Ruth – Gentile Bride

Download the notes Jesus the Redeemer in Ruth

“I have also spo­ken by the prophets, and I have mul­ti­plied visions, and used simil­i­tudes, by the min­istry of the prophets.” (Hosea 12:10) As the Bere­ans did, check the fol­low­ing out for your­self. (Acts 17:11)

For what­ever was writ­ten in ear­lier times was writ­ten for our instruc­tion, that through per­se­ver­ance and the encour­age­ment of the Scrip­tures we might have hope. (Rom 15:4)

This arti­cle will explore the story of Ruth. The Jews read this story each Pen­te­cost but the prophetic mean­ing is lost on them. Ruth has huge mean­ing for the Chris­t­ian Church. Like the story of Rebecca,  the role of the gen­tile bride of the com­ing Mes­siah was always tucked away in the scrip­tures. Ruth was a ref­er­ence Peter and Paul would have drawn their the­ol­ogy from.

Prophetic Roles or mod­els or Types. Naomi is a type Israel dur­ing the Dias­pora. Ruth is a Gen­tile bride of the Kins­man Redeemer. He is the cen­tral Char­ac­ter and is also called the Lord of the Harvest.

Ruth the Moabite joins the tribe of Judah, through an act of kind­ness, and she becomes the great-grandmother of David, the king of Israel.

Esther and Ruth are the only two books named after women.   One is a lowly gen­tile join­ing Israel and the other an royal Israelite in a gen­tile land. There are four women in the linage of Jesus and the royal line of Matthew’s geneal­ogy.  Tamar,  Rahab mother of Boaz,  Ruth and Bathsheba,  all of ques­tion­able moral status.

In rhetoric Ruth is very impor­tant — Boaz and Naomi – the older gen­er­a­tion – Speak in the archaic Hebrew. Ruth speaks in a more mod­ern ver­sion. The book is a mas­ter­piece of Hebrew literature.

Ruth is posi­tioned between Song of Songs and Lamen­ta­tions in the Tanakh.

Since Song of Songs is a love song between God and His peo­ple, while  Lamen­ta­tions  is a lament over the lack of love between His  peo­ple and their God.  The posi­tion of Ruth alludes to the con­nec­tion that con­nects the lack of love to whole­hearted love.

The name Ruth means “friend  or pleas­ant com­pan­ion.” Ruth is a Love story – The love of Ruth for Naomi and the love of Boaz for Ruth.  God mod­els His love and His Redemp­tion of us in this drama.  A major theme of the Book of Ruth is that of the kinsman-redeemer.  Boaz, a rel­a­tive of Ruth on her husband’s side, acted upon his duty as out­lined in the Mosaic Law to redeem an impov­er­ished rel­a­tive from his or her cir­cum­stances.  Lev 25 v79– 49 Boaz can be viewed as a type of Christ in a seven-fold aspect: Lord of the Har­vest, The Near Kins­man, The Sup­plier of Wants, The Redeemer of the Inher­i­tance, The Man Who Gives Rest, The Wealthy Kins­man, and The Bridegroom.

The mar­riage of Boaz and Ruth was of a type known as a levirate mar­riage .

More­over, the Israelites under­stand­ing of redemp­tion included both that of peo­ple and of land. In Israel land had to stay in the fam­ily. The fam­ily could mort­gage the land to ward off poverty; and the law of required a kins­man to pur­chase it back into the fam­ily. Boaz becomes Ruth and Naomi’s “kinsman-redeemer.”