Ruth 4:11-22
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For :
Family Tree:
Jesus broken Family Tree:
Boaz comes from Judah: Perez is invoked
Ruth comes from an incestuous relationship between Lot and one of his daughters. See .
Ruth parallels Tamar: Both making daring moves to continue a family line.
Both Ruth and Tamar belong to the lineage of Jesus.
4:13
1.4: Mahlon and Chilion ‘took’ Moabite wives.
4.10: Boaz ‘aquired’ Ruth
‘The consummation of the marriage is clearly a human activity. However, in the narrator’s eyes, the conception of a child is gift from God (“the Lord made her conceive”). Like Rachel and Leah- indeed, like all the mothers of the promised line- Ruth conceives only by the grace of God.” (; ; ; ).” NIB
4:14-17:
“Ruth’s son is Naomi’s redeemer.” NIB “Redemption for Naomi takes the form of a reversal of the emptiness that has embittered her. It is poetically fitting for the narrator to use the same women who absorbed Naomi’s bitterness in 1:20-21 to assure her that the Lord has not abandoned her; the child whose conception was given by the Lord will turn Naomi’s life around.” NIB 904
“Not only did these women pay a part in building up the house of Israel, but they did so in particularly deceptive ways. Tamar, Rachel, and Leah are all remembered as tricksters whose deceptions have reproductive consequences.” NIB
Tamar and Ruth:
Both are widows
Both are childless
Both could have everything fixed through a Levirate Marriage.
Both take their reproductive future in their own hands by dressing up and luring in the one who could fix it.
Getting the Love that you Want
Boaz: Familiarity with Ruth: Ruth dressed up like a prostitute… Rahab was a prostitute!
Looking for that void...
Moabite mother
Canaanite Grandmother
“Least Likely Agents”
Kings and Control: An Anti-American
“We who consider ourselves the people of God are frequently tempted to think that redemption comes as a reward to those who are faithful. We need to be reminded on a regular basis that God’s faithfulness, not our own, brings about redemption.... ‘They are all human, yet out of the tangle of human interactions God’s redemption occurs.’” NIB pg. 946
Naomi rrflects the reality of who we are: We are the recipients of unmerited love, and our redemption is due to someone else’s hesed, not our own.” NIB
Story of Redemption for Prostitutes in Korean:
In general, Western societies make an idol out of individual freedom and embrace love and acceptance as attributes of God. Grace and forgiveness sound attractive, but sin and retributive judgment are difficult to accept. In other cultures that make an idol of honor, the Christian idea of deep human depravity is self-evident, while the biblical concepts of free grace and forgiveness are seen as weakness or injustice. Retribution is critical, not only to maintain dignity, but also to keep order in society. People in these cultures are naturally more comfortable with the sovereignty, justice, and holiness of God.
A real-life example of this dynamic comes from a discussion with a Korean-American pastor, Dr. Stephen Um, in which we talked about a book that contended that people could not accept the idea of a God who judged and sent people to hell. Stephen responded that the statement was culturally narrow.
He related how his grandfather struggled with Christianity. His grandfather had no objection to the idea of hell. He had seen firsthand how evil human beings could be, and he had no problem with a God who judged people for their actions. His real concern was with the concept of free grace— that forgiveness could be extended to someone regardless of what they had done in the past. His culture did not value this idea, and so the “A” doctrine to him (the acceptable belief) was not God’s love but God’s justice. Free grace was the doctrine he found objectionable.
He then gave an example involving work with prostitutes in Korea:
No one denies there are biblical texts that talk about God predestining and electing people to believe in him, though there is plenty of controversy about what these passages exactly mean. In our Western, democratic, egalitarian culture, the idea of God’s sovereignty and his control of all things is definitely a “B” doctrine [an idea which is not acceptable in a culture]. We don’t like those parts of the Bible that talk about God being completely in charge of history, or those parts where he opens the hearts of those chosen for eternal life (; ).
So when sharing the gospel, we avoid this doctrine at all costs. For most of us in the West, predestination is not just a “B” doctrine; it’s a “C” [completely unacceptable to even consider within a culture] doctrine!
This missionary, however, realized that this was not necessarily true in mid-twentieth-century Korea. So he told the prostitutes about a God who is a King. Kings, he said, have a sovereign right to act as they saw fit. They rule — that’s just what kings do. And this great divine King chooses to select people out of the human race to serve him, simply because it is his sovereign will to do so. Therefore, his people are saved because of his royal will, not because of the quality of their lives or anything they have done. This made sense to the women.
They had no problem with idea of authority figures acting in this way — it seemed natural and right to them. But this also meant that when people were saved, it was not because of pedigree or virtue or effort, but because of the will of God (cf. ). Their acceptance of this belief opened up the possibility of understanding and accepting the belief in salvation by grace.
We’re going to look at family trees...
Family Trees
Family Trees:
Barrenness
Ex. Sinai
Num Jericho
Deut Israel
Josh; Ephraim
Perez: