16 But Ruth replied, “Don’t urge me to leave you or to turn back from you. Where you go I will go, and where you stay I will stay. Your people will be my people and your God my God. 17 Where you die I will die, and there I will be buried. May the Lord deal with me, be it ever so severely, if even death separates you and me.” 18 When Naomi realized that Ruth was determined to go with her, she stopped urging her.
Here is a really important lesson in how to read sacred stories.
As we’ve read straight through the Bible until now, we’ve been given a whole lot of warning against intermarriage with foreigners as a cause of Israel’s insecurity, vexing, etc. This was especially true in the last three books Deuteronomy, Joshua, and Judges. Samson’s life became a byword of what could happen if you fool around with foreigners. And even Moses didn’t get off Scott-free; and, of course, he never made it to the Promised Land.
How surprising it is then that after all those warnings, we suddenly turn the page and begin a new book called Ruth where an Israelite not only marries a foreign Moabite woman, but then when her husband died, the Moabite acts with complete loyalty to her Israelite mother-in-law, goes with her back to Israel to care for her, ends up marrying yet another Israelite and gives birth to a son who gives birth to a son who gives birth to David, the eventual king of Israel.
The book of Ruth is a minority report. It is a protest against against all the prejudice found in other books, and it too is sacred Scripture.
The Bible does not always speak with one voice on all matters — even important ones. It is a like a library with lots of books and authors, some of whom are quibbling or even arguing with one another. And whoever wrote Ruth is doing just that: putting forth a dissenting opinion, and reminding the nation that though its leaders are intolerant of other nations and literally building a wall to keep them out (that’s in Ezra and Nehemiah, the same time when Ruth is thought to have been written) there was a little shepherd boy born of Moabite ancestry named David who turned out to be a pretty important part of the nation’s history.
Oh, and yes, in the lineage, not only did David come from that Moabite woman, but so too did Jesus.
A minority report which makes a major, major case for looking at the world a whole lot differently . . .
NOTE: We’re reading the Bible straight through. Tomorrow we will begin the monarchical stories, starting with 1 Samuel chapters 1-3.
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