On Ruth

I want to close this portion of my blog with a look at cordial consent through a study of the book of Ruth. One of the shorter books of the Bible at only four chapters, it yet illustrates the consent of God to man (and woman) in a very profound way. I strongly recommend reading it; I’ll try to summarize it somewhat here, commenting along the way, but the whole thing deserves to be read.

Ruth opens quite succinctly; there’s a famine in the land, and a man from Bethlehem in Judah – with his wife Naomi and two sons – move to Moab. The man dies, and after marrying two Moabite women, the sons die as well. In just five verses, Naomi is bereft of husband and sons, and left with two daughters-in-law, Ruth and Orpah.

The next section begins by saying that the Lord had come to the aid of the Israelites by providing food. (So often we overlook such common providence, despite being told again and again that all good things come from God.) Naomi decides to go back to her country, since nothing is left for her in Moab. She urges her daughters-in-law to return to their country and, after some resistance, Orpah decides to stay in Moab. But, it says in verse 14, Ruth clung to her.

Here, an interesting several statements are made. First, in verse 15, Naomi says to Ruth: “Look...your sister-in-law is going back to her people and her gods” (italics mine). But Ruth replies in verse 16: “Your people will be my people and your God my God” (italics mine, again). We don’t have a clear picture how much of Israel’s God Ruth knew about, and frequently in the Old Testament we have people acknowledging God almost arbitrarily. Often, in cultures then, new gods were nothing new. As Paul notes in Corinth in the New Testament, the people had a temple to an unknown god, just in case there was one they were missing out of their myriad gods. So it is uncertain, given the text, whether Ruth clung to Naomi for Naomi’s sake, or whether she truly believed in God. But there is a further statement in verse 17 that we see often in the Old Testament; Ruth says: “May the LORD deal with me, be it ever so severely...” But once again, this is a very common oath, and is sometimes used by those whose hearts are far from God. In 1 Kings 19:2, for instance, Jezebel makes the oath of her gods dealing with her if she does not kill Elijah. (According to biblegateway.com, Ruth is actually the first instance of this oath, which is interesting.) What seems most important, however, is that we have – not only in the book of Ruth, but the fact that Ruth is even a book in the Old Testament – someone who is not from Israel coming to believe in Israel’s God -- and, to jump ahead a little, not only believing in Him, but being blessed by Him. This is significant, because God is commonly in the Old Testament called the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob – that is, the God of Israel. There was a common belief that God only dealt with Israel, had chosen them as His people, and that others could not come to God without conforming to Mosaic Law.

However, it is after returning to Bethlehem that we begin to see God’s cordial consent to Ruth, a Moabite. By chance, as the text says, Ruth finds herself gleaning in the fields of a relative of Naomi’s. From the start, when seeing Ruth work, this man – named Boaz – orders his men to look after her. Boaz himself tells Ruth to glean only in his fields, and the he will do well by her. It may be easy to see this as Boaz’ consent to Ruth, but lest we forget, Boaz is a man directed by God. His introduction is by saying “The LORD be with you!” to his harvesters (Ruth 2:4). He further blesses her, in verse 12, asking God to repay her for the kindness of keeping with her mother-in-law, Naomi.

Throughout the book, roughly nine times, the LORD is invoked to give blessings, or is shown to give blessings – whether directly or indirectly through others. The ultimate blessing, it may be argued, is Ruth’s inclusion in the line of David, which is the line of Jesus. (As an aside, I’ve always found it interesting that the line of Joseph, Mary’s husband, is the line which is traced – even though Joseph had nothing to do with the conception of Jesus.) Ruth’s great-grandson would be David himself – all because she did not return to her people and her gods, but chose – whether with full heart or half – to make Naomi’s God her God. I may perhaps be biased toward Ruth’s half-knowledge of God, because I do not want to make it seem that Ruth had to act first, and only then did God bless her. So may we instead keep in mind that people make real choices, and the right choices will lead to blessings, while wrong choices lead to pain. But even these wrong choices may be redeemed; Naomi did not retrieve her sons or husband, and that loss would be with her the rest of her life. But after Ruth had conceived, the people declare “Naomi has a son!” (Ruth 4:17) Truly an interesting statement, since we would say Ruth has been given a son. But the point, I believe, is that God has redeemed Naomi from her state of despair, because of her faithfulness to put herself and her daughter-in-law in the way of God’s blessings.

So let me close this chapter with this: Put yourself in the way of God’s blessings. As Annie Dillard says, beauty happens whether we will it or not, and all we can do is put ourselves in beauty’s way. Edwards defines beauty as cordial consent; put together, then, we put ourselves in the way of God’s consent, and we consent as well. The rain falls on the righteous as well as the unrighteous, and the sun shines on both, too. The question is, do we seek the sun? God is in the work of beautifying, as Edwards says; by His presence, He makes beautiful. How can we not believe, then, that by putting ourselves in His presence, He will not make us beautiful? And this is most beautiful, so let me state it plainly: We will suffer, as long as we live and breathe in this world. This is so critical to understand that seeking God’s presence does not mean there is no longer pain in our lives. But without His presence, the best we can do is to try to ignore the hurt. And when we seek God’s presence, He will not rewrite history so that the pain never happened, but he will make beautiful the stain left on our hearts. Oh, what hope we can have in the LORD! Just as, when we do the dishes, we do not make it as if the dish was never dirty; but we redeem the dish, cleansing it of food so that it is sparkling and clean once more. So may be our lives, when we seek the Light of the Son.

Amen, Lord; may it be so.