Lesson 1 - Ruth Introduction

[Music] we begin our study of the Book of Ruth today and then as usual our format is gonna be where by ice I come up I present you it with an introduction so in order to set the stage so I want to read just a very few verses to get the flavor of The Book of Ruth so open your Bibles to the Book of Ruth they have a complete Jewish Bible to page 10:57 we're just going to read the first seven verses page 10 57 back in the days when the judges were judging at a time when there was a famine in the land a certain man from beit lesson Bethlehem went to live in the territory of Moab he his wife and his two sons and this man's name was a Lima let his wife's name was now me and his two sons were named Mahone and kill young and they were ever a team from beit elohim in judah and they arrived in the plain of moab and they settled there and a Lima left and now Emmys husband died and she was left she and her two sons and they took wives for themselves from the women of Moab the name of one was Orpah the name of the other was root they lived there for about ten years then Malone and Kili owned died both of them and the woman was left with neither her two sons nor her husband so she prepared to return with her daughters-in-law from the plains of Moab for in the plains of Moab she had heard how odd and I had paid attention to his people by giving them food she left the place where she was with her two daughters-in-law and took the road leading back to Judah at times throughout this book we are going to take an extended look at several principles that are addressed in the Book of Ruth and we're going to examine them in depth now those of you who are starting your study with seed of Abraham Torah class with the Book of Ruth are going to be at a disadvantage unless you have received instruction elsewhere on the Hebrew Bible those who have studied with us beginning at Genesis are going to see several familiar topics woven into this story and so many loose ends will be tied up other matters that we discussed long ago are going to be reviewed and some topics discussed in more depth as we encounter them in Ruth I think you're gonna get a lot out of this study in fact Ruth ought to be at the top of our list to study before you tackle the New Testament gospel accounts and so I ask you in advance for all of your attention focus because if your mind wanders off for even a few minutes you're liable to be lost this study is going to be somewhat technical at times but I think also really interesting so today as part of this introduction to Ruth I want to take a little bit of time and pause to reaffirm a very basic principle of seed of Abraham Ministries one which is central and the heart of the point of view of Torah class and which is in also in desperate need of revival if not downright revolution within the church and it is that what we call the Old Testament it's called the Tanakh among the Hebrews is neither old has an outdated nor is that obsolete nor has the New Testament somehow replaced it rather it is as much the needed and remaining foundation for the entire and the understanding of the salvation that we are offered in Christ as a concrete slab and footings attached to bedrock are the needed and necessary foundation for any house that hopes to not be washed away at the first signs of a storm how is it then that the body of Christ nearly universally has come to the conclusion that the Old Testament is as irrelevant to us today as there's a horse and buggy you know it's common today for a pastor or a priest to caution his flock against even venturing into the Old Testament with the warning that it might be harmful for them or even make them question their faith or even more that the Covenant of Moses was destroyed and abolished as though it were nailed to the cross of Christ now to a modern churchgoer this premise is rarely disputed it probably seems as though the printed Amaze of the former Testament has always been understood as fact but as we have learned especially from the study of the book of Judges it is the natural way of our evil inclinations to replace the commandments of God with similar sounding man-made doctrines that are more in step with our current agendas and our day we find ourselves sliding back quite unaware into the age-old enemy of judeo-christianity Gnosticism Gnosticism seeks to humanize God and to simultaneously naturalize the mystical and the supernatural Gnosticism is like an ancient underground river that at times surfaces so it flows visibly raging in and redirecting the landscape that it cuts through but in other eras it just kind of stays burrowed just under the surface hiding out of sight going largely undetected except by those who know to watch for it Gnosticism never dies it merely assumes different forms in different seasons as does the archenemy of God the master of deception himself Satan and this is because Gnosticism is one of the evil ones greatest and most effective tools at keeping mankind separated from God the Gnosticism of today is called liberal theology and New Age also goes by several other names such as the emergent Church the interfaith movement even chrislam it could be called the I'm okay you're okay version of Christianity that says that any meaning you attach to scriptures is truth for you just like in the days of Paul and Peter and John Gnosticism is beginning to bubble up from its hiding place as a response to the return of Israel to its homeland and to a growing group of believers who are challenging tired old man made Church doctrines and instead thirst for the purity of God's Word but the unsuspecting among the thirsty are too often drinking Gnosticism bitter wormwood that in time sours our souls all the time thinking that it looks like refreshing living water so appealing is it that believers are lining up at the bookstores for a gulp and pastors are preaching it because it's so well received the New Age Christianity makes mankind more on the level of our beloved animals and God more attractive and on our level and just oh how we love that thought God is no longer the Almighty father he is our kindly grandfather who looks the other ways that are indiscretions Yeshu was no longer our master and our Savior he's a combination good buddy and a powerful liberator who's here to demolish all the barriers that stand in the way of our personal hopes and dreams men are no longer made in the image of God were simply a branch of the animal kingdom that just happened into opposable thumbs perhaps a slightly higher functioning brain than all the other branches the philosophy of existence this is not new at all it is considerably older than the so-called Old Testament now I've explained before that this most recent cycle of Gnosticism can be traced to a period known among scholars as the Enlightenment a period that brought us the likes of the philosophers Hume and Kant and Voltaire it was birthed in the 18th century and the Enlightenment sought to rid Europe of any sin it's being tied to some bird ISM religion or intangible God it was in response to the Enlightenment in a lesser degree to the printing press and sudden availability of the Bible to the masses that the new institution of systematic theology was born theoretically to counter the Enlightenment systematic theology is the Christian version of the Jewish Talmud it is a written system of man-made answers and doctrines brought about by our accepted and revered religious authorities and thought to properly dispense the mind of God to his followers and while the intent may have seemed good and although many passages of Scripture were invoked it's brought a lot of pain and confusion distortion of truth to believers of every branch of Christianity it has a weakened our faith it's stunted our maturation process one of the underlying tenets of many Christian systematic theologies is that the Old Testament has been replaced by the new and as secular humanism was the agenda that the Enlightenment sought to bring about in a strange way the concept of a systematic theology has unknowingly aided it by replacing obedience to the Father with nearly unfettered liberty in Jesus the plan has been arousing success to say the least so do not think that such a belief that the Old Testament is dead in God comes from ancient times in fact that notion is only about two hundred fifty years old it was unknown to our church fathers today in academic circles there are those scholars who are considered the founding fathers of their fields of study they're rare men who are more than pioneers they have a gift of being able to see things that others have overlooked they have the ability to face a matter with a completely fresh approach in Christian writings there are scholars whose works form the basis for the work of others who follow them commentaries in particular rely on the earlier works of these pioneering scholars as their reference points and so the outstanding works of these rare men have become known as reference material now the vast majority of the works Christian laymen and teachers read from today were created by modern academics who use these much earlier pioneering scholars as their reference point so as a last offering before we get back on the road to Ruth from our short detour today I want a quote for you the preface to the commentary on the Old Testament written by the noted scholars CF Kiel and F de leach virtually every Christian commentary written within the past century relies to some level or another on this work keel and delete or Germans pioneering Christian scholars who wrote in the early to middle part of the 1800s now this is the word by word preface to their seminal work the commentary on the Old Testament I'd like for you to play pay close attention to what they're about to explain to you and I hope you'll take it to heart and that you'll never forget it I want you to keep in mind this was written more than 150 years ago before Israel returned to its ancestral homeland before this new brand of self oriented American Christianity became popular here's the preface the Old Testament is the basis of the new God who at sundry times and in divers manners spake unto the father's by the prophets have spoken unto us by His only begotten son the Church of Christ is built upon the foundation of the apostles and the prophets for Christ came not to destroy the law or the prophets but to fulfill as he said to the Jews search the Scriptures for in them ye think he have eternal life and there they which testify of me so also a short time before his ascension he opened the understanding of his disciples that they might understand the scriptures and beginning at Moses and all the prophets he expounded unto them and all the Scriptures the things concerning himself and with firm faith in the truth of this testimony of our Lord the fathers and teachers of the church and all ages have studied the Old Testament Scriptures and I have expounded the revelations of God under the Old Covenant in learning and edifying works unfolding to the Christian community their riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God which they contain in pressing them upon the heart for doctrine for reproof for improvement and for instruction in righteousness it was reserved for deism naturalism and rationalism which became so prevalent in the closing quarter of the 18th century to be the first to undermine the belief in the inspiration of that first covenant and more and more to choke up this well of saving truth so that at the present day depreciation of the holy scriptures of the Old Testament is as widely spread as ignorance of what they really contain and at the same time very much has been done during the last thirty years remember what we're talking about with them and in the early to mid 1800s during the last 30 years on the part of believers in divine revelation to bring about a just appreciation a correct understanding of the Old Testament Scriptures may the Lord grant his blessing upon our labors and assist with his own spirit and power a work designed to promote the knowledge of His Holy Word I think that's just a profound profound an absolutely correct statement a little more than a hundred and fifty years ago mere hundred and fifty years ago heal and delete were eyewitnesses to that moment in history that the institutional church sod the Bible in half and through the first part of it away they chronicled it they fought against it and even though they are still among the most esteemed Christian scholars studied to this day their caution and warning has been mostly ignored and now the nearly blind and deaf institutionalized Church of Jesus Christ gallops on convinced that they are finally and fully emancipated to live any life they choose without any fear of consequence from our fearsome God those who have fairly recently taken up this good fight to rediscover the formative part of our Bible and to once again explore its truths found nowhere else in God's Word are now forced to endure the taunts and the accusations of these blind spiritual advisers who lead our largest Christian organizations they say we are cults the desire to minimize Yeshua or to lead people into rabbinical Judaism or even two entirely separate ourselves from him when in fact just the opposite is the truth this was the same accusations by the way that were hurled at the Puritans and the pilgrims who fled the increasingly secular and warped European Christianity for a new start and a new world across the Atlantic this should not surprise us in many ways it follows that same pattern that we observe in the standard modern exegetical teaching of the New Testament which is itself so dependent upon messiahs Sermon on the Mount as recorded in the book of Matthew and so when we complete roof Ruth we shall immediately begin that gospel because at the center of Christ's teaching is a key admonition to all who would call him Lord who would study his words this admonitions purpose was to create an immutable context an uncompromising set of boundaries for understanding and applying messiahs teachings it was not an impulsive spewing of words spoken in the passion of sincere oratory rather it was a necessary one that because he was God he foreknew it was gonna play a major role in the eventual apostasy of his followers if this message went unheeded and in the midst of that apostle apostasy that was absolutely certain to come in time these precious words would be rediscovered they would be taken to heart by a remnant as the spark to reignite a new love for God's Word and for God's ways Matthew 5:17 do not think that I have come to abolish the Torah or the prophets I have come not to abolish but to complete yes indeed I tell you that until heaven and earth pass away not so much as a uterus stroke is gonna pass from the Torah not until everything that must happen has happened so whoever disobeys the least of these Commandments and they teach others to do so they're gonna be called the least in the kingdom of heaven but whoever obeys them and teaches them will be called great in the kingdom of heaven let's talk about the Book of Ruth now I'll begin by telling you that for a short little four chapter book it has an incredible complex structure theme and theology that defy simplistic solutions there is no monochromatic expression of its purpose neatly bundled with in its passages in fact after centuries of studying this book much academia is so confounded by it that what most have avoided even making commentaries on it you won't find a lot of commentaries on the Book of Ruth it will take some time to explain what makes it so complex and I'm gonna attempt that but on the other hand I can tell you in a nutshell why Christians scholars practically avoid this little book there is no way to make heads or tails of it if one knows a little or nothing of ancient Hebrew culture or traditions or if one knows nothing of the Torah or if one seeks to understand the Ruth story in modern Gentile terms using Western thinking now before we get into the complexities I want to get the basics out of the way Ruth isn't a Hebrew root or wrote and it means friendship or to befriend and it very well fits in with the tone of this story now there's a lot of debate about when the Book of Ruth was written but virtually no argument about the time period that the story is said to take place the era of the judges now one good time marker is that we're told that Ruth's father-in-law Alima left left his home on the west bank of the Jordan to live in Moab because there was a famine going on in Canaan and we read in judges 6 verses 3 & 4 about a severe food orange caused by the Midianites who regularly come came and stole Israel's food supply and then destroyed what they couldn't carry off these raids occurred for several years in a row the effect was pretty widespread so there is good reason to think that the events of the Ruth narrative occurred around the time that Gideon was judging now we usually think of a famine as being weather or pestilence related but in fact famine can be a man-made disaster caused by war we see this over and over in our time in various places around Africa where a dominant tribe led by some vicious warlord will try to wipe out an opponent by destroying their livestock their crops even by blocking any food aid to them or as is most common today where an Islamic tribe seeks to destroy a Christian tribe through starvation this is by every definition of famine and since there is no record biblical or otherwise of a weather or a pestilence related regional famine in Canaan during the ear of the judges very likely le Malak moved his family to Moab to escape this ongoing food shortage caused by the marauding Midianites and their partners in crime Amalek now as for when this book was written down the first verse helps us to know that it was certainly written after the period of when the shelf team the judges were judging Israel as it clearly is looking back to that time so that puts it in the era of Sall or later king saul was the first king of Israel further it gives the genealogy of King David so it had to be written at the earliest in the time of King David no mention of Solomon or of his genealogy is given so some stop right there and say it is self-evident it was written during David's reign but that Solomon's name is not mentioned is not proof of the date of its authorship others proposed it was written after the return of the Jews from their exile and Babylon and that the purpose of the book was to reestablish the right of the line of David to once again assume the throne of Israel of which the majority that remained belong to the tribe of Judah now modern literary credit critics use a different method of dating and they look to writing styles and to the use of certain phrases even cultural expressions in order to ascertain a date their main argument stems around whether the literary style of Ruth uses what they call classical Biblical Hebrew or late biblical hebrew and we're certainly not gonna delve deeply into that yes you're welcome but it doesn't hurt for us to understand the debate because there's validity and the reasoning the reality is language changes over time English was not and identifiable language until about the 1300s AD but if you were to try and read it in that ancient form while you might recognize it is English like many of the words wouldn't be known to us the senton would make little sense even many of the alphabet characters in the early English alphabet would be unfamiliar to us by the time of the King James Bible the English language had evolved closer to modern English but even the King James style of English can be a challenge to us in the 21st century further expressions and sayings from an early era of English disappear to be replaced by later ones and then those later ones are modified or they take on a different meaning as time marches on it works this way with all spoken and written languages including Hebrew Biblical Hebrew is substantially different from modern conversational Hebrew not so much so the communication could take could not take place between ancient and modern ancient Jew and a modern Jew but it would be like a modern American trying to communicate with someone who speaks only 16th century King James English understanding would be limited today's Bible scholars have identified many phrases many words that were used at one point in Israel's history but they fell into disuse later on or alternately phrases that were used later in Israel's history but they didn't exist in earlier times at least according to those scholars they didn't by looking for these words and phrases one then can some what did some what date when the author wrote a piece of work now another way to date a Bible book is to look for certain expressions that come from the influence of similarly which that made its way into the Hebrew vocabulary Bible callers today speak about air Emmaus ins in other words terms taken from the Aramaic language that are found in the Old Testament and indeed there's no doubt about their existence when we think of aramaic the tendency is to remember that jesus spoke one of his most famous sentences as he hung on the cross Ailee Ailee Lomonosov ik tani my God my God why have you forsaken me so non-linguistic Christian scholars have taken it for granted that Aramaic was a late evolved language but in reality Aramaic can be dated to at least as far back as 1400 BC the early part of the period of the judges there were several Aramaic dialects so identifying an era may ISM and the Book of Ruth doesn't help us very much in fact the name le molec that's rusev ah Ruth father-in-law is probably an Aramaic name not only that but we find evidence of both classical Hebrew and late Hebrew in the Book of Ruth bottom line it was probably written sometime after King Solomon but well before the Exile of the Jews to Babylon a range of around 300 years now some of you may have noticed by now that Ruth is not in the same place and our complete Jewish Bible as it is and other Bible versions I don't know what Bible versions each of you are using but in the complete Jewish Bible we're going to find it located just after the Song of Solomon and just before lamentations in most products Bibles it will immediately follow the book of Judges what gives the answer is that the location of the Book of Ruth is can be used as a very quick way to determine whether your Bible has been translated from early Hebrew texts or from the Greek and Latin Bibles or in more technical terms from the Tanakh or from the Septuagint the Hebrew Bible places Ruth as among the last of the three divisions the Hebrews assigned to the Tanakh being in this one being the K to Veeam the Septuagint places Ruth immediately following the book of Judges if your Bible has Ruth right after Judges your Old Testament was translated from the Greek or Latin not the Hebrew I want to be very clear the location of Ruth doesn't make your Bible a good one or a bad one or a superior one or an inferior one but it can't explain why it might sound a little different especially from one's translated from the Hebrew now the Hebrew sages long ago divided the Tanakh the Old Testament into three parts the Torah Nevi'im and the k2v the law the prophets and their writings with Ruth placed as part of the writings but in later times the Hebrews also grouped certain books together for liturgical purposes that is how they would use them in synagogue worship so a group of five books was assembled called the megaload megalo just being scrolls and these consist in order of the Song of Solomon Ruth lamentations Ecclesiastes and Esther and depending on the occasion one of these books will be read at a synagogue service for instance the Book of Ruth is read during Shavuot Pentecost while Esther is read have prim so thus far here's what we've learned today about the Book of Ruth it was written somewhere between 900 and 600 BC the story itself however is set in the time of the judges probably at the time of the judge Gideon the book is located in your Bible depending on whether your Bible is translated from the Greek or the Hebrew roots father-in-law a named Aleph is at least partially an Aramaic name and the name Ruth means friendship but Ruth was not a Hebrew she was a Moabite therefore she was a Gentile Moab was lot son or more correctly by our modern thinking his grandson born of lots daughter and he founded the territory called by his name Moab now Ruth roots genealogy goes back through lot to Abraham's brother Quran Quran was lost father so it's quite interesting that Ruth is one of but two Gentiles who have a book of the Bible named after them you know what the other one is job that she was a Gentile and a woman is all the more fascinating the only other woman who has a book in the Bible named after her is Esther but Ruth and Esther has some very interesting contrasts that are worth noting in fact one of the many complexities that forms the Book of Ruth in addition to the fact that she was a Gentile is that it is a book of contrast and we're gonna talk about those as appropriate I want to compare Ruth and Esther Ruth was a Gentile Esther was a Hebrew Ruth was a Gentile who lived among the Jews Esther was a Jew who lived among the Gentiles Ruth was a daughter of a foreign nation and she was brought to the promised land Esther was a daughter of the promised land but brought forth within a foreign nation Ruth eventually married a Jew Esther eventually married a Gentile God's name is mentioned a number of times and the book of the Gentile Ruth it is not mentioned even once in the book of the Jewish Esther however in both cases the women are characterized as having great faith and so are greatly blessed by the God of Israel and both play pivotal roles in Israel's salvation history so another of the great complexities of a Book of Ruth is that it demonstrates this mysterious relationship of Israel to Gentiles who trust in Jehovah their God a relationship that st. Paul did his best to try and explain but for which there really are no sufficient words to describe it ironically it is a relationship that both Hebrew Israel and Gentile Christians have sought to sever but can never quite do so and that's because it's more a spiritual relationship than a physical relationship a man said to me not too long ago I don't know quite how to understand it but it seems to me the Christians are just one inch from being Jews and Jews just one inch from being Christians I'm not sure Paul could have sell it said it more eloquently and so in the same way that Ruth and Esther were such opposites they were in a deeper sense just one inch away from being identical so just as there is a great contrast between Ruth and Esther so there is a great contrast between the book of Ruth and the book of Judges the time in which she lived even though they occur at the same time under the same circumstances Ruth's story is a pleasant tale of goodness and friendship and brotherly love and kindness and hope of a greater purity of worship of the God of Israel but the book of Judges on the other hand tells us of evil and rebellion and darkness and unfaithfulness brother turning against brother apostasy from the God of Israel so what we're going to see is that just as in all times even if the whole people of God are seeming seemingly completely out of harmony with him there will be a remnant that seeks to remain obedient and who are open to the moving of the spirit upon them even in the darkest of times there will be small enclaves of divine light so the Book of Ruth gives gives us insight into the principle that with God all is never lost and that hope remains even when it seems that none could be possible now a good question right about now ought to be so what's the purpose for the Book of Ruth being written what did the human author intend to prove or try to demonstrate had God's inspiration again complex and so much so there's wide-ranging opinion even as to something as seemingly simple as the purpose behind the Book of Ruth but because we could debate it ad infinitum as has been the case among scholars I'd rather simply share with you in summary form the six most likely purposes that are generally agreed upon but I want to say that the scholarly mind usually says we have to choose from among these the one best one but I say to you that such rigidity is not at all necessary there can be and there are in my view several legitimate purposes for the Book of Ruth to provide the first purpose that is that I think we should take a look at possibility of purpose is to provide a genealogical link between the tribe of Judah and David so as to continue the Messianic line since there is no genealogy given of David in the book of 1st Samuel second of all to show that there was faith and obedience even in that terrible time of apostasy the time of the judges so God still maintained a remnant he could work through third to illustrate the concept of the kinsman Redeemer in action forth to show that God's grace was not limited to Hebrews but also could be extended to Gentiles thus fulfilling the promise to Abraham of his family blessing the whole world v to establish the superiority of the house of David as a permanent successor to the house of Saul and thereby defend the claims of David to the throne of Israel over the claims of ICH now that was Saul's son very likely this was foremost in the writers mind and even if he couldn't foresee this connection to a future Messiah after King Saul was killed in battle and his body was hung on the walls of Beit Shean David did not immediately become king over all Israel at first he was only ruler over Judah ish poche who was Saul's son ruled over the ten northern tribes and the territory that at that time was called Ephraim so in the writers eyes the Book of Ruth is a kind of appendix to the book to the book of Judges just as the final five chapters of the book of Judges is called by scholars and appendix the problem the writer was a countering was that essentially the book of Judges is all about the Canaan ization if you would turn that into a word the canonization of Israel making them like Canaan that is through syncretism the tribes of Israel absorbed and melded Canaan's culture and religion into their own and tell it was an unholy elicit mixture that just not suitable for God's people the Book of Ruth is to demonstrate that the ancestors of David were godly and more pure and were not part of that unholy mixture sixth this is the one the most common modern Christian computation and commentators begin and end with the Book of Ruth was to show that the kinsman redeemer who in the Book of Ruth is bolos was a type of Messiah I think that's enough for today we'll close here and pick up next week [Music] yes you [Music] you you

Channel: Torah Class

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Keywords: Ruth, Bible Study, Torah Class, Tom Bradford, Intro to Ruth, Books of the Bible

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Length: 51min 8sec (3068 seconds)

Published: Tue Aug 13 2019