The Book of Ruth David Gooding A Myrtlefield House transcript www.myrtlefieldhouse.com Contents 1 The Structure of the Book of Ruth 3 2 Four Possible Ways of Applying the Story of Ruth 14 3 Naomi as a Prototype of the Nation of Israel 24 Appendix: Outline of the Book of Ruth 35 David Gooding has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as Author of this work. Copyright © The Myrtlefield Trust, 2018 Unless otherwise indicated, all Scripture quotations are from the ESV® Bible (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version®), copyright © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved. Sometimes Dr Gooding gives his own translations or paraphrases. This text has been edited from a transcript of three talks given by David Gooding at Broadway Hall, Belfast, N. Ireland in December 1993. All rights reserved. Permission is granted to reproduce this document in its entirety, or in unaltered excerpts, for personal and church use only as long as you do not charge a fee. You must not reproduce it on any Internet site. Permission must be obtained if you wish to reproduce it in any other context, translate it, or publish it in any format. Published by The Myrtlefield Trust PO Box 2216 Belfast BT1 9YR w: www.myrtlefieldhouse.com e: [email protected] Myrtlefield catalogue no: rth.001/dw 1 The Structure of the Book of Ruth Thank you for the stimulus of suggesting to me that I join you in a study of the book of Ruth. I’m well aware that you have not asked me to study it with you because you do not know the book of Ruth. It is rather the reverse: all of you are absolute experts on the book of Ruth, knowing it from end to end and loving every syllable of it! What you wish me to do, I’m sure, is to provoke you by calling to mind the things that you have known in the past and enjoyed. The book of Ruth is one of the best known and best loved books in the whole of the Old Testament, for various reasons. It is, in the first place, a delightful love story, and all the more delightful because of its purity. Since the story of Ruth is set historically in the context of the book of Judges, the love story that Ruth presents stands in vivid contrast to the dark and lurid scenes at the end of the book of Judges, and makes the story of Ruth and Boaz a delightful, if not romantic, story of healthy human love and family life. If in the course of my contributions to these talks I don’t stress the romantic side of the story too much, I’m sure you will understand and not be disappointed. Had you wished a speaker to stress the romantic side of it, you would have invited another speaker! Actually the story of Ruth’s marriage to Boaz doesn’t turn out to be quite as romantic in our modern sense of the term, as we shall see. In the second place, the book is not about Ruth. What it is about, we shall now see as we read from the beginning and then from the end of the book. Ruth and Boaz are certainly the key figures in the action of the book, all turns on them, but the book is not about Ruth and Boaz. We now see the subject matter of the book as we begin to read: In the days when the judges ruled there was a famine in the land, and a man of Bethlehem in Judah went to sojourn in the country of Moab, he and his wife and his two sons. The name of the man was Elimelech and the name of his wife Naomi, and the names of his two sons were Mahlon and Chilion. They were Ephrathites from Bethlehem in Judah. They went into the country of Moab and remained there. But Elimelech, the husband of Naomi, died, and she was left with her two sons. These took Moabite wives; the name of one was Orpah and the name of the other Ruth. They lived there about ten years, and both Mahlon and Chilion died, so that the woman was left without her two sons and her husband. Then she arose with her daughters-in-law to return from the country of Moab . But Naomi said, ‘Turn back, my daughters; why will you go with me? Have I yet sons in my womb that they may become your husbands? Turn back, my daughters; go your way, for I am too old to have a husband. If I should say I have hope, even if I should have a husband this night and should bear sons, would you therefore wait till they were grown? Would you therefore refrain from marrying? No, my daughters, for it is exceedingly bitter to me for your sake that the hand of the LORD has The Book of Ruth Page | 4 gone out against me.’ Then they lifted up their voices and wept again. And Orpah kissed her mother-in-law, but Ruth clung to her. And she said, ‘See, your sister-in-law has gone back to her people and to her gods; return after your sister-in-law.’ But Ruth said, ‘Do not urge me to leave you or to return from following you. For where you go I will go, and where you lodge I will lodge. Your people shall be my people, and your God my God. Where you die I will die, and there will I be buried. May the LORD do so to me and more also if anything but death parts me from you.’ And when Naomi saw that she was determined to go with her, she said no more. So the two of them went on until they came to Bethlehem. And when they came to Bethlehem, the whole town was stirred because of them. And the women said, ‘Is this Naomi?’ She said to them, ‘Do not call me Naomi; call me Mara, for the Almighty has dealt very bitterly with me. I went away full, and the LORD has brought me back empty. Why call me Naomi, when the LORD has testified against me and the Almighty has brought calamity upon me?’ So Naomi returned, and Ruth the Moabite her daughter-in-law with her, who returned from the country of Moab. And they came to Bethlehem at the beginning of barley harvest. (1:1–6, 11– 22) We have read from the beginning of the action of this wonderful story. Now let’s read its conclusion, the end to which all the action is designed and directed. So Boaz took Ruth, and she became his wife. And he went in to her, and the LORD gave her conception, and she bore a son. Then the women said to Naomi, ‘Blessed be the LORD, who has not left you this day without a redeemer, and may his name be renowned in Israel! He shall be to you a restorer of life and a nourisher of your old age, for your daughter-in-law who loves you, who is more to you than seven sons, has given birth to him.’ Then Naomi took the child and laid him on her lap and became his nurse. And the women of the neighbourhood gave him a name, saying, ‘A son has been born to Naomi.’ They named him Obed. He was the father of Jesse, the father of David. (4:13–17) Naomi And so it is that the book of Ruth is, strictly speaking, not about Ruth. I say again, Ruth and Boaz together are the key persons in the action of this story, but the story is about not them; it is about Naomi. You see that from the very beginning. How the story is introduced: there was this man, Elimelech, who had a wife and two sons, and when there came a famine in the land he went down to sojourn in the land of Moab. And he died, says the narrative, moving very swiftly without filling in any more details, and concentrating on what is the chief element at this stage in the story. He died and Naomi his wife was left. Meanwhile, the boys had married two Moabite girls and then they also died, apparently both of them childless. So now, says the historian, the woman was left of her sons and her husband. That is the point the story writer wants to get to. A woman, now in middle life and perhaps beyond, who had had to uproot home and go with her husband and her sons to Moab because of the famine that had come upon her village. She is trying to make a new life for herself in that foreign country when the first disaster comes on her, the death of her husband, and she’s left a widow. And then to her horror her two sons successively die The Book of Ruth Page | 5 without children and she is completely desolate, left only with her daughters-in-law. What to do? She hears news that the Lord has visited her people back in Bethlehem, giving them bread. So she decides to uproot herself once more and go back to Bethlehem. At the beginning her daughters-in-law follow her but then, with all realism, Naomi turns to dissuade them. Listen to the woman talking to her daughters-in-law: the conversation is told at great length.