I don’t think it is any of these. I think it is real life and real people. I think we miss the point if we spiritualize it to the point of turning the characters into nothing more than symbols for some greater truth. It is part of the mixed family history of Jesus and yet points to him at the same. His bloodline is not pure. His forebears are the result of mixed marriages, migration and cross cultural relationships of all kinds. It’s just the kind of story the Nazis wanted to take out of the Bible because it reveals the impurity of our Christian history.

2.  It is real life and reflects the circumstances and responses of real people. Read Ruth 1.

This is an account that could be ours today. The world changes and we change with it. We move because of changed circumstances and instead of working out the way we hope they sometimes get worse and more complicated. At some point in our lives we learn we are not protected from reality.

I have read commentators that say Naomi’s troubles are due to her moving from the Promised Land to Moab – from grace to works, from faith to doubt or from Bethlehem to Babylon. They see her difficulties the same way she does – as God’s hand against her. I don’t take it that way. They did what they needed to do for their family – just as Abraham did when there was a famine and what Jacob did as well. When there is no food or work you do what is necessary. You don’t just sit and wait.

As harsh as it sounds there are people today who imagine everything inconvenient or difficult or even tragic that happens is God orchestrating the world to teach them or someone else a particular lesson or to send them a sign that there is something they need to do to be closer to him. He is punishing them for some unknown reason and his hand is against them until they find it and correct it. Or, worse, he has decided for not reason to make their lives miserable and all they can do is resign themselves to it. None of it makes sense. Living that way will make you crazy. I think misfortune, disease, hardship, loss, and pain are part of living in a fallen world – and not merely lightning bolts God uses to communicate with us. As Scott Peck says, “Life is difficult” and it is. It doesn’t make us Darwinian where only the strong survive and it should not make us followers of Ayn Rand where everyone is on their own. It should make us even more compassionate because we bear one another’s burdens.

But it is an attitude of resignation and self-defeat that colors and defines Naomi’s life. She is bitter but I don’t think she is evil. She has lost all hope for better prospects but she does not lay down and die. She hears that things are better in Bethlehem and she takes the initiative to return. Life has not been easy for her but she doesn’t quit. She is not self-destructive or angry or even cynical – just resigned to her lot in life. I heard some advice recently given to someone going through a difficult time. “Start where you are.” I think that is wisdom we can all use. Oswald Chambers writes that “A life of faith is not a life of one glorious mountaintop experience after another, like soaring on eagles’ wings, but is a life of day-in and day-out consistency; a life of walking without fainting.” All of us have times of soaring and times of running but then we have days of walking without fainting – of just putting one foot in front of the other. I saw this figure of Naomi and Ruth in Israel and I thought it captured the heaviness and effort of that putting one foot in front of another.

3.  Ruth is not a romantic figure. Because her name means Beauty, many pictures of her have made her into a starlet. While our names often have meaning – especially in Scripture – it is not always the case that we become what we have been named. Some of the worst characters in Scripture have had names beginning with “God is”. Some of the vilest people in history have had names that represent fine qualities. Joseph Stalin’s name meant “God will increase”. Adolph Hitler’s name means “noble wolf”. Charles Manson means “manly farmer”. Yes, there are times in Scripture where names have great significance but I don’t think this is a story about the meaning of names.

If anything, the kind of beauty we see in Ruth is not physical but the beauty of character. When Boaz meets her, it is clear he has already heard of her and it is not her features which impress him. He has heard her story because that is what stirred up the town. “Boaz replied, “I’ve been told all about what you have done for your mother-in-law since the death of your husband—how you left your father and mother and your homeland and came to live with a people you did not know before. May the Lord repay you for what you have done. May you be richly rewarded by the Lord, the God of Israel, under whose wings you have come to take refuge.”

In Scripture there is often a distinction between face and countenance. Face is what we see but countenance is who we are. We confuse them but Boaz understood that Ruth’s beauty was marked by a deep commitment, loyalty, hard work, faith in God and a willingness to risk. He was drawn to her countenance – her identity.

4.  Boaz is not a romantic figure either. He’s not a white knight but a man who is unusual in several ways given the times and his own circumstances.

It’s clear that he observes the Law even in a time of lawlessness, disbelief, corruption and people doing what is right in their own eyes. Remember last week when we read about the good woman who was so confused that she thought making idols was a tribute to God. We looked at Jonathan, the ambitious young levite, who used his religious credibility for his own gain. This was a time when it would have been very hard to remain devout and orthodox but it seems Boaz did. How do we know that? We know it because he is faithful to observe the laws about gleaning. For many successful people (and he was) he could have rationalized not doing that. What were those laws?

Leviticus 19:9-10: “‘When you reap the harvest of your land, do not reap to the very edges of your field or gather the gleanings of your harvest. Do not go over your vineyard a second time or pick up the grapes that have fallen. Leave them for the poor and the alien. I am the Lord your God.

Deuteronomy 24:19-22: “When you are harvesting in your field and you overlook a sheaf, do not go back to get it. Leave it for the alien, the fatherless and the widow, so that the Lord your God may bless you in all the work of your hands. When you beat the olives from your trees, do not go over the branches a second time. Leave what remains for the alien, the fatherless and the widow. When you harvest the grapes in your vineyard, do not go over the vines again. Leave what remains for the alien, the fatherless and the widow. Remember that you were slaves in Egypt. That is why I command you to do this.”

Gleaning is different from free food. Gleaning is giving an outsider an opportunity to work and provide for themselves. It is treating the poor with respect – not disdain. It is not fixing the problem of poverty. It is including them in your life.

Boaz was not envied by people because of his wealth. He was not like Richard Cory – a poem by Edwin Arlington Robinson.

Whenever Richard Cory went down town,
We people on the pavement looked at him:
He was a gentleman from sole to crown,
Clean favored, and imperially slim.

And he was always quietly arrayed,
And he was always human when he talked;
But still he fluttered pulses when he said,
‘Good-morning,’ and he glittered when he walked.

And he was rich – yes, richer than a king –
And admirably schooled in every grace:
In fine, we thought that he was everything
To make us wish that we were in his place.

So on we worked, and waited for the light,
And went without the meat, and cursed the bread;
And Richard Cory, one calm summer night,
Went home and put a bullet through his head.

He was not a local celebrity. He was not detached from his workers or his work. They blessed him and were grateful for him. He was a man of influence and some power but chose to use it in ways that drew people to him. He noticed people and protected them. There is no hint of class warfare or the 1% versus the rest. He is not the rich fool or the ambitious levite or the privileged man we are warned about in James. He is a man who remembers where he came from and that is the source of his generosity. He is not a Benefactor or philanthropist.

And he had his own story. Read Matthew 1:25. Who was his mother? Rahab – a Canaanite prostitute. What might that say about growing up in Bethlehem – a small town where everyone gets stirred up when someone comes back after ten years being away? Yet, he had no chip on his shoulder. He has something of a different experience than Naomi. She begins “full” and, I suspect, Boaz did not. She leaves and he stays. He becomes a local success story and she becomes bitter – at least for now.

5.  The final part to understand about Boaz is his role as the kinsman-redeemer. Again, this is not a romantic role. It is the role of someone who accepts his duty and obligation when he could have done otherwise. This is the role in which he most foreshadows Christ. He does for us by his own choice what we could not do for ourselves. He is not a victim but a redeemer.

Deuteronomy 25:5-6: “If brothers are living together and one of them dies without a son, his widow must not marry outside the family. Her husband’s brother shall take her and marry her and fulfill the duty of a brother-in-law to her. The first son she bears shall carry on the name of the dead brother so that his name will not be blotted out from Israel.”

Leviticus 25:25: “If one of your countrymen becomes poor and sells some of his property, his nearest relative is to come and redeem what his countryman has sold. If, however, a man has no one to redeem it for him but he himself prospers and acquires sufficient means to redeem it, he is to determine the value for the years since he sold it and refund the balance to the man to whom he sold it; he can then go back to his own property. But if he does not acquire the means to repay him, what he sold will remain in the possession of the buyer until the Year of Jubilee. It will be returned in the Jubilee, and he can then go back to his property.”

The kinsman redeemer’s responsibility was in two major areas. First, if a member of the tribe had to sell (or lease) land to non-family, the kinsman redeemer was the one who bought it back so that it would not be outside the family. Land belonged to the family – not individuals.

Second, if a man died his brother or closest relative was bound to marry his widow to perpetuate the family line.

So, we see why Naomi was so enthusiastic about Ruth’s encounter with Boaz. He is one of her kinsman redeemers…but there is an obstacle and we’ll look at that next week along with the rest of the story.

So…we come to the end of the introduction of the characters and, hopefully, understand this is not a Biblical bodice ripper or even a Jane Austen novel. It is a story of real lives with complications, hardships, choices, mishaps, trials, bad starts, duty, obligation and even some luck – like most of our lives. It is a also a story of God’s way of weaving lives together in ways we could never predict toward an end we could never imagine.