Ruth Bible Study: Session 3 (Ruth in Real Time and Space) Sandra Richter

so welcome back to the Book of Ruth were in session three Ruth in real time in space so in our last study we got to learn a good bit about Israelite culture and about our own ethnocentrism and how we're trying to grit get past the great barrier in order to get out of our space and into theirs and we even started introducing ourselves to the concept of redemption which is going to be critical to this book and over the course of this study together you're gonna find out in real space and time and in every other way as well that this word redemption that is all over Church speak is bigger and broader and older than you've even ever imagined so what we've got to do in this study in getting past the rest of the great barrier is that we have to get Ruth and Naomi and Boaz back into their real space and time so what you're looking at on the screen right now is my mall map of the world I believe in mall Maps because I hate malls and if it were not for mall maps I would be that idiot wandering around to the mall for the next 45 minutes trying to find the store I'm looking for so as you look at the map it says they were there and the there where they are is this little green crescent-shaped area that I put on the world map so you can see from a bird's eye perspective the space where every story you know out of your Old Testament comes from let's zoom in a little bit on that little green crescent-shaped area and noticed that it's actually called the Fertile Crescent and here's some real high-powered stuff here why is it called the Fertile Crescent because the area was fertile and it was shaped like a crescent okay you guys got it and again in that region that is highlighted in green every story you know from Genesis to the end of your Old Testament takes place over here in this circle that you see on the map is the region that is actually local to the story of Ruth and Naomi and Boaz this is where Israel is this is where Moab is and this is where the story that takes place in the tiny little town of Bethlehem actually in the tiny little suburb of Ephrathah occurs so let's focus in a little tighter and see what we can see this region where our story occurs is staged in the tribal territory of Judah in the village of Bethlehem which is just a few miles outside of a city you've probably heard of many times that being Jerusalem the narrator lets you know that you're in Judah this tribal territory which during our period is large it's significant but it's going to get larger and more significant as a story moves forward because we're gonna be introduced with a monarchy to the great King David who will take over all of this southern region unite it with the north and by the time we come to the period of the monarchy Judah is probably the biggest and most powerful tribe in the mix and then when we come to the point of the divided monarchy it's so significant that all of the south is actually called Judah we are also going to be introduced to the region known as Moab and it's not just a region actually it's a country and this country as you can see on your map is on the other side of the Dead Sea both of these regions are similar and that they struggle with drought they are their economy is based on dry farming which means an agriculture that doesn't involve irrigation if you're not irrigating what happens when you have a dry period and the answer is you can wind up with a famine this cycle of famine is so common in Israel's experience and in the biblical narrative that probably if you were to ask your group members you could come up with four or five stories of how the Israelites had to relocate themselves because of a drought induced famine so dry agriculture pastoralism it's happening on both sides of the Dead Sea both in Judah and in MOA and one of the crazier things about this story is a Grigore is actually more stable in judah than it is in moab but because a limb elects family is in such dire straits moab is the only place he can go alright another region that is important to this story is called the plains of moab and although this is not specifically a nation it is a region which has particular agricultural fecundity don't you like that word fecundity I just like saying it I feel like kind of like I'm saying a dirty word almost but it's not it just it just means things grow there and that's what the plains of Moab are it's quite possible that when our limo lek was heading from Judah over into Moab he was targeting that area hoping against hope that he would be able to find open farmland and care for his family okay so let's turn this into some real images what you're seeing on the screen in front of you is an image I actually took of the plains of Bethlehem back in the summer of 2010 and 2010 was a dry year so as you look at this picture you see some green okay those are the fields of Bethlehem just a few miles outside of Jerusalem but you're also seeing that this area might not be your top pick in choosing farmland if you're an agricultural kind of guy at the point of our story this region of Bethlehem is actually almost a complete backwater and again it won't rise to prominence until the time of the monarchy and our little tiny suburb of Africa is even more of a backwater so how interesting is it to us that Boaz who obviously is powerful and influential is a big fish in a very small pond and yet in the midst of his pond we're gonna see this man behaving with a level of high L are you remembering that word high L a level of integrity and strength that is going to live really change the trajectory of the nation and that's kind of cool when you think about the fact that an average guy normal guy living in his normal life living his normal life with exceptional integrity can change the map of history this is the land indeed of Elimelech and a little X extended family remember the phrase bit of his wife Naomi and his two sons Macklin and killing on this is the region of his world where a dry year was followed by another dry year and probably by a third dry year and once you get to the place of two or three especially agricultural years in a row you've exhausted your first crop you've exhausted the seed you saved for your second crop and you and your family are facing into the cold eyes of starvation and so it is this region that Alamo lack is going to abandon and when he abandons it he's actually abandoning the patrimony the inherited land of his great-great great-great grandparents it is a very big deal when someone in this tribal culture says the only choice I have left is to walk away from the land I inherited and head across the land indeed as we have seen in the air of the settlement of Israel this is a land of small farms and pasturage this is a subsistence economy where life was hard survival was fragile and family was everything so this is our space let's take a look at the characters a little bit you will notice as you do your reading that Ruth throughout almost the entirety of this book always has a following appellative in other words she always has a title she is Ruth comma the Moabite us and your narrator and your narrator's readers are Airy intro in the fact that Ruth is a mullah Vitus so we should be interested in that as well so we want to ask ourselves as student of students of this text what's the deal with Moabites hey you know a Moabite and anna night and you know might what's the difference to us well there's a big difference to them let's rehearse what we know about Moab and Moabites in the biblical text the first story we come across is one you may have heard before it's the story of lot and his wife and daughters and their escape from the city of Sodom now Sodom and Gomorrah do not have a good reputation in the Bible have you noticed this is still not a word we throw around loosely what has happened in Sodom is that the city down in the Jordan River Valley has become so corrupt that God has said that's it and he rains down upon this city fire and brimstone literally forcing the inhabitants to scatter lot who was one of our guys right lot is Abraham's nephew we know a lot he grabs his immediate family and he runs for the hills do you remember the story about how his wife didn't want to leave her home you know she just finished replacing the windows she just had it repainted and just put down exactly the sort of hardwood she wanted in her living room for the last 20 years and so she turns around one last time to look at her house and she's turned into a pillar of salt you remember that story well lot news daughter's actually managed to escape and they run out of the valley up into the hills and they're hiding in caves and Lauda's exhausted and everybody's overwhelmed and honestly his daughters in Genesis chapter 19 believe that the world has ended they think that every human on the planet is dead this is zombie apocalypse 3 right and so as they're sitting in this cave looking at they're exhausted and now asleep father the eldest of these two daughters comes up with a brilliant plan hmm you know all about tribal culture now you know all of a woman a woman's role in tribal culture and you know that she starts off as her father's daughter becomes her husband's wife and eventually becomes her adult son's mother which is how she is connected to the economy and the legal system throughout her life so these two young women who are not yet married take a look at their their dad laying there asleep in the cave and the oldest one says to the youngest okay girl this is it were the last women on the planet and that's the last man so here's the plan let's get him drunk I'll sleep with him first and get pregnant and then we'll get him drunk again and you can sleep with him and get pregnant what a great plan do you ever wonder what your daughters are talking about up in their bedrooms I happen to have two daughters and this is not one of my favorite stories okay so the plan works they get the guy drunk and he winds up fathering two incestuous children with his two daughters the eldest child is a son and guess what she names him Moab the youngest child is a son and she names him Eamonn so what this tells us as readers of the Bible is that the Israelites understood that they were related to the Moabites they understood that and they understood that they were related to the ammonites but are these the type of relatives that you talk about at big parties are these the relatives that you invite over for Thanksgiving are these the relatives that when they drop in for a visit you pretend no one's home and tell the children not to answer the door could be you don't have relatives like this okay so there is obviously an understanding of relationship but it's not a positive understanding and what happens in numbers chapter 22 is that the Israelites have just escaped from Egypt and they are will not just escape actually they've been wandering the wilderness for 40 years and it's finally their moment finally they're gonna march up the Kings Highway which is the major superhighway which runs through Edom Moab and Amon and as they're passing through there are a lot of them and so they're asking for passage they're asking can we buy water can we buy food we've got a lot of people here and the Moabites refused to give them passage the Moabites take a look at what could have been six hundred thousand a million two million people were never sure with biblical numbers but a whole heck of a lot of people and they say this is dangerous these people are scaring us we are not going to practice even basic hospitality no you cannot have passage and then as they pass through with their own supplies and resources the king of Moab hires a local holy man now when I say holy man don't be thinking a holy man of the religion of Israel he's a diviner he's a shaman of sorts in the ancient world in my classes I would call him a divine intermediary and his name is Balaam and actually we know that Balaam is an historical character because we found his inscriptions at Deir alla in the Transjordan how much fun is that so they hired this guy Balaam and they asked Balaam to curse Israel and so the king of Moab pays a pretty penny to get this divine intermediary to curse our heroes and Balaam goes from Mountain to mountain to mountain he practices his craft he slaughters animals he reads entrails he asks for the will of the gods and finally he has to come back to the king of Moab and say I can't find a curse against these people so once again as we look at that story which is recorded in the Book of Numbers and we say do the Israelites like the Moabites know do they consider them allies heck no are they dangerous suspicious untrustworthy backstabbing jerks yes so that's our second story our third story we've read that the Israelites right on the eve of their successful entry into the Promised Land okay we've managed to escape Egypt get through the Red Sea receive the Covenant at Sinai wander for forty years in the wilderness this is the moment we are standing outside the Promised Land we're about to cross the river and at that moment the women of Moab Moab again literally come into the Israelite camp seduce the young men into worshipping their fertility god bale and you can guess how you go about worshiping a fertility God and so there's a huge orgy there's a huge backlash big hullabaloo and a lot of people died on the eve of what should have been the most successful day in Israelite history so all told how do we feel about mullah bites and the answer is they are one of those relatives and specifically in Deuteronomy chapter 23 verses 3 through 6 no ammonite or Moabite shall ever enter the Assembly of the Lord none of their descendants even to the 10th generation you shall never seek their peace or their prosperity as long as you live that's how Israelites feel about Moabites now let's turn the page and take a look at our Moabites in not well not just our Moabites but our entire crowd in real time and as you take a look at your scene bed timeline with all its handy-dandy features notice the highlighted area which is the era of the judges I've already introduced you that the heir of the judges is not one of the periods of Israelite history where we're proud of our peeps okay they're a mess they are corrupt they are abusive they are busy doing all sorts of things that I don't even really want to tell you about what happens by the time we get to the end of the book of Judges is that Yahweh looks down on his people and he says you know what these people my people are worse than the Canaanites and I drove the Canaanites out of this land what am I gonna do with the Israelites lucky for us and blessed be to the Almighty he sends a guy named Samuel who becomes one of the greatest prophets and judges of all time Samuel is one of my great heroes he is tough he is holy he is uncompromising he loves his people and he knows what to do with a weapon which is another very interesting thing about this guy so Samuel becomes this transition figure he kind of whips the Israelites into shape he winds up serving Israel from the age of four when his mother Hannah leaves him at the tabernacle oh my gosh I can't live my kid at daycare and she leaves him at the Tabernacle until he is an aged man and during that time of service Israel cleans up her act and one of the last acts of Samuel will be to anoint the Great King David who will be the solution to this problem we're interested in that okay so mark that in your mind that the heir of the judges is transformed through Samuel and finally resolved with the appointment of David now for those of you who've already done the intro to the Old Testament with epic Avedon you've seen this chart before and this chart speaks of the era of the judges and I just want to make sure that everyone is on board with what's happening throughout this book because of course our story takes place in the days of the judges the book of Judges is set up around twelve scenarios twelve short stories of twelve great leaders and it is not that they only had twelve great leaders but these are the twelve that have been chosen to tell the tale and in each one of these scenarios each one of these vignettes the exact same thing happens Israel starts off at 11 o'clock on your chart they start off in a period of obedience to the Covenant and when they're in obedience life goes well they have national security they have economic well-being Yahweh protects them cares for that and then they sort of forget that you always actually taking care of them and so they move over into disobedience to the Covenant I know it absolutely stuns you that people who claim our God might actually slip off into disobedience it just staggers me so they slip off into disobedience and according to their covenant not yours the next aspect of this story will be foreign oppression this is how Yahweh gets Israel's attention he sends an opponent against them they realized oh my gosh we've messed things up and so they cry out in repentance and they ask God for deliverance and the next thing God does is he raises up a judge which is kind of an unfortunate term in American English at least because when we think judge we think litigator and really what you need to think when you think judge is charismatic military leader charismatic in that this is a person who can stir a crowd to do anything charismatic in that he's not born into his role she's not born into her position rather anointed by the Spirit to take the position and they are a military leader so what do they do with their military ability they unite the people and they lead them against the opponent into military victory they say all hail the name of Yahweh he's the one who's delivered us and the people live in obedience for a while longer this cycle repeats itself twelve times in the book of Judges by the time you get to cycle 11 you're like how stupid are they how many times are we gonna do this and then you look at your own spiritual life and you talk a little quieter okay well as they're cycling forward there's another cycle that's happening as well and that is with each cycle Ford these people are cycling downward as well so by the time we get to judges chapter 19 one of the final stories of this book it's a story about a Levite that means a priest someone who should be a holy man who's second wife his concubine has left him why did she leave him we can't anticipate that perhaps he wasn't the greatest husband because women don't just walk out on their bid offs in a tribal community and she goes on to her own father's house and Levite decides he wants it back so he travels all the way down to her father's house and tries to woo her back and finally the father says okay go back with him it's okay and the Levite takes his second wife his concubine and they start heading north well they come across what will become Jerusalem and it's still enemy territory and the Levite says oh I don't want to stop here these are you know those pagan types these are the bad people let's go further north into the tribe of Benjamin where our people are and we'll spend the night there so he gets to the tribe of Benjamin and no one no one will take him in which violates every law of ancient Near Eastern hospitality we know until a foreigner comes in for the fields and sees this little family camped out in the town square he says oh my gosh you guys can't stay out here come into my house and so he takes them in and he feeds them and give some hospitality and in the middle of the night the Rogues of the town pound on this man's door and say send out your houseguest we want to have sex with him it's not something I've ever actually said to anyone ever in my life but you know I just did okay does this remind you of another story Sodom and Gomorrha again right and so the host says I can't do that that would be appalling no no brothers don't sin this way and the Levite the holy man says no worries we can give them my concubine and so this Levi this husband throws his second wife out the door and literally the text tells us that she is gang-raped all night until she falls on the threshold of the door with her hand on the threshold the Levite apparently has a good night's sleep wakes up the next morning opens the door steps over his wife the woman he's supposed to protect realizes that she's dead picks her up throws her over his donkey takes her home cuts her up in 12 pieces puts a note on each piece and sends her body parts out to the tribes of Israel and says we got a problem we got a problem guys we got a problem I look at that story and I say who the heck are these people this is the era of the judges when a girl is not safe on the streets of her own town even a Israelite town and even her Levite husband will not lift a finger to protect her dignity or her life so by the time we get to the end of this cycle in the book of Judges this book which serves as the backdrop for our lovely story of the integrity of Ruth and Boaz what we've come up with is a community that claims to be the people of God but ultimately has become more corrupt than the enemies of God and the book of Judges ends with several messages one is that in this particular covenant obedience will result in national security and vice versa disobedience will result in national insecurity this is the old covenant not the new the second message is that every man was doing what was right in his own eyes this is how Israel got into this mess in the first place they assumed that their personal morality a world without boundaries would give them joy and what has happened to their community as a result we have wound up with a community in chaos what would your town look like if every man did what was right in his own eyes one of the third messages here is that the tribe of Benjamin actually is responsible for a lot of the woes that are going on in this period and this is going to become more important as we move into the monarchy and the last and perhaps the most important message here is that this group needs a leader they need a leader not just because the leader is going to be perfect because that's never gonna work they need a leader who's going to organize this community into obedience let's flip over to Ruth chapter one and open up to the very first pages in the days when the judges ruled has that phrase taken on a new meaning for you at this point in the days when the judges ruled there was a famine in the land and a man from Bethlehem in Judah together with his wife and his two sons went to live for a while in the country or the fields of Moab the man's name was a limo like his wife's name was Naomi and the names of his two sons were masculine and Killian they were efforts from Bethlehem of Judah and they went to Moab and they lived there you know about the period of the judges you know what famine does to communities in fact almost every refugee population you know of right now is a refugee population in some way connected to famine famines make people move we called these people refugees Naomi her name actually means Pleasant and at this point in the story her life is nothing but Pleasant she's married she has two healthy sons there's absolutely no reason for her to anticipate anything besides wives for those sons and grandchildren to come but we know this story is going to take a dark turn and it takes a dark turn very quickly alright take a look at this map for a second and let's ask the question how do we think our heroes journeyed option1 for a route over to the plains of Moab would take them down through the Judean wilderness and up the Jordan River Valley and over the top of the Dead Sea route number two would have actually taken them through Jerusalem down into Jericho and landed in the same place either option is viable both options get our little family over to the territory of Moab so we keep reading now lilyc Naomi's husband died we're only in verse three folks this is a very economic telling of the tale and Naomi was left with her two sons now if we just pause the story of right here okay it would be said this is the loss of a soul mind this is the loss of a life partner there is grief this woman has just lost her man but she still got her two adult sons who are still healthy they're still able to farm their little plot of land she is still secure verse 4 they married mullah by women one named Orpah and the other Ruth by the way Oprah Oprah Winfrey she was supposed to be named Orpha and she will tell the tale if you look her up on YouTube that her family's literacy level was weak enough that when they pulled this name out of the Bible they accidentally switched the letters and no one in the family noticed until she was an adult and so she never changed the name back it's a lovely little clip search it sometime so Orpah and the other Ruth and after they had lived there about ten years okay so far so good they've married right it's not ideal they're not Israelite girls but they're nice girls verse five both masculine and Killian also died or five verses into the story and Naomi was left without her two sons and her husband oh my goodness at this moment the greatest tragedy that can happen to abate off to an extended family has happened every one of the men in this little cluster of humans has passed and so what we are looking at is a family that has become an unfamilar as Naomi had had every hope of a secure future a husband and two healthy married sons all of a sudden there's nothing she is stranded in a in land there is no patrimony she is widowed from her husband there's no link to the local economy she is bereaved of her sons there is no current support and there is no future hope of children naomi is left without any means to care for herself or for her recently widowed daughters-in-law guys this is not only a group of broken hearted women these are women in desperate serious trouble and so we keep reading when she heard in Moab that Yahweh had come to the aid of his people by providing food for them which means the famine has finally broken Naomi and her daughters-in-law prepared to return home from there so with her two daughters-in-law she left the place where she had been living and she set out on the road that would take them back to the land of Judah now Naomi's choice here is both a desperate choice and a strategic one she and her two daughters-in-law three women are gonna take that same route you saw on a map a few moments ago and they're gonna do it alone all right three women traveling alone today can be dangerous three women traveling alone in that day this is a desperate choice but it's also a strategic choice she is hoping that she's got kinsmen at home she's hoping that someone's gonna remember the patrimony of Allah Malak she's hoping that even after ten years of absence that there's someone in her family circle in her clan in her village that will actually step in and take care of her and so she turns to return to Judah all right as we keep reading then Naomi said to her daughters-in-law go back each of you to your mother's house may Yahweh show faithfulness and this is another Hebrew word that we're gonna need to work on it's the word Hesed and say it back to me let me hear it it's a little spit on that first stage this one has to do with covenant faithfulness and the idea that Yahweh has shown his grace to his family may Yahweh's show faithfulness to you as you have shown faithfulness to your dead into me may Yahweh grant that each of you will find rest in the home of another's husband and then she kissed them and she wept out loud think about the typical bit off as we have already studied when a patriarch like Elimelech dies who takes care of his widowed wife and his extended family who steps in to that spot and the answer would be the air it would be his first born son but in this scenario the firstborn son the heir has died as well so there's no one to step into that spot so there's no one to buy the patrimony back that would be the inalienable land law that we have already started studying there is no brother-in-law to impregnate his widowed sister-in-law and create an heir there's nothing and so Naomi is standing there realizing that she's got responsibility for these two girls but she's got nothing to give them and so in light of that she turns to them and says do not come with me I got nothing don't come with me stay here go back to your mother's house well we haven't had any exposure to the mother's house yet have we we know about the father's house that's the legal bed of what's a mother's house well the idea and and the theory here is that especially in a household that had more than one wife each of the wives would have had a private space within the household where she was raising her children unique from a second or a third wife who is raising their children and so what Naomi is doing is saying girls I've got nothing for you but I I think your mom's just out of compassion they're gonna find a way to get you back in to your household of origin so you go back to your mother's house and let your mom's intercede for you before your father of origin and let them try to find you a nice Moabite boy and get married again and start your lives over and forget about me because I've got nothing and nothing to offer you and so she kissed them and they wept out loud as the story continues the girls turned to her and they say no no we'll go back with you we'll go to your people so obviously there's a really good relationship here right both of these girls love their mother-in-law but Naomi says no return home my daughters why would you come with me look at the highlighted verse am I going to have any more sons who could become your husband's what is she talking about return home my daughters I'm too old to have another husband even if I thought there was still hope for me even if I had a husband tonight and then gave birth to sons would you wait until they grew up would you remain unmarried for them no my daughters it is more bitter for me than it is for you because y'all ways hand has gone out against me hmm wonder who Naomi is blaming all of this on at this they wept again and then Orpah kissed her mother-in-law and said goodbye but Ruth clung to her what does all that talk that naomi is offering this whole business about I have no more sons to give you I don't have a husband even if I got a husband tonight and even if I got pregnant what is she talking about folks what she's talking about is standard tribal law she is speaking of levirate law she knows that it's her responsibility to give these widows daughter widow daughters-in-law to another son but she didn't have another son and so she's saying look I don't even have a husband so miracle number one I get a husband tonight miracle number two I managed to get pregnant as an old lady who's already had my babies miracle number three I actually managed to produce a boy child are you gonna wait 20 years for that boy to grow up and marry you no it's hopeless girls go home and this is where we get our first exposure to ruse exceptional character then Orpah kissed her mother-in-law goodbye but Ruth clung to her this word cling is actually a technical term it's debauch in Hebrew and what it means is Ruth is expressing kinship fidelity to her mother-in-law in other words what she's saying is I don't care what the law is I don't care what the normative practices are I don't care what everybody else around us thinks ought to happen here you are my kin and you're not going anywhere without me and so Ruth goes on to give that so famous speech don't urge me to leave you or to turn back from you where you go I'm going where you stay I'm staying your people will be my people your God my God where you die I will die and there I will be buried folks we love this passage and we quoted a lot in marriage ceremonies and that's kind of sort of okay but really what we've got going here is the ultimate expression of tribal solidarity that's what's happening here Ruth is declaring for anyone who cares to listen and that's how legal actions often are accomplished in the ancient world she is announcing you are my kin period which means I live in your bed off which means I die and get buried in your family grave which means your gods my god I take care of you you take care of me you are not shaking me lady I'm right here Yahweh may he deal with me me ever so severely if I break this oath to you when Naomi realized that Ruth was determined to go with her she stopped urging her and so the two women went on until they came to Bethlehem all right so our two women travel alone on the road one quite elderly one fairly young and perhaps a little too cute for her own good we'll see where that goes as our storing this Ford and they arrive at Bethlehem now keep in mind that Bethlehem is a small town 200 250 people everybody knows everybody and everybody knows what happened just five minutes ago because it hit the prayer chain three minutes ago right you know this kind of town and so the women are out doing their daily chores are at the well they're in the fields and they see these two figures coming up over the hill and the first thing that catches their attention is they're women and they're traveling alone and the next thing that catches their attention is oh my gosh do you could that be she looks like oh my gosh it's Naomi and I love this particular image because I think it captures this moment where all the women of the town drop whatever it is they're doing and they run for Naomi and as they run for Naomi they're grabbing her they're kissing her they're hugging her they're all touching each other like good southerners you know how that works and they're saying but where's a little egg where where the boys Naomi what's going on when they arrived in Bethlehem the whole town was stirred because of them and the women exclaimed can this be Naomi and Naomi stands there with all of her oldest friends standing around her and she says don't call me Naomi because my name doesn't mean pleasant anymore call me Mara because the Almighty has made my life very bitter I went away full and I've come back empty why call me Naomi the Lord has afflicted me the Almighty has brought misfortune upon me now this is a very dramatic exchange I'm sure there were all sorts of tears and moments of tragedy I'm sure that the women who are acting and interacting with Naomi are grieving and overwhelmed there are some of them that are probably a little bit judgmental this is the gossip that's gonna take over this village for the next two weeks if you haven't left us in the first place maybe this wouldn't happen to Naomi or perhaps they're stepping away god forbid that this happened to me but in all of this exchange where is Ruth where's Ruth standing at this moment Ruth who's dressed in Moabite attire Ruth who again might be a little too cute for her own good Ruth who's afraid to speak up because her accents gonna give her away Ruth who's having a little trouble following the fast dialogue because at home she doesn't know he brewed this well I think Ruth is over here and I think Ruth is standing here very uncomfortable with their hands folded in front of her and she's watching and she's watching and all of a sudden she's watching these women notice her and one set of eyes after another after another locks on the young Moabite us who doesn't even have a name what I think I see in the story is an outsider's welcome and so the chapter ends so Naomi returned from Moab accompanied by Ruth comma the Moabite us her daughter-in-law arriving in Bethlehem as the barley harvest was beginning for our launch question at the end of this session I would like you to turn to the one next to you and ask them the question have you ever been the outsider prejudged by some external factor your skin your clothes your accent how did it feel take it away you

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Length: 44min 25sec (2665 seconds)

Published: Thu Jan 18 2018