Context No. 873 of 4322 · Ruth
Context · Reflection
Ruth 4:18-22: in context
18Now this is the history of the generations of Perez: Perez became the father of Hezron, 19and Hezron became the father of Ram, and Ram became the father of Amminadab, 20and Amminadab became the father of Nahshon, and Nahshon became the father of Salmon, 21and Salmon became the father of Boaz, and Boaz became the father of Obed, 22and Obed became the father of Jesse, and Jesse became the father of David.
These five verses close the book of Ruth with a genealogy: Perez fathered Hezron, down through Amminadab, Nahshon, Salmon, Boaz, Obed, Jesse, and David. It reads like a dry list, but it is the payoff of the whole story.
The book has just told a small, local story: a famine, a widow named Naomi, a Moabite daughter-in-law named Ruth who would not leave her, a field, a kinsman named Boaz who redeemed them. Nobody in that story is a king or a prophet. And then these last verses pull the camera back and show what the small story was quietly building toward: David. The redeemed widow's child, Obed, is grandfather to Israel's greatest king, and the New Testament will carry the same line down to Jesus, naming Ruth the foreigner right in the genealogy of the Messiah. The point is that God was writing the royal line through a famine, a foreigner, and an act of ordinary faithfulness that none of the people involved could see the end of. Providence works in exactly the material that looks too small to matter.
Am I willing to be faithful in a story whose ending I cannot see, trusting that God builds his purposes out of small obedience?
Sources
- Ruth 4:22: Obed became the father of Jesse, and Jesse became the father of David
- Matthew 1:5-6: Boaz the father of Obed by Ruth... and Jesse the father of David the king
- Ruth 1:16: where you go I will go... your people shall be my people, and your God my God