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In the book of Ruth, Naomi told Ruth and Orpah that
she had no other sons that could perform the duties of levirate husbands (Ruth
1:11). Boaz was a near relative of Ruth’s late husband, Mahlon. Boaz performed
the duties of kinsman-redeemer (Hebrew: go’el) by marrying Ruth and
buying the property that had belonged to Mahlon’s father, Elimelech (Ruth
4:9-10).

If a married man died without any children to carry
on his name and inheritance, it was his unmarried brother’s responsibility to
marry the widow so that: "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" (Deuteronomy
25:6). This is known as a levirate marriage from the Latin word for
brother-in-law, levir.

When Tamar realized that Judah would not allow Shelah
to fulfill the obligations of levirate marriage, she disguised herself as a
prostitute and sat where she knew Judah would approach. Judah did not recognize
her and purchased her services. In due course, Tamar became pregnant and bore
Judah twin sons, Perez and Zerah.

The son of Boaz and Ruth would thus become the legal
inheritor of Elimelech’s property, a "son" of Elimelech and Naomi (verse 17).
This seems to be an extension of levirate marriage as discussed in Deuteronomy,
but many details concerning the transaction remain unknown.

We do not know why Tamar embarked upon this action,
but we are told that

Ruth is rightly remembered for her pledge of
total devotion and loyalty to Naomi (Ruth 1:16-17). Ruth clung to Naomi even at
the cost of renouncing her people and her gods in favor of Naomi’s people, the
Israelites, and Naomi’s God, Yahweh: "Your people will be my people and your God
my God" (verse 16). The totality of this commitment is emphasized by its
terseness (merely four words long in the Hebrew: ‘amekh ‘ami we’lohaikh
’elohai, which literally means "your people my people; your God my God").
Yet Ruth extended her commitment still further, beyond death itself: "Where you
die I will die, and there I will be buried" (verse 17).

These words may sound anticlimactic compared
to accepting Naomi’s people and her God. But to understand their significance,
we must appreciate the cultural mind-set of the ancient
Near Eastern peoples. All the death accounts of the patriarchs mention the
burial, often at length (Genesis 23:1-20; 25:8-10; 35:19-20, 28-29; 49:29-33;
50:1-14, 24-26). When a patriarch died, he was "gathered to his people." Jacob
and Joseph died in Egypt, but their bones were laid to rest in the Promised
Land. The location of burial was important to them.

Ruth concluded her pledge by calling down
God’s punishment on herself if "even death" (Ruth 1:17, NRSV — a preferred
reading to "anything but death") parted her from Naomi. Even after the death of
Naomi, Ruth would live, die and be buried in Bethlehem. In so doing, Ruth
identified herself with Naomi’s community in the most absolute manner
possible.

Ruth was willing to forgo everything — her
future in Moab, her people, her gods and even her ancestral burial plot — to be
joined with Naomi. Yet as we remember Ruth, as we acknowledge and strive to
emulate her devotion, her loyalty, her total commitment, let us not forget that
other remarkable woman, Naomi. As F.B. Huey, Jr., explains, "Naomi’s consistent
living must have so impressed her daughter-in-law to cause her to abandon her
homeland and her gods" ("Ruth," in The Expositor’s Bible Commentary, Vol.
3, p. 524).

What sort of woman was this Naomi, to
inspire such affection in a daughter-in-law? What relationship with God must she
have had to cause Ruth to forsake the gods of Moab and worship Naomi’s God
alone?

The second part of the story continues Naomi's story, but the focus shifts to
Ruth, one of her daughters-in-law. Ruth refuses to leave Naomi, and returns with
her to Judah, where she now becomes an alien in a foriegn country, just as Naomi
had been in Moab. Things were at their absolute worst. When they return, people
recognize Naomi, kind of, but she has changed so much that they say, "Can this
be Naomi?" (1:19). Naomi responds, "Don't call me Naomi, but rather Mara because
God has made my life bitter. I left full, but I'm coming back empty. God has
brought misfortune on me" (1:20-21). "Mara" means "bitter." So, not only was
Naomi completely at the mercies of peoples' good will, without money or
property, and completely bereft of her family, except for Ruth, she was also
bitter, and she attributed her misfortune to God's afflicting her life.

Things were bad, but life had to go on, so Ruth volunteered to go gleaning in
the fields. This practice was like a work-welfare program in that culture
(Deuteronomy 24:19-22). People who were destitute would go to fields that were
being harvested and follow along, at a respectful distance, behind the
harvesters and pick up the little bit accidently left behind. Even though God
had instructed his people to allow this practice as a kindness, some people
resented the poor getting even the little bit they could pick up by gleaning. So
it must have been humiliating and frightening to go to the fields.

The story begins its upward swing at this point. Just when Naomi and Ruth are
at the very bottom of their lives, they keep walking in obedience to God, and He
begins to open doors. First, she picks a field at random, but it turns out to be
the field of Boaz, a kind man, who was a close relative of Naomi. Incidently,
Boaz's mother was Rahab, a non-Israeli from Jericho whose story is told in
Joshua 2 and 6:23. Perhaps he was more willing to be kind to Ruth, an alien,
because his mother was an alien.

Second, Naomi begins to have hope that she will be able to get her land back.
God had made provision in the Law for relatives to be able to buy back property
that had been sold in hard times (Leviticus 25:23-28). This provision came to be
known as the "law of the kinsman redeemer." Boaz was a wealthy man, and he was a
relative (or kinsman), so he could buy back Naomi's land for her if he wanted
to, but the law had also come to have an extra condition attached to it: if
there was a widow of the person who was the rightful heir of the land, then the
kinsman redeemer was to mary her so that she could have children and thereby
keep the line of inheritance going.

So, not only woul Boaz need to be generous enough to buy the land back and
give it to Naomi and Ruth (who was the widow of the rightful heir), but he would
have to mary Ruth so that she could have children. This part of the story is
very important, because Jesus came through the line from Judah, through Rahab
and Ruth to David (Matthew 1:3-6). The line of promise nearly died out, and
would have, had not Boaz married Ruth.

What the story is about:
Ruth was
poor, a foreigner, and a woman, and all this counted against her, but she was
helped by an older woman to overcome the difficulties she faced. She had the
good sense to listen to the advice given to her by Naomi, and the older woman
was rewarded by Ruth's  unfaltering loyalty. Her story illustrates the
triumph of courage and ingenuity over adverse circumstances. She has
special significance for Christians. In the gospel of Matthew, four women were
included in the genealogy of Jesus (Matthew 1:2-17), and Ruth was one of the
four.

Fortunately, Ruth had the good
sense to heed the older woman. 
She perfumed herself, dressed in her
most becoming clothes - see WOMEN IN THE
BIBLE: CLOTHING AND HOUSING  for the type of clothes she might have
worn, and waited until Boaz had eaten a good meal - both women knew a man with a
full stomach was easier to handle. When Boaz finally lay down to sleep, Ruth
approached him where he lay on the threshing floor - someone always slept there
at night until the grain was removed, to guard against thieves. (Read Ruth
3:1-18) 

'When Boaz had eaten and drunk, and he was in a
contented mood, he went to lie down at the end of the heap of grain. Then she
came stealthily and uncovered his feet, and lay down.' 

THE MARRIAGE OF RUTH AND BOAZ (Chapter
4)

Of course, the villagers were well aware of what was happening,
as people in small towns usually are. When Boaz went next morning to the meeting
place at the gate of the town, he was met almost immediately by the official
go-el of Naomi’s family - and probably by a good many intrigued onlookers
as well.

InBabylon these families were well-treated: they were
allowed to live together, and given land. They were not forced to intermarry or
become slaves, but were respected members of the Babylonian empire. They adopted
Babylonian names, the Babylonian calendar and the Aramaic language (this was the
language that Jews such as Jesus spoke in later times). They assimilated well
into Babylonian society, but maintained their Jewish identity.

Their living conditions may have
been good, but they were faced with a theological dilemma: if they were Jahweh's
Chosen People, why had he allowed the destruction of Jerusalem and his Temple,
and the scattering of his people? What had they done to deserve the terrible
things that had happened to them? How could such an event be prevented in the
future?

Their prophets and wise men reasoned that disaster
had struck because they had not completely abandoned the fertility gods 
Asherah and Baal in favour of Yahweh as they should have - this must be why
Yahweh had given them up to their fate. It followed that if they repented,
Yahweh would forgive them. Hopefully they would be reinstated, first in his
favour, then in their homeland. With this in mind, the priests edited and
rewrote the Jewish Scriptures so that the focus was on radical monotheism, the
exclusive worship of one god - thus effecting the development of religious
thinking to this very day. 

In 538BC Cyrus the Great
of Persia issued an edict allowing the Jewish captive population to return to
Jerusalem and rebuild their Temple. This was part of an empire-wide resettlement
program, but the Jewish captives saw it as evidence that Yahweh was giving them
a second chance.

Over a period of time they returned to Jerusalem, and
then set about the task of rebuilding Jerusalem and the Temple, the Second
Temple (the first Temple had been built by Solomon). They no longer had kings to
govern them, but were led by prophets. Two of these prophets, Ezra and Nehemiah,
carried out sweeping social reforms that had a direct bearing on the lives of
many women.

WOMEN’S LIVES IN THIS
ERA

Ezra demanded that worship of the fertility gods be
completely abandoned; only Yahweh was to be worshipped. This was not as
difficult to enforce as it might previously have been. Worship of the forces of
Nature and fertility had been strongest in the northern agricultural provinces,
and the dispersal of these people by the Assyrian conquerors had led to a
decline in the popularity of the fertility religions. The problem for women was
that religion was now centered on a god whose essence was power and majesty.
This deity was a genderless spirit force, neither male nor female, but because
power and strength were seen in human terms as male attributes, the deity was
increasingly described in male terms.

Naomi decided to return to Bethlehem for the famine had
long been over and her late husband had land there, but entreated her daughters-in-law to
stay in Moab, their own country. Ruth, one of the Moabite daughters-in-law
commited herself to go with Noami and entrusted herself to the True Living God,
with an oath, "Don't urge
me to leave you or to turn back from you. Where you go I will go,and where you
stay I will stay. Your people will be my people and your God, my God. May the
Lord deal with me ever so severely, if anything but death separates you and
me", the other, Orpah decided to remain in
Moab.

Naomi would have lived a godly life in Moab for Ruth to
see the difference in worship of gods and worship of The True God. Ruth's
decision to leave Moab was a conversion from pagan gods to serve God. She showed
great unconditional loyalty and selfless love to Naomi, her mother-in-law. This
love was by the grace of God from the young widow toward her embittered
mother-in-law, for the degree of loyalty shown was very rare and her pure
devotion was extrordinary. Ruth is recoded as the most disinguished Moabite in
the Bible.

Ruth faced an unknown situation, similar to Abraham,
leaving all behind, forsaking all she had known to commit herself to God and her
future by faith, not aware of what lay ahead of her in a foreign land. She did
not seek pity and showed strong maturity of faith, greater than her
mother-in-law, Noami.

Ruth had many

Naomi returned home a bitter,
poor woman, for she had left Bethlehem a much more prosperous, happier person
than when she returned.All the city was interested in Naomi's return, for she
was well known by all. She and Ruth had no means of support so Ruth gathered
the left over grain from the harvest fields of barley for them both. The Law
of Moses requires that the poor be permitted to follow harvesters as they
gleaned. Ruth was not ashamed to gather grain among the poor and the outcast of
society nor her lowly status of work.

The owner of the field Ruth chose was Boaz, a man of great wealth, son of Salmon