A Rare Bond Love

A Rare Bond Love

Ruth and Naomi lost everything except their care for each other

Ruth 1:16-17 And Ruth said, Entreat me not to leave thee, or to return from following after thee: for whither thou goest, I will go; and where thou lodgest, I will lodge: thy people shall be my people, and thy God my God: Where thou diest, will I die, and there will I be buried: the LORD do so to me, and more also, if ought but death part thee and me).

Ruth and Naomi were unlikely friends: a generation apart, one young and strong, the other past middle age. Stranger still, one was the other's mother-in-law and came from a completely different ethnic and religious background. 

Who would have put them together? They had lost everything when their husbands died. With no man to rely on, their lives were at risk in those rough times. No one else would come to their defense: they had each other. 

The woman's initiative 

The book of Ruth is not "two women against the world". Rather, it shows the woman taking initiative to find, by God's help, a man who would care for them.

A woman initiative rarely gets so direct as in Ruth.

At her mother-in-law's direction Ruth located where Boaz, a relative was camping out.

She waited until dark, then crept to his feet and lay down. When Boaz woke and found her, he didn't have to be told what was on her mind.She wanted him for a husband.Flattered, he didn't let another sun set before making the legal arrangements for marriage.

Society the way God had designed it encouraged men like Boaz to help the needy. For instance, by Old Testament law a farmer had to leave some of his grain behind so that poor people like Ruth could harvest it. And, also by law, a helpless widow had to be taken in to the home of her husband's family.

This was he law by which Boaz claimed Rurh (4:1-12)

God's invisible presence

Behind the eloquent story looms an invisible helper - God.

He didn't intervene in the events,so far as the story tells.

But nobody in Ruth swore when declaring her love to Naomi (Ruth 1:17), and the Lord whom Naomi creditedfor bringing Ruth to Boaz,s field (Ruth 2:20 And Naomi said unto her daughter in law, Blessed be he of the LORD, who hath not left off his kindness to the living and to the dead. And Naomi said unto her, The man is near of kin unto us, one of our next kinsmen).

God's law brought Boaz and Ruth into marriage. Finally, the Lord gave them a son, in whom mother, father, and "grandmother" found deep satisfaction.

The last verses of Ruth show, furthermore, that God's plan extended Ruth and Naomi's personal problems. Ruth was a member of the despised Moabites - enemies of Israel.

Yet God not only accepted her into his family, but also used her to produce Israel's greatest king.

Ruth's great- grand son turned out to be David. To anyone who thought that God's love was for Jews only, Ruth's life made a striking condition.