| | 1100 Years LaterA friend and I started reading the Book of Ruth today. We didn't get very far verse-wise, but I learned so many things that made so many other things make sense I feel compelled to write them down. Despite various attempts I still have not read the whole OT and am continually surprised by the number and the strangeness of the things I am only just now discovering. Here's what I learned: In the days when the judges ruled In other words, sometime between approximately 1400 BC to 1100 BC. When a judge was in place the people would look to the Lord for guidance and everything would be well, but when that judge died things would deteriorate and everyone would do what was right in their own eyes. Samson was the last judge. there was a famine in the land, and a certain man of Bethlehem in Judah went to sojourn in the country of Moab. Moab is a country to the East of Israel, bordering the Dead Sea. The people of Moab are descendents of a man named Moab who was the product of an incestuous relationship between Lot and one of his daughters. The Moabites and the Israelites therefore had common heritage but a tumultuous relationship, the Israelites being none too fond of their distant cousins. Moab was considered a terrible place and the famine must have been quite bad for the man and his wife and his two sons to go there. The name of the man was Elimelech and the name of his wife was Naomi which means Pleasant and the names of his two sons were Mahlon and Chilion; they were Ephrathites from Bethlehem in Judah. We tried and tried to figure out what Ephrathites were, since normally when such an epithet is given to a group of people it describes what tribe they are from - Benjaminites for example - but that doesn't seem applicable here since clearly "in Judah" describes the family's ancestry. I looked it up just now and here's the answer from Easton's Bible Dictionary: Ephratah Fruitful. (1.) The second wife of Caleb, the son of Hezron, mother of Hur, and grandmother of Caleb, who was one of those that were sent to spy the land (Ch1 2:19, Ch1 2:50). (2.) The ancient name of Bethlehem in Judah (Gen 35:16, Gen 35:19; Gen 48:7). In Rut 1:2 it is called "Bethlehem-Judah," but the inhabitants are called "Ephrathites;" in Mic 5:2, "Bethlehem -Ephratah;" in Mat 2:6, "Bethlehem in the land of Judah." In Psa 132:6 it is mentioned as the place where David spent his youth, and where he heard much of the ark, although he never saw it till he found it long afterwards at Kirjath-jearim; i.e., the "city of the wood," or the "forest-town" (Sa1 7:1; compare Sa2 6:3, Sa2 6:4). So perhaps to say they were Ephrathites from Bethlehem was to say they had been there a long time. They were townies. And that leads me to the really cool stuff, which is the family history. Eventually Naomi returns from Moab with the widow of her deceased son, which would have been a very long walk over mountains and rivers to get around the Dead Sea and back to Israel. In Bethlehem "the whole town was stirred" over the arrival of the two widows. Jewish law made provision for widows as follows, from Deuteronomy 25: 5(E) "If brothers dwell together, and one of them dies and has no son, the wife of the dead man shall not be married outside the family to a stranger. Her(F) husband’s brother shall go in to her and take her as his wife and perform the duty of a husband’s brother to her. 6And the first son whom she bears shall succeed to the name of his dead brother, that(G) his name may not be blotted out of Israel. 7And if the man does not wish to take his brother’s wife, then his brother’s wife shall(H) go up to the gate to the elders and say, 'My husband’s brother refuses to perpetuate his brother’s name in Israel; he will not perform the duty of a husband’s brother to me.' 8Then the elders of his city shall call him and speak to him, and if he persists, saying,(I) 'I do not wish to take her,' 9then his brother’s wife shall go up to him in the presence of the elders and(J) pull his sandal off his foot and(K) spit in his face. And she shall answer and say, 'So shall it be done to the man who does not(L) build up his brother’s house.' 10And the name of his house[a] shall be called in Israel, 'The house of him who had his sandal pulled off.' Ruth 4.7 says "7(A) Now this was the custom in former times in Israel concerning redeeming and exchanging: to confirm a transaction, the one drew off his sandal and gave it to the other, and this was the manner of attesting in Israel." Fascinating that if a man refused to take his brother's wife, she could rightfully (if symbolically) remove his power to perform economically, and spit in his face while she was at it. I wonder how many times that actually happened? So Boaz had a vested interest in taking care of Ruth. Perhaps this explains why Naomi told Ruth to uncover his feet while he was sleeping - a sort of not-so-gentle reminder of his duties. As we know Boaz does accept Ruth as his wife, and gladly it would appear, which makes sense given his own family history. Boaz was the son of Rahab, the harlot from Jericho whose story is told in Joshua and who appears again in the so-called "Halls of Faith" in the Book of Hebrews. His mother was a person of suspect heritage but remarkable faith, much like Ruth. Boaz and Ruth become the parents of Obed, who is given to Naomi as her own son. Obed of course became the father of Jesse who became the father of David, who was a shepherd boy in Bethlehem. All this is even more amazing when you consider that the Christ was eventually born in Bethlehem, where his father's family still lived more than 1100 years later. |
