Transcript
Jesus’ Family Tree: Ruth
First Baptist Richmond, February 9, 2025
Fifth Sunday after Epiphany
Ruth 3:1-11
Naomi her mother-in-law said to her, ‘My daughter, I need to seek some security for you, so that it may be well with you…’
I’m so excited!
We’ve been talking about Jesus’ family tree and looking at the genealogy in Matthew 1. We’ve been talking about the women in that genealogy and how each of them was, in some way, associated with scandal. Two weeks ago I talked about Tamar, who seduced her own father-in-law and last week Lacey Wondree talked about Rahab, the prostitute from Jericho, but today I get to talk about Ruth, and we all love Ruth, don’t we? It’s hard to imagine that she was associated with any kind of scandal. But maybe that’s because we don’t know much about Ruth’s family tree.
She was a Moabite, and if you were an Israelite, living in that same time period, you might spit on the ground every time that word was mentioned. Moabites; those people who lived on the other side of the Jordan River; those despised descendants of their ancestor Moab. If you know his story then you know that at the very root of Ruth’s family tree there was a scandal.
You can find the story in Genesis 19, which is not a place many of us go. In my Bible the subtitle at the beginning of chapter 19 is “The Depravity of Sodom.” The next subtitle, a few paragraphs down, reads, “Sodom and Gomorrah Destroyed.” But it’s the next subtitle that concerns us, the one that begins at verse
30. It reads, “The Shameful Origin of Moab and Ammon.”
You may recall that Lot and his family escaped the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, but Lot’s wife looked back and became a pillar of salt, meaning that it was only Lot and his two daughters who actually got away. They ended up living in a cave in the hills and it was there that the older daughter said to the younger one, “Our father is old, and there is not a man on earth to come in to us after the manner of all the world. Come, let us make our father drink wine, and we will lie with him, so that we may preserve offspring through our father” (vss. 31-32).
And that’s what they did.
I love the delicacy with which the New Revised Standard Version reports that event but there’s no getting past the fact that “both the daughters of Lot became pregnant by their father” (vs. 36). The older sister named her son Moab; and he became the ancestor of the Moabites. The younger sister named her son Ben-ammi; and he became the ancestor of the Ammonites.
And that explains why the Israelites wanted to spit on the ground every time they heard those words; they wanted to get the bad taste of those shameful origins out of their mouths. But what are you going to do when there’s a famine in the land of Israel so severe that it turns the entire country into a dust bowl, while on the other side of the river, in the land of Moab, the rains are falling and the crops are flourishing?
After his crops had failed again and again and after his storehouse had been emptied out so that there was nothing left for him or his livestock to eat Elimelech, a Bethlehemite, decided that in spite of that country’s shameful origins he would try his luck in the land of Moab. So he took his wife, Naomi, and his two
sons, Mahlon and Chilion, and they went up the road to what is now called Jerusalem, took a right turn and went down the road to Jericho, and then went over the River and through the woods to the land of Moab.
They settled there, Elimelech planted his crops, and they began to grow. For a while at least it looked like everything was going to be all right. But then Elimelech died, leaving Naomi alone with her two sons. And then the oldest son, Mahlon, fell in love with a Moabite girl named Orpah and married her, and what do you think his mother said about that? (ptui!) And then Chilion did the same; he fell in love with a Moabite girl named Ruth and married her (ptui!). A few years later, and who knows why, both Mahlon and Chilion died.
I can picture Naomi, sitting between their graves, scooping up handfuls of dirt and letting it fall through her fingers, thinking that things hadn’t worked out very well for them in the land of Moab. Here she was, a childless widow in a foreign country. You can’t get any more destitute than that. At least her daughters-in-law were from there and still had homes they could go home to. “Go,” she told them. “Go back to your mothers’ houses. You’re still young. Maybe you can each find a nice man to marry.” But they said, “No, we’ll go back to Bethlehem with you.” And Naomi said, “Why? I’ve got nothing to give you! If I got married today and conceived twin sons tonight, would you wait until they grew up so you could marry them? Of course not!” That made sense to Orpah. She kissed her mother-in-law goodbye and headed down the road toward home, but Ruth said, “No. I’m not leaving. Where you go I will go; where you lodge, I will lodge; your people shall be my people, and your God my God.”
And what are you going to say to that?
So, they went back to Bethlehem, and when they got into town all of
Naomi’s friends came out to greet them, saying, “Look who’s back! It’s Naomi!” “No,” she said. “Don’t call me Naomi (which means “pleasant”). Call me Mara (which means “bitter”). For the Almighty has dealt bitterly with me. I went away full, but the Lord has brought me back empty.” Which didn’t say much for Ruth, who was standing right there with her.
But Ruth didn’t say a word.
Together the two of them unlocked the door of Naomi’s old home. They swept out the dust and cleared away the cobwebs. They settled in as best as they could and the next morning at breakfast Ruth said to Naomi. “Let me go to the fields and glean and see if I can bring home a little something for supper.” And Naomi said, “Go, my child.”
Ruth did, and she ended up gleaning in a barley field belonging to Boaz, who was actually a distant cousin of Elimelech’s. When he saw her gleaning he said, “Who is that!?” They told him it was Naomi’s daughter-in-law, you know, the Moabite (ptui!). But Boaz went out to where she was working and told her he’d heard all about her many kindnesses to her mother-in-law. He told her she was welcome to glean in his field. And then, even though she was a despised foreigner, he said, “May the Lord reward you for your deeds, and may you have a full reward from the Lord, the God of Israel, under whose wings you have come for refuge!” (Ruth 2:12). Which means that Ruth was a refugee, but apparently not only vulnerable, but also beautiful. I think that’s one of the reasons Boaz noticed her in the first place, and one of the reasons he had to tell his young men not to bother her.
In the middle of the day he invited her to come and have lunch with the rest of the workers, to eat some bread and drink some sour wine. He even heaped up
some parched grain in front of her so she would have enough to eat. And then, when she went back out to the field, he told his workers to drop a few stalks of grain here and there so she could pick them up more easily.
As a result, Ruth had a very good day in the field, and came home with a basket full of grain. “Good Lord, child!” Naomi said. “Where did you glean today?” “In a field belonging to a man named Boaz,” she said, and Naomi’s eyes got big. “Oh, yes!” she said. “That’s the perfect place to glean! Boaz is a distant cousin of ours, and not only that, he’s a rich cousin—the best kind!” So Ruth went back the next day, and the day after that, and the day after that, until the barley harvest was over. And that’s when Naomi began to cook up a plot to provide a little “security” for her daughter-in-law.
Now, let’s be honest: Boaz wasn’t much to look at. He was older. He’d gotten a little thick around the middle. Nobody had to tell the young women to leave him alone, in fact, he’d never been married. But have I mentioned? He was rich! And he was kind. Naomi began to think he might be just the kind of man who would make a good husband for her daughter-in-law.
So she waited until he was down at the threshing floor, winnowing grain all by himself. And then she told Ruth, “Look, here’s what I want you to do. Take a long, hot bath and then put on some of your best perfume. Put on your nicest clothes and then go down there to the threshing-floor. But stay out of sight until Boaz has finished eating and drinking. When he lies down, notice the place where he lies; then, go and uncover his feet and lie down; and he will tell you what to do.” And Ruth said, “All that you tell me I will do.”
I’ve been wondering what it is we love about Ruth, and if you had asked me last week I might have said, “Her love and loyalty.” Because she loved her mother-
in-law, didn’t she? Obviously. And she was loyal to her. But after spending some time with this story last week I might add “her obedience,” because her mother-in-law told her to do something and she did it without question. Those of you who have children will know how much it means to you when you ask them to do something and they just do it, without whining or complaining. The Bible says Ruth, “went down to the threshing-floor and did just as her mother-in-law had instructed her.” And then it says, “When Boaz had eaten and drunk, and he was in a contented mood (meaning, I think, that he was happily drunk), he went to lie down at the end of the heap of grain. Then Ruth came quietly and uncovered his feet, and lay down.”
And this is where some scholars find the scandal in this story. They point out that in the Bible the word feet is often used as a euphemism for a person’s private parts. Maybe even in that passage from Isaiah 6 that we heard earlier the writer is suggesting that those seraphim buzzing around the temple in the year that King Uzziah died were using one pair of wings to fly, another pair to cover their faces, and another to cover their “feet” (if you know what I mean). If that’s true about this story it would be scandalous for Ruth to come to the threshing floor in the middle of the night, bathed and perfumed and wearing her best dress, to lift the covers from Boaz as he lay there in a drunken stupor, and to lie down at his “feet.” A lot of scholars begin to giggle like teenage boys at this point. But I believe (and you can quote me on this) that sometimes feet are just feet, and that’s where Ruth lay down, and when Boaz rolled over in the night he kicked something down there, and it wasn’t a sack of grain.
I love the way the New Revised Standard Version puts it: “At midnight the man was startled and turned over, and there, lying at his feet, was a woman! He
said, ‘Who are you?’ And she answered, ‘I am Ruth, your servant; spread your cloak over your servant, for you are next-of-kin.’” And I can’t help but think of that blessing Boaz had given earlier, when he said to Ruth, “May the Lord reward you for your deeds, and may you have a full reward from the Lord, the God of Israel, under whose wings you have come for refuge!” Now Ruth was asking to come under Boaz’s wings, under his protection; asking him to spread his cloak over her as a sign that he intended to marry her. As next-of-kin he was the one who had the right to do so.
And this, I believe, is when Boaz burst into tears, unable to believe his good fortune. He said, “May you be blessed by the Lord, my daughter; this last instance of your loyalty is better than the first; for you have not gone after young men, whether poor or rich. You’ve come to me! And now, my daughter, do not be afraid; I will do for you all that you ask, for all the assembly of my people know that you are a worthy woman” (Ruth 3:10-11).
And that’s how Ruth and Boaz got engaged, and it wasn’t long after that that they got married, and it wasn’t too long after that that Ruth brought a baby boy into the world and named him Obed, the same Obed who became the father of Jesse, who became the father of David, the greatest king who ever lived in Israel. I picture Naomi holding that little fellow and grinning from ear to ear, thinking about how this Moabite woman had almost literally saved her life, and then given her the best gift she could have ever asked for. Her friends would say, “Looks like things have turned around for you, Mara” (which means “bitter”), and she would say, “Oh, yes! Yes they have! Please, from now on, call me Naomi” (which means “pleasant”). I think of Psalm 16 where it says, “The lines have fallen for me in pleasant places.” I think Naomi might have said the same.
And that, more or less, is the story of Ruth, one of five women who show up in Jesus’ family tree. If you were looking for the traits she passed along to him you might think of her love and loyalty, but you might also think of her obedience. On the night that he was betrayed Jesus went to the Garden of Gethsemane like Ruth went to the threshing floor. Whether she wanted to or not she did exactly what her mother-in-law had told her, and it ended up changing her life. In the same way, there in that garden, Jesus fell down at the Father’s feet and prayed, “Not my will but thine be done,”
And it ended up changing the world.
—Jim Somerville © 2025
