BY

THE REV. R. SINKER, M.A.

INTRODUCTION

TO

THE BOOK OF RUTH.

I. Contents.—In the book of Ruth is presented to us a family, consisting of father, mother and two sons, which under the pressure of a famine in the days of the Judges, migrated from Bethlehem to the land of Moab. Here the two sons, Mahlon and Chilion, took two Moabitesses, Ruth and Orpah, to wife. After a ten years’ sojourn, Elimelech the father, and the two sons having died, and tidings having come of the change of famine to plenty in the land of Judah, Naomi and her two daughters-in-law set off to return. In spite, however, of her evident affection for them, and of their unwillingness to leave her,’ she unselfishly urges them to seek their own kindred, and not to venture on what must have been a long toilsome journey. After a struggle Orpah yields, but Ruth, with a devotedness which says almost as much for Naomi as herself, sinks all ties of home and kindred in the outburst, “Thy people shall be my people, and thy God my God.” Thus she takes her last look at the fertile fields of Moab, to enter a strange land, where the result of her devotion to her mother-in-law was to be, that from her line in ages to come should be born, David, the sweet psalmist of Israel, Solomon, the wisest of the sons of men, Zerub-babel, the later Moses, and the Messiah, the son of David, whom all these prefigured.

When Bethlehem is reached, the barley harvest is beginning, and Ruth, going to glean, chances upon the field of Boaz, a wealthy kinsman of the family of Elimelech. Learning that the unknown woman was the daughter-in-law of Naomi, and having clearly been much impressed with the story of her devotedness, he bids her to continue to glean in his fields, and to make use of the food provided for his own people. Through the kindness of Boaz, she gleans barley, which when beaten out, is about an ephah, and so first the barley and then the wheat harvest pass by.

The end of the harvest having come, Naomi bids Ruth to claim a kinsman’s help from Boaz in his threshing floor, where he had been winnowing barley, and accordingly at midnight when Boaz awoke he found Ruth lying at his feet. He promises then to discharge the kinsman’s duty unless a still nearer relative should claim to do it. The case was brought into judgment on the following morning. The next kinsman, afraid of “marring his own inheritance, “declines to redeem the land that was Elimelech’s. Accordingly Boaz himself redeems it, taking therewith Ruth to wife to raise up the name of the dead Mahlon on his inheritance. The offspring of the marriage was Obed the father of Jesse, the father of David.