Lesson 2 - Ruth 1

[Music] now last week we began with an introduction to the Book of Ruth and some things to keep in mind as we studied it so I want to very briefly review it now first of all this small book and that contains only 85 verses is very complex it deals with several foundational and advanced Torah principles this is as opposed to the more usual concept that this is a book that is entirely about presenting us with a messiah type figure in boas that is then framed in a love story and while indeed such a concept is present in the book that's just really kind of a small part of it second of all the Book of Ruth was composed several centuries after the actual happenings that are recorded he Ruth lived at around the time of the judge Gideon but the story at least as we currently have it was not written or at least it wasn't finalized till sometime between the end of King Solomon's reign which is around 900 BC and the Exile of Judah to Babylon which is about 600 BC somewhere in there third the location in our Bibles of The Book of Ruth usually varies according to which ancient manuscripts any particular Bible was translated from if it was from the Greek Septuagint Ruth usually is found immediately following judges if it was taken from the Hebrew to knock then usually Ruth is going to be found following the Song of Solomon 4th Ruth was a Gentile she was a Gentile that was born in the land of Moab her ancestors were a lot in his father harren who was a brother of Abraham it's significant that this is one of only two books written in the Bible named for Gentiles the other one is job and finally while there is an extensive list of purposes that this book undoubtedly was meant to address the chief one in the mind of its God inspired anonymous human writer was probably to demonstrate the house of David's permanent right to the throne of Israel and this was in response to the ongoing undercurrent of dissension among the divided tribes of Israel stemming from a battle between political factions one believing that the descendants of King Saul who was the first king of Israel ought to rule the other one that the descendants of King David ought to rule this had much to do with the civil war and breaking up of Israel shortly after King Solomon's death into two separate kingdoms usually dubbed the northern kingdom and the southern kingdom we find that the north at first preferred Saul's successors the South preferred David's so let's read chapter one of Ruth now last week I was a little more preachy than T G but it'll be kind of the opposite this week so I again present you with the caveat that while Ruth will be a fastening study it's also going to get technical and detailed at times so stay alert as we move from the basic math of Holy Scripture to algebra Ruth The Book of Ruth pay is page 10 57 if you have a complete Jewish Bible back in the days when the judges were judging at a time when there was a famine in the land a certain man from Bethlehem Bethlehem went to live in the territory of Moe off he his wife and two sons the man's name was le malade his wife's name was now me and two sons were named Mahone and Killion they were ephra team from Beit Lacombe and Judah they arrived in the plain of Moab and settled there heli Malak now amis husband died and she was left she and her two sons they took wives for themselves from the women of MOA the name of one was Orpah the other was Ruth they lived there for about ten years then Malone and Killian 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 plain of Moab for in the plain 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 now me said to her two daughters-in-law each of you go back to your mother's house may I don't I show grace to you as you did to those who died in to me maiya don't I grant you security in the home of a new husband and then she kissed them that they Gant they began weeping aloud and they said to her no we want to return with you to your people now me said go back my daughter's why do you want to go with me do I still have sons in my womb who could become your husband's go back my daughters go your way I'm too old to have a husband even if I were to say I still have hope even if I had a husband tonight and more sons would you wait for them until they grew up would you refuse to marry just for them no my daughters on your behalf I feel very bitter that the hand of Ida and I has gone out against me and again they wept aloud and then Orpah kissed her mother-in-law goodbye but Ruth stuck with her she said look your sister-in-law has gone back to her people and to her God go back after your sister-in-law but Ruth said don't press me to leave you and stop following you for wherever you go I will go and wherever you stay I will stay your people will be my people your God will be my god where you die I will die and there I'll be buried me ad and I'd bring terrible curses on me and worse ones as well if anything but death separates you and me when now me saw that she was determined to go with her she said no more to her so the two of them went on until they came to bait like him and when they arrived in bait Lacombe the whole city was stirred with excitement over them and the women asked can this be now me don't call me now me which means pleasant she answered them call me Mara which means bitter because Shaddai has made my life very bitter I went out full R&I has brought me back empty why call me now me odd una has testified against me should I has afflicted me this is how nami returned with Ruth the woman from Moab her daughter-in-law companying her from the plains of Moab they arrived in Beit Lahm at the beginning of the barley harvest well the book places the opening of the story of Ruth in space and time in a very general way by saying when the judges were judging now even in a slightly more specific reference to the dating of it being when there was a famine in the land it's only marginally that's only marginally helpful for us really now we've already covered the likelihood that this was during the several year time period of Gideon because at that time the Midianites were always descending like locusts to steal Israel's food supply at harvest times and so throwing the Hebrews into starvation but by no means can we say that that certainly this also begs the question why didn't the author of Ruth more definite definitively peg the events to chronology for our benefit I mean it certainly doesn't seem I could be very difficult to do wouldn't take much writing time the answer is that the Hebrew Bible does not attach very much importance to when something happened unless it was in conjunction with a day of holy observance such as a festival or a Shabbat but rather the concern is always what happened who was involved and its effect upon Israel's development as this set apart nation for Yehovah that's part of the reason that we have this ongoing and seemingly unsolvable young-earth Old Earth battle because the first words of Genesis are ambiguous and setting up the timeframe of creation I mean the words in the beginning God created the heavens and the earth and the earth was unformed and void does this mean to inform us that the substance of the heavens and the earth was part of the first day of the 68 six-day creation process that began begins a couple of verses later or does it mean that the earth was incompletely formed in the beginning and it just hung there in space dead and void until some undefined later time when God began a six-day creative process of sculpting into a place that could sustain life there's strong opinions on both sides I'm not gonna debate this issue with you today the point is the writer of Genesis usually credited to be Moses could have rather easily straighten this whole matter out with but the addition of a handful more words but he didn't I mean why why not sometimes I wonder if it's just a tormentas all right cause arguments no it's because to the Hebrew mind the time issue is secondary and unimportant the point and purpose of the opening words of Genesis was not when but whom when the earth came into being was not the issue it was in the past that's that rather it was who or more accurately which God which God brought the earth and its many life systems into being the question of when really only matters to the more modern mind of rational greek-style thinkers that's all of us because we want tangible testable proof of the existence of a Creator God in order to validate the legitimacy of our divine texts in describing that creation the ancient Hebrews didn't need any of those proofs they fully accepted and understood that the ecosystems and many life forms in existence were supernaturally ordained so while I'm sure the ambiguity of the first words of Genesis provoked some small amount of curiosity among the ancient Hebrews that's about as far as it went not because they were small-minded not because they were unintelligent people but because for them and all the rest of the known world a Creator God was self-evident and what we call the need for proof and satisfying the scientific model wasn't sought after so it wasn't addressed now interestingly the opening statement of the Book of Ruth is not only unclear regarding precisely when but also precisely where it says that this famine was occurring in the Eretz the land what land well depends on your point of view in general the Eretz is the land of Canaan later called the Land of Israel it was located on the west bank of the Jordan but does this mean that the famine engulfed all the land of Canaan from this Sinai Peninsula all the way up to the Lebanon border no again defining the precise boundaries of the area affected by the famine wasn't really important to this storyline all we know is that it affected Ruth's life and so it affected her destiny no more is needed if you are of the tribe of Judah the aerith's the land well that's where you were living if you were of the tribe of Manasseh the land they're at is where you had settled apparently Bethlehem was in the famine affected region of Canaan and the lack of food was ongoing it was serious enough that it caused some families to seek better prospects outside of their own tribal territories the use of the term beit Letham Bethlehem of Judah is because there were several Beit lacombe's Bethlehem's in Canaan and this is because Beit Liam means House of bread or more in the sense that it was intended in those days house of food now a house of food was a granary a bait LEM was a place where there was a grain storage Depot and of course there were several grain storage facilities scattered around the land of Canaan in the various tribal territories the one that our story is concerned about is the one that was in the tribal territory of Judah and it's the same place where Messiah would be born Bethlehem now one Hebrew family of many who moved to a foreign land to weather the famine was headed by a fellow named le Malik meaning my god is king aleem Allah had a wife now me and had two sons by her Mahone and Cillian he chose moap for someone told reason as his family's place of refuge and survival now technically there wasn't a nation of Moab during the time of the judges it was just an easy and familiar way for the writer to refer to a particular territory on the east side of the Jordan River bordering on the Dead Sea Moab was conquered and taken over by the tribes of Reuben and GAD even before Joshua led Israel across the Jordan into Canaan probably around 30 to 40 years before the time of Ruth so saying Moab was just kind of a holdover it was a common way of speaking at that time however as we found out in our study of Joshua and judges while it might seem as we read the scriptures and look at a map that large blocks of land were settled fully controlled by the various Israelite tribes in reality when we look closer at those twelve allotted Israelite territories they had many pockets of Canaanite settlements just sprinkled all around the Hebrew settlements and they generally existed coexisted peacefully it was the same on the east bank of the Jordan people who were of Moabite ancestry like Ruth continue to live in their own villages side by side with other villages inhabited by relative newcomers the Reuben nights and the gadites but as in the case as with the whole Book of Ruth even another complexity is added when we were told in verse 2 that Alima lex family were efforts of Bethlehem of Judah what's an effort I well there's a lot of disagreement about this but as of now this matter has mostly been resolved we find a few places in the Old Testament the term effort site sometimes it's obviously attached to the people of Ephraim at other times it's not but more and more it seems that what we have here is probably a very early copyist error or a translation error when the word F recite is connected to Ephraim and the reason for this is simple the only difference in spelling between F F Roth and Neff rhyme is the last letter of the word we would say a tear in him all right and in Hebrew the last letter is either a table or a mem they look almost identical when they're written so it was was a common copyist in translation air so what we don't have here in Ruth is a claim that le Malik and his family were members of the tribe of Ephraim they were not but at the time we're living in a in Bethlehem of Judah rather is that if Roth was an earlier name for bethlehem genesis 3519 so Rael Rachel died and she was buried on their way to Efrat that is Beit Letham okay but why would the family of le Malak be called F recites I mean how does that distinguish them from others of the Hebrew families living in Bethlehem to this there's no certainty answer but likely it is the term effort light was given to a certain clan of Hebrews likely a clan in the tribe of Judah that was living there and it is not a formal name it's a nickname a froth means something like fruitfulness or maybe abundance it was a word that was often applied to a town sometimes just to a general area because it was unusually fertile and it was known for the quality of its produce and how well things grew there and since Hebrew is a language and a culture that gives names to people that are usually fairly common words that have a definite meaning like schewe God saves Alima lek my God is king so on will also find women in the Bible who are named F Roth or some form of that word and notice the association between bait liam which means again house of food it's a granary and Efrat meaning fruitful that the place Elimelech was from was very fruitful from therefore called Efrat and later called Beit liam which is essentially a large warehouse to store all that fruitfulness the change in name from a frost debate lek um is really more than a simple modification of the nickname of the place that occurred over time now probably the clan of le Malak was known for their wealth that was based on farming so they were given the nickname the clan of Efrat the clan of abundance and thus they were renowned as the fruitful clan living in Bethlehem just as we might look upon a wealthy family in a small town and identify them in that same regard now I took you on this side trip not only to present you with an inner a bit of information but also as one of but many evidences of what a very straight forward book the Old Testament actually is certainly was to people of old and it demonstrates that it will only take the time to understand the ancient Hebrew culture suddenly the seemingly mysterious or redundant or unintelligible Old Testament statements make all kinds of sense well back in verse one were told that this certain man Ali Malik took his family to sojourn in moap now in Hebrew the word being translated is Gor GU R and it means to go someplace for a while but not with the intent of making at your new home I only point this out because the narrative makes it clear that the family was not permanently moving to MOA rather they just wanted to stay there as long as was necessary then returned back home alright to Bethlehem they were not changing their nationality they were not giving up their allegiance to the tribes of Israel they were just long-term visitors until the situation at home got better however the rabbi's have an interesting twist on this one that we should not so easily dismiss they asked themselves why as we find out in the third verse that this family experienced such devastating losses koala MOA because they're now amis husband died as did both of her sons who had married Moabite Gentile women and such a horror can only be seen as a curse from God and I'll add a little bit to that thought later all three of the family males die early deaths which was considered an indication of divine judgment so if it was punishment from you ho PHA what was the sin here is the Jewish mindset on that subject and Genesis Rabbah 28 which is a just a Jewish commentary we read this our rabbis taught that it is not permitted to go forth from the land of Israel to a foreign country unless one saya is sold for to say us say us just a unit of dry measurement that equals about two gallons meaning in this case that the price for food is twice what it should be making it all but unaffordable rabbi Shimon said this is permitted only when one cannot find anything to buy but when one is able to find something to buy even if one saya costs a se la se la is a very hard Hebrew word to define but as used here it means annexed an extensive Bible teaching or a profound religious instruction that literally you pay to obtain and it's expensive so he says even under those conditions one must not depart being from the land and so said rabbi Shimon bar Yohai le Malik ma clone and Killian were what were among the notables of their generation and they were leaders of their generation why then were they punished because they left the Land of Israel for a foreign country there's actually some very good insight here and a dovetails quite neatly with the scriptures this is saying that indeed Alima Lex family felt the wrath God all the males of the family died because they left their land too easily that it was not that there was no food available nothing to buy but rather it's only that the Midianites made their lives more difficult by stealing much of their food supply so making food more scarce more expensive it also meant that this well-to-do farming family the member the efrat the abundant clan had the most to lose because their land holdings were large and they lost so much of their cropping comes to those Marauders so rather than stay in the promised land under difficult but not necessarily unbearable conditions as they should they just left for an easier life they belonged in the promised land not just any place that suited them they belonged in the land that God had set aside for them at the cost by the way of millions of Egyptian lives thousands of Israelite lives and the loss of land and life of countless Canaanites the result according to the rabbi's God severely punished alia molex family frankly I think these rabbis have nailed it and we're gonna shortly see Nami adopt this same line of thinking now verses 3 & 4 explain now while Moab while in Moab le Malik the father of the family died and then his two sons had married Moabite women Ruth and Orpah but during that decade the family spent more of these two sons also died get no cause of death but it was probably disease or accident because their death had been caused at the hands of another the term would have been killed and not died and as a matter of clarity the mention of the ten years was not how long the Moabite women had been married to aleem elects sons before they died rather it was a total amount of time the family had sojourned in Moab but the tragic result of all this was that now me a relatively old woman woman now had no husband and she had no sons and so she had no means of support and the rest of the story essentially deals with this very serious problems that this causes for now me and how it would be remedied by the ever-faithful Lord God whom she steadfastly worshiped even in a foreign place where Gamache was the chief deity I want to say something to you at this point that might be counterintuitive but it is also something you need to know before we go any farther as it will put this story in its proper perspective now while the book is named for Ruth in reality the central character is now me Ruth had lost her husband and it said her sister-in-law Orpah but that can generally be remedied by remarriage and if the girls were young and even better attractive remarriage was the most likely outcome further it was the custom of the era the young widows would be welcomed back into their father's home cared for indefinitely just like when they were young maidens virgins so the prospects of a decent life for a young widow were generally good but for an older woman beyond childbearing years probably beyond the ability to work hard to provide needed labor for the family to become a widow to have no sons to care for you well I was pretty near a death sentence at the least it foretold of a very meager existence of poverty and deprivation so the Book of Ruth is essentially a tale of how a major problem for now me was graciously solved by God through Ruth and Boas now if you'll keep that in mind as we go along you're gonna get the most out of this marvelous little book now some of Todd that Alima lacks and Naomi sons were wrong for taking Moabite wives and so Ali Malec was wrong for allowing it that's not necessarily so in my view there is no commandment of God against this okay Deuteronomy 73 forbade marriage to Canaanites not to Moabites one argument against my position is that Deuteronomy 23 3 says that no Moabite may enter the congregation of Israel until the 10th generation which can only mean the tenth generation after Israel is entered the promised land and it's unlikely that 10 generations had passed by now could have but probably not however the Hebrew word for congregation is qahal and it has a little more nuanced meaning than simply Israelites at large or a gem the general population of Israel Sika Hall usually denotes full citizenship without reservation in Israel it denotes the ability and the status to serve as leader or as an elder to participate in their rituals and the observances to a symbol on holy occasions on the tabernacle grounds things like that resident aliens were not permitted those things and apparently some foreign women who married into Israel were also excluded perhaps because they refused to stop worshipping their former gods and worship only Jehovah in any case it does not appear that the taking of foreign wives was the issue for these terrible tragedies of the LME like family it was simply the leaving of the holy land for a foreign land when it was not at all necessary for their survival now there's been a lot of conjecture over the centuries about the names of the six people so far identified in this story now me plainly means delightful or Pleasant and of course le molec is by God is king these are both good standard recognizable Hebrew or Aramaic names but it gets a little dicey err regarding the names of the two sons and their mole by wives Ruth which is root or wrote in Hebrew was probably not a Hebrew name it was more white now because Ruth became so highly regarded by the Hebrews it also became an adopted name used among Israelite females but the meaning is not entirely certain most often it's said to mean friendship and we don't there's no reason really to think otherwise that is that's kind of generally not disputed fits pretty well with the theme of the story now or pas the other daughter-in-law is often said by Jewish sages to mean stiff necked her firmness the idea being she takes a strong position she can't be swayed she's not comfortable with change however just as we'll see regarding the two sons names very probably these were not their real names but rather epithets that became nicknames for them because these names identify their roles in this story that is the Book of Ruth now understand this does not mean this story is contrived it's not a fairy tale it's just a common ancient literary device used especially when stories are meant to be handed down by word of mouth now the one son is named ma clone which is said to mean weak the other is Haley own that is said said to mean failing now ask yourself this would you name your children hey come here weak you failing go sit down over there I mean this is just all the more evidence that these were descriptions used as names by the writer to achieve a desired effect to make this a memorable story these weren't their actual names he probably didn't even know the given names a very many of the characters except for le Malik and Naomi and probably Bo Hwa's so the widow Naomi who now also has no sons hears that the famine in her homeland has ended and determines it's time to return now it's interesting how her viewpoint is that Jehovah had visited the Eretz the land the promised land and given them let them bread I remember this is just a common expression bless them all right that actually just means food in general what this shows us is that in mieze mind the famine that forced now amis family to leave the land was divinely brought about and thus the ending of the famine was also - - due to God's intervention now saying that she arose with her daughters-in-law is an expression that simply means to begin a journey so it was expressly now a meze initiative to return home to Bethlehem at this time the two girls they were just tagged along so now the story starts to gain speed now me insist that her daughters-in-law go home to their own biological mothers Moabite mothers and the wording of the statements kind of unusual because it's not normal and usual to refer to the family home as the mother's rather it's always the father's it is thought that the idea is that they're to go home to be comforted by their mothers I mean who better to comfort a daughter that our mother and it will be temporary until they get new husbands now I can't disagree with that assessment but I also think there is a simpler solution that plays at least as big a role in this see this is a story that revolves around women it is told from a woman's point of view it deals with women's issues of that day in a very male-dominated society and it shows the value of women in the eyes of God and how their value should be regarded in Hebrew society and it shows the important nurturing aspect of mothers and women in general so it's appropriate to speak of the mother's home and not the father's in this case now goodness knows that if there is a favorite Bible story of the modern day judeo-christian woman it has to be Ruth because it has so many elements of love and romance coupled with a tender thoughtful male who rides to the rescue with this woman's best interests at heart but verse 8 verse 8 also throws towards us another interesting statement whereby now--my blesses these two girls by saying may you have a deal kindly with you and like manner that they the daughters-in-law dealt with their dead husband's hmm what does that mean well what it decidedly does not mean is that they have shown respect and kindness to their husbands memories we've talked about ancient burial practices and beliefs concerning what happened after death and even among the Hebrews ancestor worship still played a major role in their thinking they thought that someone died they thought rather that someone died and went to heaven didn't exist rather was that the dead existed in some other form under the ground in the place of the dead and they needed tending Abraham's bosom and the place of torments were both underground chambers so it was up to the children or to the wife or some other close family member to bring food to a burial site to sustain the spirit of the dead person to say prayers on behalf of the deceased and especially to continue speaking the deceased s-- name so that it didn't disappear if a name stopped being spoken it was thought it essentially ended the afterlife of that person apparently Ruth and Orpah were diligently doing all the customary things to attend to the dead in this they were showing direct kindness to the dead men themselves their dead husband's further it was going to be important for the two dead husband's that Ruth and Orpah get remarried because they were childless because by custom the essence of the deceased male lived on in his firstborn son so if he never had sons during his life his essence had no place to live on and since these two fathers died childless it was customary among Hebrews that when these women remarried the first son born to them would be dedicated in the name of that woman's deceased husband so the dead man's line would be rescued and it would continue on the complication here of course is that these were Moabite women who if they did what Naomi admonished them to do would go home to Moabite finally families marry Moabite men and live in Moabite territory so how was all this gonna work and the answer is we don't know the concept of levirate marriage a brother being responsible to marry his deceased brother's wife and then father a child with her was uniquely Hebrew but these two dead sons had no brothers to perform levirate marriage with the widows so now what you see the dilemma here but this difficult situation also helps to explain what comes next when nami told her daughters-in-law to depart from her and go home to their mothers and find new husbands we see a very sad scene where all three women begin to cry and weep loudly which by the way was a typical middle-eastern reaction and it's obvious that now me was at the center of a great attachment between them but in this same sentence a Hebrew word is used that's a powerful one a word that Gentiles need to get know a little bit because Holy Scripture uses it often the word is I said I said and in this passage used in verse 8 where it says that now me dealt kindly do said with you as you have done with the dead Naomi's two sons a said is a lot like the Hebrew word Shalom in that it's not a word that has a direct one or two word translation because that is speaking of a complex concept rather than merely a word like a simple verb or a noun head is often translated in our English as loving-kindness and while that's not incorrect it's it's actually much too shallow it is a word that often means ironclad loyalty at other times very much like active love in the Old Testament it is almost always covenant related so Hesed implies the mutual and reciprocal rights and duties between parties who are in some kind of a relationship HESA is a kind of faithfulness and it related and it isn't related in this story as the action and the attitude of these two girls towards their dead husband's and so now me praise to your home a that because these women have been so faithful to her to see sons then God would be faithful to them finally her blessing upon them is that they would eventually have rest in the house of a new husband the Hebrew word used here for rest as men AHA and Menaka more accurately means a place of rest it includes in it the nuance of warmth and comfort Namie is praying for them to have a husband to comfort them to provide for them now kissing in the Middle East is generally either a welcome greeting or a goodbye so when now me kiss them it was less a kiss of affection or comfort as it was her saying goodbye to these daughters-in-law and knowing it was fair well they just all broke down in tears now me was doing what was best for these girls but what about for herself her prospects were bleak to say the least we'll continue the story next week [Music] you

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Keywords: Ruth, Old Testament, Books of Bible, Bible Study, Torah Class, Tom Bradford, Seed of Abraham

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Length: 53min 3sec (3183 seconds)

Published: Tue Aug 13 2019