The Kinsman Who Bought Her Back

In the days when judges like Samson led Israel, the rain stopped falling on Bethlehem. (Bethlehem means "house of bread," and now the house of bread had none.)

So Elimelech took his wife, Naomi, and their two sons to the country of Moab. There Elimelech died. The sons married Moabite women, Orpah and Ruth, and ten years later both sons died too.

When Naomi heard the LORD had sent bread to Bethlehem again, she started home. On the road she told the young women, "Go back to your mothers. May the LORD be kind to you, as you were kind to my sons and to me."

Orpah cried, kissed her, and went. Ruth held on tight.

"Where you go, I will go," Ruth said. "Your people will be my people, and your God will be my God. Where you die, I will die, and there I will be buried."

In Bethlehem Naomi told everyone, "Call me Mara, which means bitter. The LORD has brought me back empty." (She said this with Ruth standing right beside her.)

It was barley harvest. God's law told farmers to leave fallen grain for the poor and for foreigners, so Ruth went to pick it up. As it happened, she came to the field of Boaz, a rich relative of Elimelech. (It looked like luck. It was God.)

"The LORD be with you!" Boaz called to his workers.

"The LORD bless you!" they called back.

Then he spotted Ruth. "Stay in my field. You are safe here."

Ruth bowed to the ground. "Why are you so kind to me? I'm a foreigner!"

"I have heard what you did for Naomi," said Boaz. "May the LORD reward you. You have come to rest under his wings." Then he whispered to his workers, "Drop some extra for her on purpose."

That night Ruth staggered home with so much barley that Naomi's eyes went wide. "Boaz?" cried Naomi. "He is one of our redeemers!" A redeemer was a close relative who could buy back a poor family's lost land and take care of a widow.

When harvest ended, Ruth asked Boaz plainly to be her redeemer and marry her. Boaz said yes, but a closer relative had to be asked first.

Boaz sat at the town gate with ten leaders until the closer relative walked by. "Will you buy back Elimelech's land?"

"I will!"

"Then you must marry Ruth too."

"Oh. Then I can't," the man said. "You do it." He pulled off his sandal and handed it to Boaz. (In Israel, that sealed the deal.)

"We are witnesses!" shouted the leaders.

Boaz married Ruth, and the LORD gave them a son, Obed. The women crowded around Naomi. "Praise the LORD, who has given you a redeemer today! Ruth loves you, and she is better to you than seven sons." Obed grew up to be the grandfather of King David.

Boaz could buy back a field and give a widow a home. He could not bring Elimelech or his sons back from the dead, and one day Boaz died too.

Later the prophets promised a king from David's family, born in Bethlehem.

At last, near those same barley fields, another baby of Ruth's family was born. He would buy back people from every country, foreigners like Ruth included. Nobody made him pay. He chose to, and the price was his own life on a cross. On the third day he rose.

He is Jesus, and what the women of Bethlehem said over baby Obed is now true for the whole world: the LORD has given us a Redeemer.