Okay, so listen to this is a short Bible study on Ruth. So lesson one was an introduction to the book of Ruth. We went through all the themes and typology and generally introductory stuff. Quite meaningful.
Like remember, placement in the canon was a really big deal. It's a very theological fun discussion there. Now lesson two, we're going to just cover these four short chapters. It's entitled A Woman of Worth, just like the Bible study.
We're pulling that straight from chapter three. So it's only four short chapters, but there's a lot of beautiful stories in here. And we're going to begin here in chapter one, verse one, jumping right in for the historical context. In fact, I want to give you a lot of context, historical, geographical, theological context to the dilemma, the drama, the plot of this whole story as God is going to direct all things for the good of this family, but also for the good of Israel and all of salvation as a whole.
So chapter one, verse one begins, in the days when the judges ruled there was a famine in the land. Or we'll just stop right there here and just look at the context. All right, so the historical context, we click it's very, very clear from verse one. We talked about that link in the introduction.
This is at the time when the judges ruled Israel. So it's probably towards the end of this time where there's a period of peace, or at least there's certainly a transition of difficulty of famine. And we're going to see in verse six that famine has ended, probably a period of peace with Moab because of course this family of Alimaleq is going to go to the land of Moab and they're trying to make things work. So it is in the time of the judges probably towards the end of it in relative peace with Moab, but there's a difficulty.
If you remember the in the book of judges, you've got the cycle of sin and mercy as we discussed in that Bible study, or you've got sin, it's in servitude, supplication, salvation, a judge comes, it's in silence, right? There things seem to be good for a period of time. So we're kind of in that transitional period at some point here. And why?
Because a famine is the key term or the key indicator, a piece of evidence that were in a bad time right here. Because well, says here, there's a man in the name of Judah, of Bethlehem in Judah, Alimaleq is from this town Bethlehem. Bethlehem, you probably know, means house of bread. It is a principle location throughout this entire story.
It's really important how Bethlehem is a piece of, important real estate, times a piece of geographical significance in the period of the judges. Well, now it's like a whole story of Ruth really takes place in Bethlehem, except for this really quick little hiatus at the beginning of chapter one, where they go into Moab. So Bethlehem is really, really important. And in Moab, as mentioned here, it's really across the Jordan River.
This is where the Israelites camped, the second generation of Israelites. They camped across the Jordan River before crossing over under Joshua. Moses is going to die before he crosses over. If you remember all of that salvation history here.
So Moab is basically southeast of the Dead Sea, and really any biblical map at the back of Bibles will tell you exactly where that is. Now, the theological context is important because it says there was a famine in the land. So as I said, this is probably a period of difficulty in the period of the judges because it's also very ironic here. So Bethlehem, as I said a moment ago, means house of bread, but there's a big famine in the land.
So what gives? Why are you living in a town that's named house of bread, like the bread basket of Judah, so to speak? It would seem like this is named house of bread because of the great crops, the harvest that comes in every single year. And now there is no great crop or harvest.
There's a huge famine that takes place. And that's extremely ironic and it sets attention. Why are these people who are righteous, certainly the family of a limo leg and we see Boaz and all these characters in just one second here. Why are they being cast off to a foreign land in Moab trying to make ends meet during this famine?
And that brings us back to the Pentateuch. Really, the Pentateuch is to the Old Testament, what the Gospels are to the New Testament. It's really, really important to understand the Pentateuch. Those boring books that everyone skips over like Leviticus and Deuteronomy, they're going to give you a lot of clues as to what is going on.
So when famines show up, typically speaking, more often than not, they're because of the disobedience of the Israelites. They're breaking the covenant that they have sworn to abide by. They've sworn to observe and to uphold the terms of the covenant that they made with God at Mount Sinai and later on the ratification in Deuteronomy, Plains of Moab under Moses, all of these things, they swore to say, we're going to follow them. And if you uphold the covenant, you're going to be blessed.
If you're faithful to the terms, you're going to be blessed. Life is going to go great. But if you break the covenant, then there are curses that are unleashed. Because making a covenant is a really big deal.
It's much more than just a real estate agreement with you and your neighbors, right? You have this covenantal HOA document or something like that. It's way more significant than that because you are made family by means of this covenant that you've sworn to uphold. So when you break family bonds, there are curses that are going to be unleashed.
So having your notes, your couple of references in Leviticus and Deuteronomy, Leviticus 26, Deuteronomy 11, I just want to take a moment here and take you to Leviticus 26 verses 3 and following just to give you a sense of this. It's kind of a long chapter. And this is definitely the case in Deuteronomy 11. You could totally go to Deuteronomy, chapters 27 and onwards as well for more of this concept of blessings, for obedience, curses, for disobedience.
Go back and check out the Bible study on Deuteronomy if you want more on that. But just listen here to Leviticus 26 verse 3. It says, if you walk in my statues and observe my commandments and do them, then I will give you your reigns and their season and the land shall yield its increase and the trees of the fields shall yield their fruit and your threshing shall last in the time of vintage and the vintage shall last to the time of fore sowing. And you shall eat your bread to the full.
I find that super interesting. Remember this is Bethlehem house of bread. There's a famine. Well, again, if you are faithful, then you shall eat your bread to the full.
So that's the tension and the irony that we're seeing. It goes on and you're going to dwell on the land securely. I will get peace in the land. You shall lie down and shall make you afraid, etc.
It goes on to talk about God's blessings, especially verse 11. Let me read that. I will make my abode among you and my soul shall not abhor you. And I will walk among you.
I will be your God and you shall be my people. That's a very beautiful whole concept of God walking with his people. It's very intimate. It's very personal.
It goes all the way back to Genesis. Then Abraham walks with God and Noah walks with God and Enoch, you know, there's all kinds of people that are walking with God. It's friendship. That's the state of friendship.
You don't really take a stroll with your enemy, right? So it's a very beautiful chapter. Those are some of the highlights there. And it goes on in verses 14 and it goes on and we talk about the punishments, for disobedience and so on and so forth.
So my point here in reading Leviticus, and you can check out the various verses that explain the same thing, is that during the time of the Judges, they're disobeying God and they're breaking the covenant and the refrain in Judges is that they did what was evil inside of the Lord. They're playing the harlot. They're going after false gods. They're giving spiritual adultery, spiritual idolatry.
They're very similar concepts there. Spiritual idolatry is adultery against God because God is the bridegroom of Israel, Israel is the bride. These are really beautiful images here. So the fact that there is a fan and striking Bethlehem house of bread, again, helps us understand the theological context as well as the historical context.
You're in the period of the judges and these people are doing really bad things and so therefore the curses of the covenant are unleashed. You know, sin has catastrophic events and we don't fully understand this as human beings. It really takes revelation to understand it fully and we meditate on our whole lives. We can even see in a natural realm that there's a ripple effect, there's a domino effect to our sin.
If we do something wrong, we can see that affecting many other people, depending on what the sin might be or how bad it is or whatever. So that is the theological context here. Why is there a famine? It's not just accidental or coincidental.
It's because they're in the period of the judges where they're doing bad stuff here and then it'll get resolved in verse 6. All right, so let's move on from that. Let's keep reading. There was a certain man of Bethlehem of Judah who went to Sajorn in the country of Moab, I explained all this.
He and his wife and his two sons. The name of the man was Alimaleq and the name of his wife Naomi and the names of his two sons Ramallah and Kilean. They were Ephrathites from Bethlehem in Judah. So really quickly I'm going to make a comment here before I forget.
An Ephrathite could either be like a sub-territory in Bethlehem or it's a family clan. I think it probably refers more likely to a family clan and that will make more sense considering the fact that this whole story is describing the ancestors of King David as well as ultimately of Jesus. So Bethlehem, Ephrathah is an important, I'll talk about that at the very, very end in Micah as it relates to the Gospels. Ephrathites is a family in the territory of Bethlehem.
It goes on. They went into the country of Moab and they remained there but Alimaleq, the husband of Naomi died and she was left with her two sons. These took Moabite wives, the name of the one was Orpah, not Oprah, but Orpah. And the name of the other was Ruth and they lived there about 10 years, both Malan and Kilean died.
So the woman was bereft of her two sons and her husband. All right, this introduces the characters here. Alimaleq means, and I have his own own notes, Alimaleq means my God is King. I find that really, really interesting because to my mind that really indicates that he's an exception to the theological atmosphere in the book of Judges, right?
The religious irreverence in the book of Judges. If you go back to the epilogue in Judges 17 verse 6, there is a verse that is repeated at the end of Judges. It's an inclusio, if you remember, from that Bible study. It means that there, it says there was, in those days there was no king in Israel.
Everyone did it was right in their own eyes. Then in chapter 18, it's repeated in chapter 19, at least the first half was repeated. In those days, there was no king in Israel. And the point of this is that during the time of the Judges, they had no king, yes, in a very strictly, like earthly sense, and they didn't had no earthly ruler as king.
They're really to the point God was not their king. And this is going to be very, very clear when you get to the story of Samuel, for Samuel, chapter 8, how when they ask for a king like all the other nations, they're really rejecting God's kingship. So there's a lot to say about that when we get to 1 Samuel, chapter 8. The point is they have no king, not even God, but a limulex name means, my God is king.
So I think that might indicate that he might be a more righteous character. He's an exception to the depravities of the era. Now he is being driven out of the land because of the famine, and maybe he shouldn't have done that. Maybe you could speculate he dies in exile because he shouldn't have left.
Maybe he should have stayed. Okay, he should have stayed there in Bethlehem and trusted God. That's all speculation and interesting conversation over a pipe and a bourbon. But nevertheless, I think that you can say he probably is an exception to the whole horrible atmosphere of the book of Judges.
All right, so that's a limulex and his name means, my God is king. You're going to see, I mean, everything is significant, places and names, people's names, the names of places themselves, geography. It's so incredible to go dive deeper on this. Moving on, Naomi, Naomi's name means pleasant, or delightful, or my delight.
This concept of really just happiness, right? She's a pleasant person. And I think that indicates her character. She has a lot of love in regard for her two daughters-in-law, as we're going to see him a little bit and certainly for Naomi, we're going to see there's a little attention about her name as well, and he's open in this opening verses of chapter one.
She means pleasant in my delight, but that's not how she feels. That's not how she sees her situation, and we'll get there. Ruth, Ruth herself means friendship, or she who comforts or comforting. I like friendship, friendship is what you'll find a lot in commentaries.
I think that certainly indicates her character. She is definitely a friend for sure to Naomi. She's loyal and faithful to Naomi. As her daughter-in-law, as her friend, I think that indicates how others perceive her.
The whole town, I call her a woman of worth, she's very friendly, she's very amicable, she's very comforting. She comforts mother-in-law, she comforts Naomi and Naomi's bitterness. So certainly Ruth is a great name for this character. I also think in my personal opinion, the fact that she names her name means friendship, and she is kind of the link between Jew and Gentile.
Right? Boaz later on is a Jew from Judah, and they get married, and then their descendants are the ancestors of King David. The very fact that you have Jew and Gentile marrying like that indicates, again, this concept of friendship. This is going to be a big theme, the New Testament and Paul's epistles, the fact that we are all members of the body of Christ, Jew and Gentile, Jew first, but also Gentile.
And I like that as well, if you're going to think of this in terms of the larger theological and typological context, Ruth binds Jew and Gentile in her own personal story into a friendship, right? Ultimately marriage, I'm wearing with Boaz. I think that's really cool. So Orpa, that is the other daughter-in-law, we'll read that in just a moment here.
That means back of the neck or she who turns her back, that indicates, I think, her lack of loyalty, she's going to return to her gods and her people and her culture, and that's going to be very negative. So Orpa means like she returns her back very indicative of what happens with her. Their sons Malon means pain, achillion means destruction, and that indicates their untimely deaths. They die there in exile, unfortunately, childless.
And so their names are indicative of their story as well. So let's read on then. There's the cast of characters. You see that the names all mean something, very significant for the story.
Let's keep reading on here in verse six. Actually, no, time out. I want to make one more quick point here, a typological point of the fact that this family goes off into exile, that then there's death, and then they're coming back from exile. It's been 10 years, 10 is an important number in general, but also in the story.
They're in exile for 10 years. So you read the details, clearly, a limulec in the family go out, then he dies. And then it seems like 10 years go by, or at least the bulk of 10 years go by, where it's just Naomi and her sons and then her daughters in law. And then all this time goes by and is still no child, right?
There might be an indication here of infertility going on. And I think that's significant because a big part of this whole story, as I'm going to explain to you, is the line going to continue. Is a limulex line going to be snuffed out now that he and his sons are dead with no children? What's happening here?
Why do they not have any children during the 10 years that they were abroad? Is it that they were infertile? And then you're going to see that God is the author of life and he directs all things, which is really beautiful. Now, but before I keep reading here, I almost forgot this point.
But in your notes, I really want to share this other typological point here that if you look at the fact that a limulec and their sons and of course Naomi, they go off into exile, you've got the extinction of his line, they have no children like I'm saying, and God's going to protect them and bring them back. That to me, when I read this, this isn't in your commentaries, but I reflect and pray about this. That sounds very familiar. It's another one of those deja moments when you're reading scripture like, wait a minute, I've read about this before, or in this case, it's foreshadowing of an event that's going to happen later on, because the whole story of Israel later on is going to experience this very thing.
Now, you think about it, go all the way to the period of the divided kingdom where the north and the south, they split into the respective kingdoms and time goes on and there's a lot of sin in the kingdoms and ultimately God brings destruction upon them and through the Assyrians first and then later on the Babylonians come in and then they exile the Israelites. The kingdom of the north, I want to get into all this history really quickly, but to summarize the kingdom of the north is pretty much squashed entirely for the most part. But in the south, when Nebuchadnezzar comes through town and squishes the city, there is hope that there's going to be a return. That's what's happening.
So God's people, the Israelites, there's the righteous like Ezekiel and Daniel, they're hauled off in exile and there's a bunch of other righteous people for sure who would be hauled off along with the unrighteous. They're exiled into Babylon and into these foreign lands because of the unrighteousness and the inability to repent, the impenetence, they're hauled off into exile for their sin. And then he died in exile, absolutely. And that's this indication of Elemolek and his sons.
They die in exile, but then God is going to visit his people and bring them back that happens with King Cyrus, if you remember the story. There is a remnant, a faithful remnant that returns back to the land. God visiting his people is found here in verse 6, I have to read it in just a moment here, but God visits his people and the famine ends. So that's Exodus language, we'll talk about that here in a second as well.
God visits his people, the faithful return, that is symbolized by Naomi and Ruth who return to the land. But the whole people of Israel, if I'm going back and forth in these parallels, but the whole people of Israel, when they return from Babylon, there's a problem of fear of the extinct line of David. The king of Judah, the descendant of David was killed by Nebuchadnezzar. Rather he actually should say the princes were killed, Zedekiah, his eyes were gouged out and he's hauled off in exile.
But the line was just snuffed out. When they returned from Babylon, there was no king. And so there's this expectation, like, how is God going to take care of us? Will the descendant of David come back?
Well, that, my friend, is exactly what we're seeing here with Olemolek and his two sons dying. You have this expectation, like, well, or this hope for the new line continuing. Well, how is Olemolek's line going to continue? And it just so happens that this particular line of Olemolek is going to be the royal line leading up to David.
So I hope that makes sense here. Like you see the story of Olemolek's family going off into exile and dying there in exile, then Naomi Ruth coming back and the expectation for a child, that's the story of Israel, that's salvation history and miniature going on right there. And then the fact that Ruth herself is a Gentile and she's incorporated into the people of God. And the fact that her son, Obed, so Boaz and Ruth, and the spoiler alert here, Boaz and Ruth have a son, Obed, but Naomi actually adopts the child as her own.
So he's the continuation of Olemolek's line, but that Obed is not related to Naomi by blood in any way, either through Ruth or through Obed. That, to me, really indicates the future incorporation of all the Gentiles into the people of God, into Israel. What Paul will say is the grafting onto the branch. The Gentiles are grafted onto the branch.
They're adopted children through Israel. So it's really cool. I always encourage my students to read these things. It's more than just a story.
There are deeper things that play even what you would think are the most insignificant details of what's happening. This is exile and this is return. And ultimately, this is what I'm going to say. It's new Exodus.
It's a re-gathering of God's people to come back into the land. That was what the return from Babylon was all about. And that's what we're seeing is taking place here with Naomi and Ruth. All right.
So I hope that wasn't too confusing going back and forth, but that is the fantastic foreshadowing of what's happening in God's people. And then it's ultimately going to be completely fulfilled with Christ and the incorporation of the Gentiles. All right. So now let's move on and read verse six.