The Kinsman Who Bought Her Back

Once there was a woman named Ruth, and Ruth had lost almost everything.

Her husband had died. Her old home was far, far away. She belonged to a different people, in a different land, and when she walked into the little town of Bethlehem, no one there was hers. No husband, no children, no field of her own, and no name that anyone would stand up and fight for.

This was long ago, in the days when the judges led Israel, when God's people were waiting for better days, and no one in Bethlehem knew that better days were about to walk in through the gate. God's people were waiting for better days, and no one in Bethlehem knew that better days were about to walk in through the gate.

Ruth was empty, the kind of empty you feel when you look around a room and know that not one single person in it is waiting for you.

She had come because of love. She would not leave her husband's old mother, Naomi, all alone. "Where you go, I will go," Ruth told her. "Your people will be my people." So she came to a town that was not her town, to be poor in a place that did not know her face.

Now, that town had a kindness built right into it. When a family fell, when a woman was left empty, a kinsman, a close relative, could step in to pay what was owed, buy back the land that was lost, and take the empty one and make her family again.

They called him the redeemer. The one who buys you back.

But who would do that for Ruth? She was a stranger and a poor one, and she had no claim on anybody.

There was a man named Boaz.

He saw Ruth out in his field, picking up the bits of grain the workers dropped. He saw her, and his heart bent down toward her, the way a strong man bends to lift a small, tired thing. He told his workers to leave extra for her. He told her, "Don't be afraid. You have a place here." And the foreign, empty woman felt something she had not felt in so long. She felt safe.

Then Boaz did something costly.

He stood up in front of the whole town, in front of all the important men at the gate, and declared it: I will be her redeemer. I will pay the price. I will take what was lost and buy it back, and I will make Ruth my own.

He didn't have to. No one made him. He chose her when she had nothing to give him back. He paid out his own riches to make the empty one full, and he made the foreigner his family, and he loved the unwanted one as his own beloved.

So Ruth came home. A husband claimed her, a baby soon slept in her arms, and a whole town knew her name. The empty woman was empty no longer.

They named the baby Obed, and Obed grew up and had children, and his children had children, and far down that family line, in that very town of Bethlehem, another Baby would be born. He would be a greater Redeemer than Boaz ever was.

Because there is Someone who saw you when you were far off and empty and sure that no one's job was to claim you. And He stood up and said, I will pay the price. I will buy them back. I will make them Mine.

Boaz spent his gold to buy Ruth back. Jesus would spend Himself.

And it all began in a barley field in Bethlehem, where a strong man saw an empty stranger and chose to bring her home.