Ruth: a four-chapter novella of loving kindness.

Ruth is told as a domestic love story, yes. But it models a truth people everywhere are experiencing currently in heightened ways day by day. Factors beyond domestic control shape the stories we live. The friendship of Moabite Ruth and her Judean mother-in-law Naomi unfolds against famine, and in the days when the judges ruled. According to the book of Judges, this was a time of ‘decline and anarchy in Israel.’[i] The marginalised are apt to become more so in circumstances of famine and self-interested government. Ruth and Naomi are both widows, refugees and each at first an alien in one another’s countries, properly on the margins.

Faith seeks more than solace and consolation in the grain of personal stories and the historical tide. Faith, because it affirms God, seeks God’s presence in every circumstance. And faith wants to know what kind of God there is to find or possibly be found by.

When Naomi’s husband and two sons have all died in Moab, and she hears the Lord has given food to famished Judah, she prays the Lord deals kindly with her two daughters-in-law as they have dealt kindly with her and their three dead husbands. Her faith claims God’s loving kindness is reflected in theirs, over-against the circumstances. And Naomi’s faith imagines them returning to their mother’s homes, marrying new husbands, and finding security. A marginalised imagination may well long for the great blessing/happiness of security.

Now at the risk of a personal quirky reading, it seems to me Ruth perceives true security in their friendship. Home is more with Naomi than in Moab or Judah. So, paraphrasing Ruth’s famous covenantal commitment to Naomi, where you and I lodge may change, possibly even who are your people and my people may come into question, but our mutual commitment and kindness reflect the loving kindness of your God who will be my God.

Naomi returns home to Bethlehem in Judah and despite the blessing of Ruth names the bitterness of the death of her husband and her sons Sickly and Frail.[ii] Naomi is not a cardboard cutout. She hopes and prays security on her daughter(s) by marriage but does not minimise her loss and emptiness. Very often faith is hope against hope.

Famine, Judges and Ruth the Moabite, great-grandmother of David, Israel’s favourite king. This story could not be conceived outside the structure of patriarchy. Thus enters the patriarch, third principal character of the ensemble, Boaz, the second nearest of kin with right to redeem the plot of land left to Naomi by her husband’s death. Because of the inevitable patriarchal dynamics, the manner of the telling of Ruth and Naomi’s friendship strikes me as even more remarkable.

The story of chapters two, three and four is emphatically not Naomi and Ruth conspire to manipulate Boaz into marrying Ruth. The story goes ‘as it happened’—fluke or providence, let the reader decide. Chapter two unfolds the story of alien Ruth gleaning from Boaz’s harvest, actively assisted by Boaz ‘as it happened.’ Naomi launches chapter three true to her marginalised character: ‘My daughter, I need to seek some security for you, so that it may be well with you.’

The reader of Ruth is asked to see that everyone’s blessing is compounded by the faithful goodwill of the principal characters. The friendship of Ruth and Naomi is shot through with good intent for one another. Boaz is portrayed as recognising Ruth’s committed loyalty to his kinswoman Naomi. Ruth’s proposal of marriage, ‘throw your cloak over me’ is seen to come from a place of both humility and an integrated adoptive identity, ‘I am Ruth, your servant, [and] you are next of kin.’

Here in the Easter season, we are celebrating the saving loving kindness of God present in the faithfulness of Jesus, ‘David’s greater Son.’ In this story of a fertile friendship of his ancestors, we are invited to recognise a pattern for a faithful disposition. Naomi and Ruth do not overturn their circumstances or inherited social system. They do not displace the flow of history. But they do invite faith to see God’s loving kindness disposing us to initiative which may just compound in new life for the principals in our stories and others around us. And possibly the friendship of Ruth and Naomi dares us, as it dared Boaz, to be found by a befriending God.

[i] “In those days there was no king in Israel; all the people did what was right in their own eyes” (Judges 21:25). Doing what is right in your own eyes is never a good thing in the Bible; and, indeed, the book of Judges traces a story of decline and anarchy in Israel. Commentary on Ruth 1:1—4:22 - Working Preacher from Luther Seminary

[ii] Ruth 1 footnotes a. and b. NRSVUE