Smoodock's Blog

Jacob had given the royal line to Judah, saying “…the scepter shall not depart from Judah, nor a lawgiver from between his feet, until Shiloh comes…” (Genesis 49:10). In other words, the blessing of the royal line culminates in the Messiah, but it doesn’t get to him without a great number of twists, contradictions and failures on the part of those who lived before him. The Messiah would embrace it all, all its failures to submit to God, all its twists and mixing with what the Lord had cursed and forbade them to be a part of, and all of its contradictions that brought them far away from God.

Instead of ruling the people in the name of the Lord, the royal line ultimately led the people away from him, coveting the fruit of the vine of the Lord, they stole it for themselves. Yet, in the end, man’s rebellion finds its way not away from God, but falling into the arms of the Lord and embraced by the Messiah, who ultimately accepts it all, forgives it all, and changes it all into something holy and desirable to the Lord.

In my previous two studies, we’ve seen that Matthew seems to be highlighting some kind of sexual impropriety in the lineage of the royal line that comes to David and ultimately to the Messiah. Tamar seduced her father-in-law by dressing up as a seductive harlot and produced a mamzer, Hebrew for bastard, and the royal line to David continues from Perez, the son of Judah trough his daughter-in-law by an illicit union. Next, we have the royal line coming through a harlot, Rahab, whose offerings, according to the Law, are unacceptable (Deuteronomy 23:18), and, according to Josephus, the Jewish historian of the first century AD, this included her children.[1] Yet, David became king despite such controversial and contradictory events.

When we come to Boaz in David’s ancestry (Matthew 1:5), we are introduced to another woman, Ruth, a Moabitess (Ruth 1:4). According to the Law, Israel was forbidden to have relations with Moabites (Deuteronomy 23:3; Nehemiah 13:1), yet we cannot come to David, the king, without coming through Boaz and Ruth. So, how was this done?

The Book of Ruth, chronicles the life of Naomi and Ruth. Naomi, her husband and her two sons were Jews, but left Israel to dwell in Moab due to a famine that struck Bethlehem-Judah where they were from, but while they were in Moab, Naomi lost both her husband and her sons, but not before her sons married two Moabite women, Orpha and Ruth (Ruth 1:1-5). Naomi decided to return to Israel, where she could depend upon the charity of the Law for her sustenance, for she had nothing in Moab, where she could gain a living. She convinced Orpha to return to her father, where she would be cared for, but Ruth clung to her mother-in-law, promising never to leave her, saying she would go with her to live in her country, and Naomi’s people would be her people, and the God of Israel would be her God, and nothing but death would ever separate them (Ruth 1:16-17).

The scene seems to depict the account of Adam and Eve in the Garden. They left because they thought they could do better on their own, without God. When famine struck Bethlehem, Naomi and her family left Israel, the Garden of God, to find sustenance in Moab, whom the Lord cursed. Eventually, all was lost and Naomi sought to return to Israel, the Lord’s Garden, but she had no means of making a living off what God had given her family. Nevertheless, the Law provided charitable support in gleaning the fields of those able to work their fields to produce a good living for themselves and their families.

Long-story-short, Ruth began gleaning what was left behind in Boaz’s fields. He told his servants to help Ruth harvest more for Naomi, and he invited Ruth to eat and drink with his servants. When Naomi found out, she recognized that Boaz could redeem her lineage/inheritance in Israel (Ruth 2:1, 20) by marrying Ruth, because her husband’s line had no way of continuing after Naomi’s death. Through the custom of a levirate marriage (Deuteronomy 25:5-7), Boaz could marry Ruth and raise up a son in the name of Naomi’s lineage and breathe life back into her dying family line. However, he couldn’t do this without marring his own family line (Deuteronomy 23:3; cp. Ruth 4:6), because Ruth, a Moabitess, was forbidden entry into the people of God according to the Law (cp. Nehemiah 13:1). Nevertheless, Boaz obeyed the Law of the levitate marriage (Deuteronomy 25:5-7), but disobeyed the Law concerning Moabites being welcomed into the people of God (Deuteronomy 23:3). He could not have obeyed the one Law without disobeying the other, so Boaz chose mercy over judgment, and such a noble character (Ruth 2:1) depicts what the Lord Jesus did for mankind as our own kinsman Redeemer.

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[1] See Josephus, Antiquities of the Jews, 4.8.23.