Chapter 3: The Final Turning Point In chapter 2 Samuel gives the account of Boaz and Ruth’s first meeting. In chapter 3 the reader discovers the couple’s second meeting, the most pivotal circumstance of the whole story. Like the meeting in chapter 2, this is not a mere chance encounter; this meeting is divinely arranged. […]
The Levirate Laws The book of Ruth is one of the places in the Bible where the levirate laws find their fullest expression. In fact, readers can see the levirate laws in action throughout the whole story. Ruth’s story, however, has so many interesting twists and turns that readers really need to view her story […]
Perhaps you have heard of a heart-warming story about a family so deeply in debt that it would never be able to pay its way out. Then out of nowhere a philanthropist comes along, pays the debt, and delivers them in a way that they could have never delivered themselves. There is a very popular […]
The story of Ruth concludes with a genealogy—but why? “Why end this beautiful story with a family tree, a piece of dusty historical information about long-dead people?”1 Samuel moves the reader from famine to harvest, from faithlessness to faithfulness, from widowhood to marriage, from barrenness to fruitfulness, and ultimately from death to life. In this […]