that's kind of that's where we're where we are uh he's gotta he's gotta make a decision now there's like there's it's not like he can stall anymore because we're on the threshing floor it's the middle of the night she's uncovered his quote-unquote feet which we talked about last time uh probably like making him partially naked and then she basically pops the question when he asked who are you yeah it's dark he can't quite see who she is she says i'm ruth you're made so spread your wings and spread your covering over

you're made for you are a redeemer so there's no putting off decision the moment of truth moment of truth has arrived let me do let me mention this before we move on because i i talked about it in the last episode i i mentioned that the first time that ruth has a conversation with boaz she identifies herself as the lowest rank of servant now this time she identifies herself as a little bit higher rank of servant so this time she is an amah which my translation has made so made servant to made it's kind we don't really have english words that help us out here but the first time she's the lowest servant now she's an amah which is a little bit higher servant and she's basically saying at this point now raise me up to the level of life marry me spread

you're covering over me because you are a goel you are a redeemer all right moment of truth verse 10 what's he going to say boaz responded may you be blessed of the lord my daughter you have shown your last kindness to be better than the first by not going after young men whether poor or rich and now my daughter do not fear i will do for you whatever you ask for all my people in the city know that you are a woman of excellence and now it is true i am a uh i am a redeemer however there is a redeemer closer than i so there must have been like you know different levels of closeness to the family to determine who actually was supposed to take the action first so it wasn't like you had just one redeemer for family so there is a redeemer closer than i

remain this night. So he wants her to stay there, stay there with him. And when morning comes, if he, that other guy, if he will redeem you, good, let him redeem you. But if he doesn't want to redeem you, then I will redeem you as the Lord lives. So he swears an oath. And then he says to Shachab to lie down until morning. I'll go ahead and finish out the chapter. So she lay at his feet. Same word again in Hebrew, as we saw earlier, she laid his feet until morning. and rose before anybody could recognize her. And then I guess he kind of communicates to the rest of the people who were out there

to be hush hush about it. He says, let it not be known that the woman came to the threshing floor. So he wasn't out there by himself. In other words, probably, you know, the people who were helping him thresh, they were out there, they had a party, people laying around, maybe somebody saw her

and he's like, don't tell anybody, let's keep this quiet. Verse 15, so before he sends her away, he says give me the cloak that that it's on you and hold it so she she she holds it out and he measures out six measures of barley however much that was we're not really told six something six measures of barley and he laid it on her and then she went into the city and when she came to her mother-in-law who this this this is not in the hebrew of course but uh you kind of suspect naomi was up all night right who came to she came to her mother-in-law who had been up all night

wondering what had happened and uh she says how did it go you know of course that's the first thing she's gonna ask how did it go my daughter and she told her all that the man had done for her and then she says these six measures of barley he gave me for he said don't go to your mother-in-law empty-handed which i think is super cool because that word that's used for empty-handed is the same word that is used by naomi herself remember when she got back to bethlehem initially and she said to all the women of the city you know don't call me naomi call me mara i'm bitter now and she says i went out full but i came back empty so it's pretty cool that at this point boaz isn't just concerned about ruth he's actually concerned about naomi as well he didn't

want ruth to return from this this night uh liaison empty-handed i mean i mean doesn't it seem like when he's he sends her back with something to show naomi this seems like a wink to let naomi know like pretty interested yeah yeah very interested uh one commentator i was reading on this i i i found this pretty uh pretty convincing that metaphorically he is this is basically him promising uh especially given the whole context here he's like he's filling it's like she's holding out in front of her this cloak and he's filling it with seed to take back home uh as if he wants to metaphorically promise that yeah i'm going to do my duty as a redeemer and I've just given her all of this seed and yeah, part of my duty as a redeemer is going to be make

sure that some seed, some offspring come forth from her as well. I don't think that's too much of a stretch given everything that's been happening through the night. So she relays this and then the chapter ends with Naomi saying to her, wait my daughter until you know how the matter turns out for the man will not rest until he has settled it today yeah so now we know what happened now we know by his response yeah and this response is what what Naomi says to her makes it seem like there there might there this is hard to know we just don't have enough information at least I don't have enough information maybe you do Chad um there's this other guy there's a there's apparently a an order that you need to follow and this sort of thing

so boaz being the you know the the by the book kind of dude that he is i guess is is gonna try to do the right thing here he says well technically i don't read this as boaz saying i'd rather not i'm gonna try to pass you off on this other guy if he just won't i guess i will yeah it seems more like he's what he is very much like i would but we have to eliminate we have to eliminate this got this this first um and so i doubt that boaz is going to go and push too hard for this guy to do it yeah in fact we'll uh we'll get to that in the next chapter but uh you can and we'll be able to i'll bring this out once we uh once we get to that part but you can tell this from the hebrew itself the way it's phrased and just the whole way that boaz goes about presenting this situation

that he wants this guy to say no it's not it's not a hard sell no no it's sort of a setup on on boaz's part so you got to give the guy some rhetorical credit for the way that he handles the whole situation uh once we get to chapter four yeah so this does not seem like something that boaz necessarily wants to do but more something that he feels he has to do yeah because you know there could be repercussions you know if he went ahead and said yeah let's do it you know well i'll be your redeemer and this other guy actually was interested in doing this redeeming not only uh ruth but also the the land that belonged to naomi and you know so if if he was interested in that and and uh boaz kind of you know cut in front of

him that yeah that could have led to some some uh some problems you know some a little bit of instability there in their in their small village of bethlehem so bow eyes is going to do the right thing he's going to make sure that he he follows the uh the order that he's supposed to we don't yeah to get to your uh your statement we don't really know enough about the way this worked to uh to say a whole lot but evidently there were you know gradations of redeemerhood if you will you know like we'll say uh you know something happens to your brother and uh you would be first in line to act as a redeemer right but what if something happened to you well maybe your cousin would be next and if it wasn't your cousin maybe you know your second anyway i'm sure it was like

family relations the closest family relation was the one who had the first duty uh responsibility opportunity to engage in the act of redemption yeah and we don't know how far boaz is removed we know he's a relative that could be yeah third cousin who knows what that is i would say that we probably it's really good reason it's not a brother it never refers to him as the brother of naomi or the the brother of naomi's husband or anything like that so he probably is further further removed right yeah yeah so we don't know exactly how connected how closely familial connected he is but anyway close enough to where he's in that line of in that line of redemption you know when he responds to her uh i mean it's obvious of course right away that he's happy about

this you know he blesses her and uh he's he says you've shown me you've shown kindness to me uh you're you're gracious to me because uh you haven't gone after young men whether old or rich which this is the first if if memory serves me this is the first time that we have any indication that boaz is a little bit older guy you know and i'm not saying he's like 50 or 60 he's just you know probably older than uh most of the guys that he considered would be her suitors so he was probably expecting her to go after one of them or expecting them to go after her but that hadn't happened so he was interested she was interested in in only him and he says of course after that that everybody in the city has has got you figured out everybody knows that

you are a you're a woman of excellence so that verb that's used that the word that's used there is the same word interestingly that's used to describe uh boaz himself he's a man of excellence so it's probably you know word has spread and everybody like we discussed last time it's a small place everybody's going to know who who ruth is and be like man she look at that look at all she's done for her family look at all that she's done for naomi she's a she's a woman of of high she's a woman of excellence everybody knows this yeah you would think this would be this this statement that he makes is in direct relation to the fact that that she did not leave naomi not only did she not leave her but now she's out in the field every day like gleaning and bringing

this bad like derek man this this uh daughter-in-law that naomi's got uh is something else yeah yeah i mean there's never any indication that naomi's out there with her no you know and maybe she was older so elderly we don't know how old she was but maybe she you know she just wasn't able to or maybe she really didn't need to i mean if if ruth is bringing back even a fraction of what she brought back that first time well they're set you know they're they're good they could open a bread store with all of the crane well maybe maybe naomi knows naomi probably knows like look man uh ain't no one dropping off extra extra grain for me yeah ruth on the other hand yeah they're dropping handfuls for her so anyway they come up with a plan uh he wants her to stay

there the rest of the night uh and then when morning comes he's gonna he's gonna send her back and he then will go about the business of making sure that he takes care of everything that needs to be taken care of officially to get them get them redeemed i don't think there's anything else i need to add about chapter three you want to throw out anything else no i think i think we're ready to do it all right well let's keep on with chapter four then so what's going to happen next well now we're going to have a we're going to have a legal proceeding and have a little bit of a surprise thrown in here only a surprise in this sense so so far we've heard plenty of talk about uh redemption and boaz being a goel being one of these redeemers but there really hasn't

been anything mentioned about land everything has been kind of connected with or at least hinted at with regard to boaz acting as a redeemer toward toward ruth but we're gonna encounter now in chapter four kind of a surprise because it wasn't just ruth that was part of this responsibility of redemption, but also land was involved as well. So what happens? Well, the chapter starts out with Boaz going up to the gate, and he sits down, and it says, behold, so that's that Hine Hebrew word that catches our attention, which some translations leave out, but I think it's good. Anytime you see a behold, it's wanting to capture your attention, like, hey, look, one of those kind of situations. So, hey, look, this redeemer that Boaz had spoken

about last night was passing by. So, Boaz says to him, well, this is my translation, turn aside, friend, sit down here. And he turned aside and sat down. There's a Hebrew phrase that's used there that happens to be one of my favorite Hebrew phrases, only because it sounds really cool. so in english if we don't know somebody's name or uh you know we've forgotten their name or maybe we're trying to uh to kind of keep it a little bit uh what's the word i'm looking for anonymous we might say something like mr so-and-so right or hey you if we don't know the person this happens to me all the time when uh when someone comes up to me that i know that i know but i don't remember their name uh so this this uh this i'm sure this has happened to you chad oh yeah

someone comes up to you and they're like hey dan what's up man and i'm like what's up bro i'm sitting there racking my brain like what is this dude's name oh yeah yeah that's happened to me uh that's happened to me plenty of times uh so for whatever reason he this guy's name is not included here which is which is kind of unusual because i mean there's this book is full of names right we know everybody's name yeah but this guy's name is left out some people speculate it's because you know yeah because what happens and they're sort of trying to protect his reputation because he didn't you know he didn't do what really he was by duty uh bound to do but for whatever reason so here's the phrase

when you don't know or when you're trying to hide somebody's name in hebrew you refer to them as poloni almoni which i just love the way that sounds it's just one of those phrases i love the way it sounds so poloni almoni sounds like it sounds like a pasta dish it does it does sounds something you'd order at an italian restaurant i'll have the poloni almoni but uh it's i mean i've read several articles about this particular phrase so they've tried to figure out exactly what it means, but that is by far the consensus. It just is a phrase that means Mr. So-and-so in Hebrew, or hey you. So he sees this guy, and he's like, hey, poloni amoni, come over here and sit down. So the guy does. So they're at the gate of the city, which we

have discussed in the past. The gate is where a lot of business happens. It's also where any kind of legal proceedings happen so he chooses the gate he finds the guy and he chooses verse 2 10 men of the elders of the city and says sit down here so they sat down so 10 is a typical number that you need for some kind of some kind of legal decision to be made some kind of official it's like a quorum basically you need at least 10 guys for there to be some kind of official decision or at least for them to serve as witnesses as two men work out a uh an agreement between themselves so he gets uh poloni almoni and he gets the 10 guys and they all sit down together and you could i guarantee you that bow eyes has been practicing this speech you're like what am

i gonna say you know let's see because you know it's a little bit a little bit uh delicate situation because you know everything happened last night and i really i really want i really really want to redeem ruth but you know i got this other guy so how am i going to how am i going to make this as unattractive as possible to this guy so that he he doesn't want to do this so here's a speech. I'll just read it. This is verse 3 and following. Naomi, who has come back from the land of Moab, has to sell the piece of land which belonged to our brother Elimelech. By the way, our brother is just, doesn't mean they were like brothers. That's typical Hebrew way of referring to someone who's a close relative. Yeah, the ESV just says to our relative, yeah. Oh yeah, good,

good yeah so it's to our relative eliminate so it starts out okay uh we are just more or less stating something that everybody knows naomi's back from moab and now we have this we have this piece of land uh and it's a little bit difficult to to to understand i've looked at several different sources on this exactly what is what is happening here because here okay here's the here's the problem in hebrew law when this might sound strange to us but this is the way it was set up in hebrew law uh land so if i die my land does not automatically go to my wife to my widow it went to my children all right but here's the problem is that uh her sons are both deceased so the land is just kind of in this legal limbo if you will so is is she selling it outright

right or as some have argued is she uh is she going to do something where it's kind of like now i'm forgetting the legal term is it use a use a fruit you familiar with that i believe that's a phrase that she's basically some of them argue that what she's what she's basically saying or what he's basically saying is listen we have this land and she's going to let somebody use it as long they don't like abuse them you take a lease right yeah it's kind of like a lease yeah so we're she's not she can't legally sell the property but she's got this property and we need to make a decision as to who's going to use it who is going to own it and anyway that's so that's he's presented the situation so uh he goes on verse four so i thought to uh inform you literally uncover your ear one

those hebrew idioms uh just i'm gonna let you know right i'm gonna make sure you're aware of the situation so i thought to inform you saying buy it before those who are sitting here and before the elders of my people if you will redeem it redeem it but if not tell me that i may know for there is no one but you to redeem it and i am after you so he noticed what he leaves out here there is no mention whatsoever at this point about Ruth it's all about the land right so here we got this land and Naomi needs to do something with it and you're first in line to act as a goel to redeem it so uh you know if you're gonna do it well then do it but if not then I'll do it so that's that's the way that Boaz is presenting this situation so far anyway and what does the

guy say in the verse four i will redeem it yeah he says oh okay well okay yeah let's do it that's good all right that's why i said boaz set this whole thing up but boaz isn't done yet so as soon as the guy says i'll redeem it boaz says oh yeah one more thing on the day that you buy slash acquire, kanah in Hebrew, on the day that you kanah the field from the hand of Naomi, you must also kanah, acquire, Ruth, the Moabitess, the widow of the deceased, in order to raise up the name of the deceased on his inheritance. Now, this is even clear in the hebrew the way this is set up because the way i read it it's like uh on the day that you get this field you must also acquire ruth and moabitis but in the hebrew ruth the moabitis the widow of the

deceased all that's pushed to the front of the sentence so it would be something like on the day that you buy the field from the hand of naomi ruth that lady from moab who's a widow of the deceased guy her you must also acquire so just the way that he puts this all together you can tell that he's really wanting to convince this guy not not to do it and he's and by acquire i mean he's he's not just saying like she'll be around yeah i mean i mean yes he's saying that you have to you're gonna i mean you're gonna have to perpetuate the name the dead uh in his inheritance so like i mean you're about to have to go get married again yes yeah or marry a second wife which is also yeah also very possible yeah yeah so uh yeah but this is i

don't understand translators sometimes why they do this but when it when it says my translation for instance says you buy the field and you acquire ruth it's the exact same verb in both cases it's kana so either translate them both as by or translate them both as a choir but don't translate them with two different words when it's obvious from the very context that what is being communicated is if you kana one then you're also going to canal the other one of my pet peeves about translations when they do that i guess they didn't like the idea of him buying the wife well okay well then use a choir uh as it because if you don't if you're not looking at it in english you don't see that so on the day that you get the field you also get this wife and so this is one of

these kind of uh uh it's it's not a a lever at marriage that we've talked about before we're like the uh the the brother of the deceased marries his brother's widow but it is kind of like that too it's a it's kind of a mixture situation where you have a uh one of those lever at marriages but also this is an act of redemption so if this guy is already married you can see why he might be hesitant like i don't know my wife's gonna love that oh yeah i mean yeah no you can see why i do my back oh wait what yeah yeah because i mean he goes on to say not to jump ahead but look i can't do this i'm gonna impair my own inheritance yeah right uh like i mean this is the same as basically saying like man i got a whole family thing going on here i don't really feel like

inserting anyone else into it yeah yeah it's a it's a lot to it's a lot to take on when you're taking on he wanted the field because he thought oh that'd be great you know i got more more crops but he doesn't he doesn't want the responsibility of a wife or a second wife but also if this is kind of a lever at marriage what's going to happen well if he has a if he does this and he he has a son with Ruth. Well, then that property that he just purchased is going to go to that son, to Ruth's son. That's the way the Leveret marriage works. So he would end up, yeah, losing money in the bargain, basically. So after all this is said and done, then verse six, he says, I can't do it. I can't redeem it for myself, lest I literally destroy, yeah, jeopardize. But it's a pretty

strong word that's used there in the hebrew to shahat is to to wreck something i'm gonna i'd wreck my own inheritance if i did that so redeem it for yourself uh you may have my right of redemption for i cannot re-redeem it and you can almost hear a sigh of relief from boaz at this point this is this is exactly how he wanted everything to everything to go down yeah and maybe even this guy so this is what makes it's not explicit but i think it's sort of implied in there that this guy is uh is already married and probably already has children probably so and uh and boaz does not presumably at least we haven't seen anything to suggest that he does and so it makes sense this guy be like oh okay if we're talking about that no like you i got dude i

already got i already got the kids the wife like i this is gonna complicate things all kind of You should do it. Yeah, you should totally do it. You're single. Yeah, this is all you, bro. Yeah, exactly. So, Poloni Amoni, Mr. So-and-so, he made the right choice. I mean, this is going to be better for everybody in the long run.

And Boaz then probably has to be like, well, I guess if I have to. Yeah. Twist my arm. and we have this kind of strange custom that's described next uh where it says in in former times this was the custom concerning the redemption exchange of land to confirm any matter that a guy would would take off his shoe take his sandal off and give it to another this was the this was the manner of attestation so this redeemer said to boaz buy it for yourself and he removed his sandal and i guess that little exchange went down probably we talked about this a long time

ago but probably judging from some customs we know from from other other cultures egyptian in particular the because the sandal was associated with walking on land on soil it kind of took on the symbolism of the soil the land itself so to claim property or to claim territory you would often walk on that territory you would put your foot down and put your sandal down on it and so I think that's probably why this particular kind of custom originated. This is the only mention of it in the scriptures, though. So they do this. They do the sandal custom. And then Boaz says to the elders that they are witnesses that I have bought from the hand of Naomi all that belong to Elimelech and all that belong to Kilion and Malon, to the two sons. And not only that, but I've also

acquired Ruth, the Moabitess, the widow of Milan, to be my wife in order to raise up the name of his deceased on his inheritance so that the name of the deceased may not be cut off from his brothers or from the gate of his birthplace. You are witnesses today. So Bias makes his speech basically saying, I'm going to be the one who steps up to the plate. I'm going to be the one who not only gets the land, but gets the widow. And I'm going to raise up children so that the name of the family of Naomi and Elimelech will be perpetuated. And everybody is happy about this. Verse 11 says, all the people who were in the court and in the gate and the elders, like, yep, we're witnesses. May the Lord make the woman who is coming into your home like Rachel

and Leah, both of whom built the house of Israel. And may you achieve, well, my translation is achieve wealth in Ephrathah but can be translated a couple different ways like a cheap honor or something like that and also that you may become renowned in Bethlehem moreover may your house be like the house of Perez whom Tamar bore to Judah through the offspring which the Lord shall give you by this young woman so they know the Bible yeah well that last part's interesting because you talk about tamar and judah um because obviously that was a little bit of a yeah that was a little bit unorthodox yeah just a little bit yeah yeah if you remember that story it was a she dressed up as a prostitute and seduced him and yeah well she didn't have to

do much seducing uh she got pregnant yeah and so that's the way so we mention of her in this particular book is is fascinating because of course matthew mentions her and ruth and is it is genealogy yeah yeah so yeah so it's an interesting thing to bring up because i mean obviously ruth is a boba pipe and so yeah you have this sort of this sort of nod to god being able to do some good things through some some things that aren't typically the way things are done yeah which is really the i mean it's sort of the message of this whole book that god is able to take some pretty messed up situations and work in some pretty incredible ways that you would never that you'd never expect i mean i i refer to this book very often when i'm

talking about kind of his theology the cross approach basically where god is always working through what you would think would be the divine opposite right he's always surprising us by acting in very unexpected, seemingly undivine sorts of ways. Ruth is just a great book to illustrate that God was always interested in not just Israel. It wasn't like he had a thing for Israel and hated everybody else, which is sometimes the caricature

that people give the Old Testament. He was always interested in all nations. He just chose Israel as his own treasured possession and through her, wanted to reach out to the rest of the nations. And of course, Ruth is one result of that. Yeah, yeah. One of the things that you sort of see a separation between these two Redeemers, not that this other Redeemer is a bad guy or anything, but you do see that he is interested in acquiring the land. That's fine with him. but acquiring this outsider this uh this moabite widow that's that's not something that he's

interested in when the exact opposite seems to be true for boaz i don't think boaz you know i don't think he cares about the land one bit no i don't think he does he probably has enough land already you know and you think about it i mean he's evidently a little bit older than most of men and presumably he had plenty of opportunities to marry yeah but for whatever reason he didn't he didn't marry any of the girls of bethlehem or any of the the nearby villages uh and then this small about woman comes along he's like yeah i really like her yeah well and this is and this is as boaz as redeemer i mean this is the kind of redeemer that you want i mean this is the kind kind of redeemer we get uh in in christ that doesn't care about what we bring to the table

whatsoever uh is is only interested in us yeah he's only he's really he's only interested in redeeming us we don't we don't come and be like well well you know if you redeem me you get this and you get this other thing i mean look at all the things that come along with me he's not interested in any of that yeah he's only interested in one thing and that's and that's his bride yeah this would have been such a different story if ruth had been just a widow from bethlehem right an israelite widow from bethlehem and what the it still would have been a great story but when you when you take into account where she's from that she is a gentile she is an outsider and then you look at this whole story in the context of the rest of the the story of salvation uh yeah it's

just it's so much more colorful so much more beautiful so much more comforting for uh for us who you know we're outsiders right we are we are brought into the fold by by our redeemer all right well we better finish this out yeah looks like looks like we're gonna gonna wrap up the the book of ruth today man yeah verse 13 so boastic ruth and she became his wife and he went into her he so they had intercourse and the lord enabled her to conceive or literally he he gave her conception and she gave birth to uh to a son so this is this pattern that we that we see you know originating in genesis where god is taking women who can't conceive for quite a period of time and then he's blessing them with with a child so she continues this this patriarchal

story in herself yeah it is interesting that she didn't have a son before this i mean because she was married right and um and so it it doesn't ever say that she was barren or anything like that but at the very least she had not she had not conceived up to this point um and that seems to be intentional as well yeah and it and the language that she used here does imply that the lord had well to use a language of the old testament had closed her womb as it were you know he was uh she was not able to have any children until the time was right and so she gives birth to a son. And interestingly, verse 14, it doesn't say, and the women said to Ruth, but the women said to Naomi, blessed is the Lord who has not left you without a redeemer today. And may his

name become famous or renowned in Israel. May he also be to you a restorer of life and a sustainer of your old age. For your daughter-in-law who loves you and is better to you than seven sons has given birth to him that's a hell of a statement for that time oh yeah about the better the year than seven sons yeah oh my yeah i was yeah i don't think that i don't think that that uh really strikes us the way that it should but of course you know sons were preferred and the seven sons that's like ruth is better to you than the perfect perfect children right yeah seven sons seven sons yeah that's just like ideal ruth is better than the what then i mean essentially they're saying that ruth is better to you than the perfect son yeah yeah right you can

do no better than ruth yeah you can do no better than ruth yeah so it's just a uh it's a wonderful way a wonderful blessing that they give to her you know he's not the lord has not left you without a Redeemer today. I mean, we should turn that into a hymn of the church. That's still the message that gives us hope today. The Lord has not left us without a Redeemer. So what does Naomi do? Well, Naomi, she kind of becomes the central character at the end. I mean, the book is entitled Ruth, and Ruth, of course, has been part of the whole story. But in the end, Naomi is the one who becomes the focus of attention so naomi took the child and laid him in her lap and became his his nurse i'm assuming at this age uh it doesn't mean his wet nurse so she's just taking care of it right

so she more or less is receiving this child as her as her very own well you know bo as a guy with some means uh probably what what happened is you know ruth has moved in and they have a baby and they say, hey, who would be a good person to bring on into the big house and have take care of the baby? Oh, we'll just have Naomi do that. So things are working out good. Yeah, they are. They are.

And then we finish out these last few verses. So only time in Scripture where this happens, where a child is named by the neighbors. The neighbor women gave him a name. A son has been born to Naomi, so they named him Obed. And this is quite a statement, too. A son has been born to Naomi, which, no, it was born to Ruth. But this is such a – Naomi has suffered such loss that this sort of new life being brought into the world, they are connecting this with her. This is a gift of life to her.

Yeah, I mean, it's like a resurrection to her. I mean, she lost her two sons, she lost her husband, she lost everything, and now this child is a symbol of hope for her. So it's given to her as her very own. A son has been born to Naomi. So they named him Obed. And then in these last five verses, we get to, I wouldn't say it's the whole point of the book, but it certainly is the climax, because we learn why this story was so significant. because Obed just happens to be the father of Jesse, the father of David, and then we wrap up with this genealogy. Now, these are the generations of Perez. To Perez was born Hezron, and to Hezron was born Ram, and to Ram, Amenadab, and to Amenadab was born Nashon, and to Nashon, Salmon, and to

Salmon was born Boaz, and to Boaz, Obed, and to Obed was born Jesse, and to Jesse, David. So we've seen this in Genesis that often in genealogies, the seventh person listed is the most significant. It's like the focus of the genealogy. And the seventh in this particular genealogy is Obed. He's the focus of attention here because he is the one who is now the promised child. he becomes of course the grandfather of uh grandfather of david which uh leads us to like the whole rest of the story of salvation right that's why ruth is so significant because this leads to to the the line of david the promise of david the seed of david from which of course

eventually comes christ christ our lord so uh yeah this is i mean definitely what you see is that you have all of this hopelessness, bitterness, this Moabite woman, all of this, of course, in the line of Christ, right? And this is what it is. And you have the, I mean, you see here, I mean, there's no way to not see the absolute providence of God working all the way through it. Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, I mean, the whole narrative becomes kind of a narrative of resurrection, right? Where you feel like, well, you feel like Naomi, you know, there's, I have no hope left. You know, everything, I've lost everything. I went out full, I came back empty. I went out lovely, I came back bitter. There's no more life for me.

And then you read the rest of the story. So she's like at her good Friday moment, right? And you read the rest of the story, you realize, ah, Easter's coming, right? Yeah. The resurrection is coming. And that resurrection comes in the form of quite appropriately in the form of a baby

that will be in the line of the Messiah. So just one of my favorite stories in the scripture because of all of these very, very Christ-centered themes that emerged from the narrative. Yeah, it's also, Ruth is a nice book in the midst of the Old Testament where you have two characters in Ruth and Boaz. You're like, I'm not saying they're righteous,

But, man, I really can't find anything wrong with either one of these people. Normally your heroes have all kinds of flaws, and no doubt Boaz and Ruth did too. But you don't have to look very hard usually as we look at Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses. We're going to get into Samuel and into the kings. It's not going to take a microscope to figure out where the flaws are in these people. Boaz and Ruth, man, they seem pretty legit. yeah yeah and i love the fact that they're you know they're not royalty they're just kind of ordinary people yep you know but they're ordinary people who uh you know nobody nobody would have

thought looking at them and uh seeing what was happening with them that uh they would be so significant so central to to the great story but that is the way god works you know he's working in in secretive hidden sorts of ways that we don't always realize while uh while we're going through them but he uh he has his ways of working them out for for the good that's it man and that is where we're gonna have to uh have to end it right there that is the book of ruth we went a little long but you know we had to finish it up so yeah glad we did yeah a little extra uh next week we will venture into to first samuel yeah it's gonna be fun i mean we're we're starting uh first samuel then we get to kings we're into uh a king is in sight it won't be long now yeah yeah we got the

name dropped we've heard there was no king in the land but we just had the first the first dropping of his name right there yes yes all right chad well we will see you next week all right see you I'll see you next time.