The Book of Ruth

Hesed (חֶסֶד, rendered variously as steadfast love, loyal love, kindness, mercy, covenant faithfulness) appears three times in Ruth at strategic moments:

(1) Ruth 1:8, Naomi releases her daughters-in-law: "May the LORD deal kindly (hesed) with you, as you have dealt with the dead and with me." Naomi attributes hesed to Orpah and Ruth both, their loyalty to her dead husbands and to herself. Orpah returns to Moab; Ruth's declaration in 1:16-17 enacts what hesed demands beyond cultural obligation.

(2) Ruth 2:20, Naomi learns that the field owner was Boaz: "May he be blessed by the LORD, whose kindness (hesed) has not forsaken the living or the dead!", Naomi is moved both by Boaz's practical provision (leaving grain for Ruth in the gleaning law, Leviticus 19:9-10; 23:22) and by the recognition that this is hesed being enacted through a human agent.

(3) Ruth 3:10, Boaz blesses Ruth at the threshing floor: "May you be blessed by the LORD, my daughter. You have made this last kindness (hesed) greater than the first, in that you have not gone after young men, whether poor or rich." Ruth's willingness to claim Boaz as kinsman-redeemer rather than choosing a younger man for her own advantage is read as hesed toward both Boaz and the dead.

The pattern: hesed is a word used both for YHWH's covenant loyalty and for human loyalty that mirrors it. In the Book of Ruth, YHWH's hesed is consistently enacted through human agents, Naomi, Ruth, Boaz, in the ordinary circumstances of a harvest season. The book is a theology of how divine steadfast love works through human faithfulness.

The legal institution of the kinsman-redeemer (go-el, גֹּאֵל, redeemer, rescuer, one who buys back; a participle of ga-al, to redeem, buy back, reclaim) lies at the heart of the book's plot.

In Israelite law, the go-el was a near kinsman who had the right (and responsibility, by customary obligation) to:

(1) Redeem land sold by a poor relative (Leviticus 25:25, if a brother becomes poor and sells some of his property, his nearest redeemer shall come and redeem what his brother has sold)

(2) Redeem a relative sold into slavery (Leviticus 25:47-49)

(3) Marry the widow of a dead kinsman to continue his line (levirate marriage, Deuteronomy 25:5-10, though the go-el and the levir were originally different institutions that converge in Ruth)

(4) Avenge the blood of a murdered kinsman (Numbers 35:12-28, the go-el ha-dam, the avenger of blood)

Boaz as go-el: he is identified as a "close relative" (2:20, meyuda'ah) and later as a go-el (2:20, there is actually both a closer kinsman-redeemer and Boaz; the plot turns on whether the nearer kinsman will act). Ruth 3:9, Ruth claims the go-el right: "Spread your wings over your servant, for you are a redeemer (go-el)." Ruth 4, the nearer kinsman declines (the shoe-sandal ceremony of Deuteronomy 25:9); Boaz redeems the land and takes Ruth as his wife.

Boaz as type of Christ: the NT does not make this typology explicit, but the theological pattern is unmistakable. The go-el must be a kinsman (the incarnation, the Word became flesh, Hebrews 2:14-17); he must be willing to redeem (not all kinsmen chose to act; Christ's willing sacrifice); he must have the resources to redeem (Boaz was a "worthy man" with means; Christ's infinite worth makes the atonement sufficient).

Ruth 4:17-22 closes the book with a genealogy: "they named him Obed. He was the father of Jesse, the father of David." Ruth the Moabitess, the foreigner who declared YHWH her God, is the great-grandmother of David.

Matthew 1:5 includes Ruth in the genealogy of Jesus: "and Salmon the father of Boaz by Rahab, and Boaz the father of Obed by Ruth, and Obed the father of Jesse, and Jesse the father of David the king." Three women in Matthew's otherwise male genealogy are remarkable (Tamar, Rahab, Ruth, all with irregular histories; Bathsheba is the fourth): Ruth is a Moabite, from a nation that Deuteronomy 23:3 excluded from the assembly of Israel "even to the tenth generation." Yet she is in the line of the Messiah to the tenth generation and beyond.

The inclusion of Ruth makes a theological claim: the covenant was never exclusively ethnic. YHWH's purposes have always included those who, like Ruth, "take refuge under his wings" (Ruth 2:12, "a full reward be given you by the LORD, the God of Israel, under whose wings you have come to take refuge"). The kinsman-redeemer's action in a small Bethlehem harvest is part of the long thread leading to the one who will be born in Bethlehem of David's line to redeem a world of exiles.

The Sanctum reads Ruth as the Bible's most concentrated portrait of how hesed works in ordinary life, not in throne rooms or temple courts but in a barley field, on a threshing floor, and in a town gate legal proceeding. It answers the question: what does the steadfast love of YHWH look like when enacted by human beings in the daily traffic of loyalty, generosity, and faithfulness? It looks like Ruth following Naomi into an uncertain future. It looks like Boaz leaving grain at the field's edge. It looks like a kinsman willing to redeem when the nearer kinsman was not.