Ruth & Naomi

Last week we talked about how we are redeemed in Christ. We find our redemption through the blood of Jesus that was shed on the cross. What is redemption? I think the story of Ruth and Naomi is a good starting point, but to get there we will pass through some important foundation laying scriptures.

Leviticus 25:25 says, “If one of your fellow Israelites falls into poverty and is forced to sell some family land, then a close relative should buy it back for him.” Leviticus 25:47-49 goes on to say, “Suppose a foreigner or temporary resident becomes rich while living among you. If any of your fellow Israelites fall into poverty and are forced to sell themselves to such a foreigner or to a member of his family, they still retain the right to be bought back, even after they have been purchased. They may be bought back by a brother, an uncle, or a cousin. In fact, anyone from the extended family may buy them back. They may also redeem themselves if they have prospered.”

So whoever was in the position to redeem their relative’s land or their relative from slavery was to do so based on God’s instructions in Leviticus. The Israelites were to take care of each other so they could keep the land they possessed in the family or not be enslaved to anyone as they belonged to God. The word used for “buy back”, “bought back” is the word “redeem” which is the Strongs word H1350 “gâ’al” which means in this context to redeem, to act as kinsman or to ransom. From that word comes the term “kinsman redeemer”. Whichever family member who was doing the redeeming, they would be called the kinsman redeemer.

Now to the story of Naomi. Naomi was married to her husband Elimelech and they had two sons together, Mahlon and Chilion. They left Bethlehem because of a famine that affected the land and moved to Moab. While in Moab, Elimelech died. Sometime later, the two sons married two Moabite women Orpah and Ruth. About 10 years later, both sons also died and left Naomi with no husband and no children (see Ruth 1:1-5). She lost everything in Moab. Well, almost everything.

Naomi told her two daughters in law to go back home. They sobbed and hugged it out and the two girls both didn’t want to leave, but ultimately Orpah went back home and Ruth stayed with Naomi. There is a whole blog in that alone but for now I’ll just say go read Luke 9:62 and John 6:63-69. Ruth refused to leave and in Ruth 1:16-17, she says, “…“Please don’t ask me again to leave you! I want to go with you and stay with you. Wherever you go, I will go; wherever you live, I will live. Your people will now be my people, and your God will now be my God.  Wherever you die, I will die there, too;  that’s where your people will bury me—next to you. Nothing but death itself will separate me from you, so help me God!””

Ruth goes with Naomi back to Bethlehem. Naomi is poor and instructs Ruth to go harvest leftover grain in their relative’s field. Whatever the harvesters left behind is what Ruth would collect for them to eat. Boaz sees how hard working she is and comes to know she is his relative’s daughter in law and invites her to continue collecting grain from his field and instructs his harvesters to leave some grain for her. Naomi, being the wise woman that she is, sees this as an opportunity and sets it up such that Boaz would have no other choice than to see to it that Ruth was taken care of.

Ruth 3:12-13 says and this is Boaz speaking to Ruth after Naomi (the all-time wing woman) had told Ruth what to do, “It’s true that I am a kinsman-redeemer, but you have a closer kinsman-redeemer than I. Stay here tonight,  and I will protect you. In the morning, we’ll see if he’s willing to redeem you.  If he does, good; let him. But if he refuses to redeem you, then I promise, as surely as Yahweh lives, I will. Sleep here until morning.”

Remember from Leviticus 25, in the list of redeemers it went brother, uncle, cousin then the rest of the family.So, Boaz was not reluctant to redeem Ruth, he was being respectful and waiting for the rightful redeemer to do the right thing. We find out later that they were not interested and this is how Boaz came to redeem Ruth and Naomi (see Ruth 4).

So that’s the story of how Boaz redeemed Ruth and Naomi. He managed to keep Naomi’s land in the family as she would have had to sell it to survive and managed to redeem Ruth who had been widowed with no children. She was later in the lineage of Jesus! Ok, that took a while to lay out but I hope you are starting to understand redemption if you didn’t already. We will look at how this applies to us as Christians next week!

Love and blessings,

Melissa Tsingano