Ruth--Grafted In

(I originally wrote and posted this to my previous blog on 03/08/2007.)

Reading: Ruth 1 & 2

Rth 1:16 But Ruth said, "Do not urge me to leave you, or to go back from following after you. For wherever you go, I go; and wherever you stop over, I stop over. Your people is my people, and your Elohim is my Elohim.
Rth 1:17 "Where you die, I die, and there I shall be buried. יהוה do so to me, and more also - for death itself parts you and me."

These lines have been popular for use in wedding vows, and because of that, for a long time I thought it was actually a case of a woman speaking to the man she loved! As I actually read the book of Ruth, I discovered it was a daughter-in-law speaking to her mother-in-law. Wow! What a special woman Naomi must have been! And Ruth's devotion was amazing as well.

When Naomi and Ruth, both widows, returned to Naomi's hometown, Beyth Lechem (Bethlehem), it could not have been easy to put food on the table. Ruth goes out to glean in the barley fields, so we know that this was in the spring around the time of Pesach (Passover). There, she finds favor with Boaz, the owner of the field, who makes sure she is watched over and that his workers leave plenty of barley for her to pick up.
Ruth is an excellent example of how a gentile is grafted into Yisra'el. In the 10 years that Ruth was part of Naomi's family before they left Mo'ab, she must have learned a lot about YHWH and His Torah, so much so that she insisted on accompanying Naomi to her homeland rather than going back to her no doubt idolatrous family in Mo'ab. So she became a true Yisra'elite living by every word from the mouth of YHWH. Even so, she was still in need of a Redeemer..... (to be continued).