Today's Daily Lesson comes from Ruth chapter 2 verses 8 through 13:
8 Then Boaz said to Ruth, “Now, listen, my daughter, do not go to glean in another field or leave this one, but keep close to my young women. 9 Let your eyes be on the field that they are reaping, and go after them. Have I not charged the young men not to touch you? And when you are thirsty, go to the vessels and drink what the young men have drawn.” 10 Then she fell on her face, bowing to the ground, and said to him, “Why have I found favor in your eyes, that you should take notice of me, since I am a foreigner?” 11 But Boaz answered her, “All that you have done for your mother-in-law since the death of your husband has been fully told to me, and how you left your father and mother and your native land and came to a people that you did not know before. 12 The Lordrepay you for what you have done, and a full reward be given you by the Lord, the God of Israel, under whose wings you have come to take refuge!” 13 Then she said, “I have found favor in your eyes, my lord, for you have comforted me and spoken kindly to your servant, though I am not one of your servants.”
The Book of Ruth is a dissenting opinion.
In the days of Ezra and Nehemiah and all the Israelites who were returning once more to Israel from their exile in Babylon and seeking to rebuild yet again the walls of the Temple, the people were instructed to drive out all the foreigners from among the people and the land. Using overly-rigid and even xenophobic laws found in the Scriptures, the leaders issued their decree. All the foreigners were to be cast out. And families were to be split apart. Anyone who had mixed marriages or mixed children would be forced to make a decision. Family or nation? On the day the issue was decreed it rained for hours. Some saw this rain as a holy cleansing of the land and its people; others saw it as God crying.
Whoever wrote the book of Ruth would have been in the latter camp. Scholars tell us the book was written at the same time as were the books of Ezra and Nehemiah -- those which told and apparently approved of the purging. But whoever wrote Ruth was seeing all that was going on in the nation and did not approve. So he or she set out to tell a different story -- even a differing story.
The author of Ruth remembered from the history how there was a man named Boaz who had once married his cousin's Naomi's daughter-in-law after Naomi's son and the woman's husband had died. The woman's name was Ruth and she was a foreigner -- a Moabite woman. Yet in spite of that and in spite of what the harsh laws of the Scriptures said about it, Boaz married her anyways. And together Boaz and Ruth had a son named Obed who then had a son named Jesse who himself had a son named David who grew up to be King David, the greatest leader in all the history of the nation, and all because Boaz married a foreign woman and did not dismiss her.
So there it is, the book of Ruth -- a dissenting opinion.
May those with ears to hear let them hear.
Artwork:
Poussin, Nicolas, 1594?-1665. Summer, or, Ruth and Boaz, from Art in the Christian Tradition, a project of the Vanderbilt Divinity Library, Nashville, TN. http://diglib.library.vanderbilt.edu/act-imagelink.pl?RC=54182 [retrieved February 22, 2017]. Original source: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Nicolas_Poussin_043.jpg.
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