*Originally published in Oikonomos, January 2023. Recommended for reading alongside the book of Ruth. <3
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Dunkirk. Remember Dunkirk?
The 400,000 Allied soldiers backed against the ocean, riddled with gunfire, with no hope of rescue? Remember the Nazi war machine closing in on them? Remember how with the incoming extermination of England's finest soldiers, it seemed that the hope of the free world was gone? How only a bit of ocean and some white cliffs stood between the world as we knew it and the world that Hitler wanted it to be? Remember the Darkest Hour, when pulling out was the only sane move, and even that hope was snuffed out by crippled manpower and a fast sinking Navy, passing days punctuated by failed attempts to lift men off the beach?
The free world went to the rescue of those men at Dunkirk. Fishing boats and private yachts from across England stepped up to save them. A hopeless situation, forever dubbed "a colossal military disaster" by Winston Churchill, was overturned piece by piece, one obstacle after another, and history proves that something far superior can rise from the brink of disaster – the thing called hope.
Walter Lord, in his fine book The Miracle of Dunkirk, states, "It is customary to look on Dunkirk as a series of days. Actually, it should be regarded as a series of crises. Each crisis was solved, only to be replaced by another, with the pattern repeated again and again. It was the collective refusal of men to be discouraged by this relentless sequence that is important."
The refusal to be discouraged equaled no giving up. The defensive situation of Britain, post-Dunkirk, led to a national patriotism unparalleled since. The whole story, each crisis in the rearview, led to a countermeasure, with more allies, more ammo, better plans, and a "go" on June 6th, 1944 on the beaches of Normandy.
Yes, Dunkirk was in 1940. D-Day, as we call it, was the Allied comeback in 1944.
D-Day fascinated me as a little girl. Hitler's Nazi army running helter-skelter fit my ideal world where good guys stormed beaches and bad guys ran; it fit the world where Roy Rogers drove the outlaws out of town, justice rolled on like raging waters, and righteousness like a never-failing stream. But grown up, with a little more real world behind me, it's Dunkirk that stills my heart, stirs my soul, and holds up a deeply instructive reflection of my own life. It's a reflection that an epic story of victory couldn't give me because you understand, and most of the time, our lives consist of Dunkirks and we are of the overrun, and not those who storm beaches.
Well, all of this about Dunkirk is a preface to another story. Some may wonder if this is about to be my story, and the reason I've been silent for two years. I considered writing that. But if I'm honest, none of our stories are over so long as we breathe. The mysteries of God's intentions in the shadowlands of my life, suffering, and even "burning edge of dawn" are far from fully revealed. What it is to live more than conquering, utterly convinced of His love, with a life kept and held in His hand is a thing I learn more about every day. To try to encapsulate a season of loss and learning and present it in some beneficial way would be akin to being a puffed up and "chairborne" intern at a one-dimensional battlemap of French beaches, playing with lives and disaster because I can, not because I should. Our stories can wait; I also am waiting. Instead, I will tell the story that changed me. A story that holds the same muscular heartbeat as the Dunkirk story, but also holds the electricity. By electricity, I mean, the source of all hope.
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Ruth. Remember Ruth?
The story really starts before she enters the picture. It starts before the book opens. It really starts before the beginning of time, when the God who has no beginning or end created mankind and initiated a plan to save a sinful human people and reconcile them to Himself – a holy and righteous God.
The face of those being rescued, the type and precursor to all who would repent and turn to God throughout the ages, was the people of Israel - a nation who historically covenanted to follow the God of their fathers, who lived under His divine care and law. These are the same Israelites who, after receiving God's promise to bring them into the “Promised Land", spent four hundred years as slaves in Egypt, where God's promise became a distant memory. They were then freed and led out of Egypt "by signs and wonders" and the mighty hand of God, but instead of taking a direct route to back to this “Promised Land”, they wandered forty years in the wilderness, thinking again that this God had failed them. A generation died before the Jordan River split in two and the Israelites crossed over to take possession of the land God had promised them. They recommitted themselves to following the law of God, and were exhorted to, "Fear the Lord and serve Him in sincerity and faithfulness. Put away the gods that your fathers served beyond the River and in Egypt, and serve the Lord" (Joshua 24:14).
In the years that followed, there was a cycle: God blessed and delivered His people when they sought and obeyed Him and He judged them when they turned away. The nations around were a temptation that led them astray morally, and then a thorn in their side to attack and enslave them physically. Deliverers, called "judges", emerged to defend the people and lead them back to the ways of God. The general landscape is summed up in Judges 21:25: “In those days there was no king in Israel. Everyone did what was right in his own eyes.”
It was in this Promised Land, "in the days when the judges ruled" (Ruth 1:1) that the story of Ruth opens.
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Chapter One: Empty
The Bible is not full of superheroes and D-Day events. Neither is the book of Ruth. The opening scene is desolate: there is a famine in the Promised Land, a couple with two sons leaves to resettle in the pagan land of Moab. The husband dies, the sons marry Moabite women, the women are barren, and then the sons die. The one Israelite left is Naomi – a widowed wife and bereaved mother – in a foreign land.
In an ideal world, she really shouldn't have been there. Famine in Israel was a sign of God’s judgment (Deuteronomy 28:38-40). Repentance and obedience were the hope of Israel and Naomi's family, not fleeing the Promised Land (Deuteronomy 28:1-6). Israel had been commanded not to mix with the nations around them, not to go after their gods or share in their evil. Descendants of Lot and his oldest daughter, the Moabite people were the offspring of incest. After the Moabites sent Balaam to prophesy judgment on Israel, the Lord declared “no…Moabite may enter the assembly of the Lord” (Deuteronomy 23). Judges 3 records that the Moabites had enslaved the Israelites for eighteen years. Jeremiah prophesied the utter destruction of Moab for their sins: “Moab shall be destroyed and be no longer a people, because he magnified himself against the Lord” (Jeremiah 48). The god of Moab, Chemosh, would be metaphorically “exiled” (verse 7), and “Moab shall be ashamed of Chemosh” (verse 13). To marry a Moabite was more than a temptation to follow the shameful god of Moab; it brought unclean blood into the Israelite offspring, the line of the promised Redeemer and Messiah.
Why did a pagan land seem better than the Promised Land of Israel? Why did Naomi’s family forsake their inheritance with the people of God and wander?
Sin runs deep in this story, together with desperation. Now, with sadness running deeper still, in verse 6 Naomi hears that "the Lord had visited His people and given them food" and she prepares to return to Bethlehem, her hometown known as "the city of bread". Her daughters-in-law, women of Moab named Orpah and Ruth, want to go with her. She says don't, stay back, it's not worth it.
Several phrases in this section reveal the heart of Naomi. Several phrases reveal the tendency of our own hearts when we're being pushed off of beaches instead of attacking them.
First, she urges the Moabite girls to stay, and asks the Lord to “deal kindly” with them as they had dealt kindly with her dead family and with herself (verse 8). Evidently, Naomi believes the Lord is able to deal kindly with people, even people who don’t belong to Him. But in verse 20, we find a different belief about the Lord's dealings with herself: "the Almighty has dealt very bitterly with me." She believes He has dealt with her in a different way than He could deal with them. She feels that her end of the stick is short, her cup does not overflow.
Second, she remembers the provision of God’s law for widowed women, which states that if a woman is widowed, the dead man’s brother could marry her to continue the bloodline and provide protection for her (Deuteronomy 25:5-10). In this situation, she believes God doesn’t have a provision, explaining in verses 12 and 13: “If I should say I have hope, even if I should have a husband this night and should bear sons, would you therefore wait till they were grown? … No, my daughters, for it is exceedingly bitter to me for your sake that the hand of the Lord has gone out against me.”
Third, she is changed by the tragedy in her life. Instead of reflecting on the famine in Israel and the reason her family left, she reflects on the losses she encountered in Moab. Her description of life is in verse 21: “I went away full, and the Lord has brought me back empty. Why call me Naomi, when the Lord has testified against me and the Almighty has brought calamity upon me?” Her name, Naomi, meant pleasant. She asks to be called Mara, which means bitter.
Several phrases in the section tell a parallel but different story:
When Naomi urges the Moabite girls to return, Orphah goes back “to her people and to her gods” (verse 15). Ruth doesn’t. Something has happened to her, something that changed her identity. She says she’s going to live in Israel, is joining the people of Israel, and intends to follow the God of Israel. Further, she plans to die in Israel: “May the Lord do so to me and more also if anything but death parts me and you” (verse 17). Despite the fact she is an outcast and foreigner, despite the fact that there is no hope of marriage, family, or offspring for her, and despite the fact that all she has heard of the God of Israel seems to be skewed by Naomi’s burnt-out and bereaved perspective, she sets herself to follow Him.
Despite their different stories and perspectives, this chapter highlights what both women believe about God. Despite her sorrow, Naomi still believes that God is on the throne, and sovereign over the blessings and curses of her life. Despite great personal cost, Ruth believes that God is worthy of her trust, devotion and life. These women are not walking away from God, but both turn their feet and hearts towards Him even as they re-cross Jordan and enter Bethlehem, the geographic epicenter of hope and coming redemption.
The stage for God’s merciful providence in their lives is uniquely set in the final verse: “They came to Bethlehem at the beginning of barley harvest (verse 22).”
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Chapter Two: Staging
The story doesn’t automatically switch from Dunkirk to D-Day when these women return to the land of Israel. Naomi is rebuilding her life from the ground up as a widow – so is Ruth. She is also an unwanted foreigner, has no name or title in Israel, and her lineage is pagan. Ruth apparently believes that even if life held nothing else for her, to dwell in the land of God in the shadow of the Almighty, was worthy of her life.
It seems to me that the backdrop of this chapter is Psalm 138:6: “Though the Lord is high, He regards the lowly.”
First, we see the kindness of God on display. God built provision for foreigners into the laws and traditions of Israel (see Leviticus 19:9-10). In Israel, where all land was divided by family and passed down by inheritance, the Israelites were commanded not to harvest to the edges of their field, not to glean twice, and not to strip their vineyards bare. The excess was to be left for the foreigners; this was the law. The rationale is in Deuteronomy 10:18-19: “[God] executes justice for the fatherless and the widow, and loves the sojourner, giving him food and clothing. Love the sojourner, therefore, for you were sojourners in the land of Egypt.” The law reflects the justice and love in the heart of God and it reminds the Israelites that when they were foreigners and slaves in Egypt, they were not forgotten by the Lord. He didn’t give them the option of forgetting the foreigners among them. There is no other god like this.
Second, we see the kindness of a man whose heart was devoted to God on display. The first mention of him (in Ruth 2:1) uses one adjective: “worthy”. When Ruth the foreigner went out to glean in the fields of Israel, she “happened to come to the part of the field belonging to Boaz, who was of the clan of Elimelech”. This worthy man was an apparently forgotten relative of Naomi. In the next verses, Boaz demonstrates more than a grudging obedience to the law of God; it seems that he truly delights in it. He asks Ruth to stay in his field, he commands his field hands not to bother her, to pull out extra grain and leave it behind for her. He gives her access to clean water and lunch, and when all was said and done, she walks away from his field with twenty-two liters of barley grain.
Naomi’s heart seems softer when Ruth comes home. She blesses Boaz the man, but more importantly, she says something different about God – that His “kindness has not forsaken the living or the dead” (verse 20). Ruth walked into a black future expecting God to be greater than all the gods of Moab; Naomi came home to Israel expecting that they were wholly forgotten. As Ruth is met by the mercy of this God, Naomi’s narrative and Naomi’s heart begin to change.
In the middle of this chapter is perhaps the most beautiful passage in the entire book. Verses 10-13 find Ruth on her face before Boaz, asking why he has chosen to be gracious to her, “since I am a foreigner?” His response: he knew that she had left everything, he knew of her love and care for her mother-in-law, and far from calling her an outcast, he says, “The Lord repay you for what you have done, and a full reward be given you by the Lord, the God of Israel, under whose wings you have come to take refuge” (verse 12).
Is it romance? Is it mercy? Is this where Dunkirk fades out to D-Day? I think it’s just a whisper of redemption, grace and hope in a field of barley – over a thousand years before Christ came to bring thunder to the whispers, to die for the sins of His people, and to make the Gospel promise extend beyond the borders of Israel to every tribe and tongue and nation (Malachi 1:5, Romans 10:12-13, Revelation 7:9).
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Chapter Three: Hope
Chapter Three is where the story takes a turn. While some believe this chapter unfolds with deep and almost sexual romance, a historical lens doesn’t really suggest that. Further, a proper hermeneutic doesn’t allow us to walk away from this chapter with a recipe for “biblical courtship”; not all descriptions in the Bible are prescriptions, or instructions for how we ought to live. When we approach the chapter with proper questions, we walk away instructed and uplifted by glimpses of God and the kindness of a man after God’s heart.
The short story is that Naomi desires to “seek rest” for Ruth in the house of husband. She instructs the young widow to go to the threshing floor of Boaz after dark, to lay at his feet, and in effect, ask for more from him than she could ever give.
This is where historical context comes into play. More than proposing marriage, Ruth was stepping into a key aspect of Israelite culture and taking up the values of the people of God. In a nation where family names and bloodlines were everything, the cessation of a family (i.e. the line of Elimelech, Naomi’s husband) was beyond tragic. The law made provision in which the nearest relative (usually a brother of the dead man) could marry a widow, and their firstborn son would be dedicated to continuing the family line of the dead, “that his name may not be blotted out of Israel” (Deuteronomy 25:6). A close relative could also buy back the allotted property of a dead man (Leviticus 25:25).
Tradition calls this the law of the goel, and the relative himself a “redeemer”, a “kinsman redeemer”, a “family redeemer”, and a “guardian-redeemer”. It seems this man, the goel, was not required to take up the widow and redeem her family property. In order for this to happen, he not only had to be a close relative, but he had to be both willing and able to fulfill the role. With an understanding of God’s lawful provision on one hand, and faith that despite her foreign status it could be for her, the woman at the feet of her potential goel says, “I am Ruth, your servant. Spread your wings over your servant, for you are a redeemer” (verse 9).
Some people say Ruth is proposing marriage. In effect, she is. But much deeper, she is going to the man who prayed that she find refuge under the wings of God and asking him to be an extension of those wings, to mercifully redeem her family line, to provide for her a hope and a future.
Boaz does not refuse. He says that all the town knows her as a “worthy woman” (this echoes chapter 2:1 in which he is called a “worthy man”), and calls her request a “kindness” because she did not go after a younger man. After telling her not to be afraid and that he will “do for you all that you ask” (verse 11), he reveals the catch. There is another relative who is closer to her. “Remain tonight,” he instructs, “and in the morning, if he will redeem you, good; let him do it. But if he is not willing to redeem you, then, as the Lord lives, I will redeem you. Lie down until the morning” (verse 13). She stayed at his feet. In the morning, before it was light, he sent her away with six measures of barley, saying, “You must not go back empty-handed to your mother-in-law” (verse 17).
In her despair, Naomi had forgotten Boaz. She had also forgotten this other relative who was closer in the bloodline. In Chapter One, we found her in the wake of famine and death saying that there was no hope of a family and future for her daughters-in-law; in Chapter One, she changes her name to Mara because “the Lord has brought me back empty”. But when Ruth returns from the threshing floor of Boaz, there are two potential redeemers for their family and grain to fill her hands.
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Chapter Four: Redemption
The first part of Chapter Four is methodical. Boaz goes to the city gate and calls the other kinsman-redeemer aside. He lays out half the facts: Naomi is selling Elimelech’s property and a relative can redeem it. The unnamed relative feels that gaining more property is advantageous to his family line and says that he will buy it. But then Boaz lays out the rest of the facts: “The day you buy the field from the hand of Naomi, you also acquire Ruth the Moabite, the widow of the dead, in order to perpetuate the name of the dead in his inheritance” (verse 5).
The unnamed relative feels that marrying a foreign woman and building the family name of another man is not advantageous to him and concludes he cannot redeem the land or Ruth (and by this, his own name is lost to history). After the other relative steps back, Boaz declares his purchase of the land, that he is marrying Ruth and that the names of Elimelech, Chilion and Mahlon will be perpetuated. The people blessed them and said, “We are witnesses” (verses 11-12).
The second part of Chapter Four glances at the future. Ruth, who had been barren for ten years in the land of Moab, conceives a son named Obed (meaning, “servant of God”). More than barley, this child is placed in Naomi’s hands, and the women of Bethlehem now say, “Blessed be the Lord, who has not left you this day without a redeemer, and may his name be renowned in Israel! He shall be to you a restorer of life and a nourisher of your old age, for your daughter-in-law, who loves you, who is more to you than seven sons, has given birth to him” (verses 14-15).
Is this D-Day? Is this where all tragedy and retreat turns to all joy and victory in the story of Naomi? Does Ruth sail through the rest of life with no pain? Despite the beauty of redemption and the hand of God here, the world they live in is still a fallen place, past wounds still bleed, children are still born in iniquity. The fall of Adam is not reversed in the three pages that tell us about Ruth and Naomi and Boaz. But there is another whisper of the Second Adam in the last verses of the book:
“Now these are the generations of Perez: Perez fathered Hezron, Hezron fathered Ram, Ram fathered Amminadab, Amminadab fathered Nahshon, Nahshon fathered Salmon, Salmon fathered Boaz, Boaz fathered Obed, Obed fathered Jesse, and Jesse fathered David” (Ruth 4:18-22).
This is the King David to whom it was said: “When your days are complete and you lie down with your fathers, I will raise up your descendant after you, who will come forth from you, and I will establish His kingdom. He shall build a house for My name, and I will establish the throne of His kingdom forever” (2 Samuel 7:12-13).
This “descendant”: Jesus Christ, the Messiah, the Redeemer, the ultimate Goel.
In Matthew 1, in “the genealogy of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham”, only five women are listed among forty-two generations: one of them is Ruth, the Moabite, foreign, impoverished, and mostly-hopeless case.
This Jesus, fully God yet fully man, perfect in every way, was the only one in a position to bridge the gap between man and God. According to the eternal purpose of God and the mystery of His will, He came as a willing sacrifice to lay down His life for His own. He had the power to shake the dominion of Satan, destroy the power of sin, bear the wrath of God, overcome the grave and so be able to redeem men for God. The position, willingness, and power of Jesus Christ to redeem is the ultimate revelation of the kindness and mercy of God – the Old Testament whisper of a Goel that burst out in amazing grace when the fullness of time had come.
This Jesus, with power to redeem all hopeless cases and souls from all Israel and the furthest seas, stood over Jerusalem a thousand years after Ruth sought refuge under the wings of God and declared that He longed to gather the people “as a hen gathers her brood under her wings” (Luke 13:34). During His time in Israel He walked with sinners, foreigners and outcasts, and called all men everywhere to repent and believe the Gospel, for “God made Him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in Him we might become the righteousness of God” (2 Corinthians 5:21). The laws of God, which poured grace on Ruth, were shown to be “our schoolmaster to bring us unto [this] Christ” (Galatians 3:24), for the compassion of the Lord seen dimly a thousand years before was made flesh in the Savior. This Savior came “not to abolish the law but to fulfill it” (Matthew 5:17) on our behalf, so that unclean people, and even pagan people, could be made righteous through the merit of the Beloved Son.
Psalm 138:6: “The Lord is high, but He regards the lowly.”
He is the hope.
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Conclusion:
He is the hope. He is the point of the book of Ruth, and He is the point of whatever beachhead you’re being pushed off of, foreign land you’re wandering through, heartbreak you can’t leave behind, or theological questions you’re left to deal with.
The situation may have no explanation. The wilderness may never be anything but wilderness. The heartbreak may always feel like heartbreak. Sometimes the questions only produce more questions. Your Dunkirk may never be anything but Dunkirk. But there are no dead-ends in His kingdom, and there is a symphony unfolding.
To me, the book of Ruth isn’t just a biblical story; it is a glimpse into the heart, power and purpose of God.
It is not a promise that all will be well in your lifetime; it is a reminder that Jesus is coming and shall reign forever.
It doesn’t directly deal with the flaws of Naomi’s theology; it leaves her in awe at the kindness of God.
It doesn’t explain how the “promise” was for foreigners as well as Israelites; it simply brings Ruth into the bloodline of the Messiah.
It is not a call to forget pain; it is a reminder to lift your eyes.
It doesn’t say that if you go into a field, you will find a husband; it says God does not forget His own.
It doesn’t say that every person will see redemption unfold before their eyes on planet earth; it says that ultimate redemption will astound you every time.
It says, “Be strong, take heart, and wait for the Lord (Psalm 27:14).”
It says, “They who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings like eagles; they shall run and not be weary; they shall walk and not faint (Is. 40:31).”
It reminds us that the Messiah Who came will come again. That the dead in Christ will rise. That this world was never supposed to be home. That eternity is nearer now than it ever was. That true faith will not be overcome. That our Redeemer, our Goel, lives, and is called “faithful and true”. That storms of destruction may pass by and leave devastation in their wake, but the Lord will not pass you by.
Ruth is an invitation to choose to lift your eyes. It is an invitation to behold your God. It is an invitation to find refuge under His wings, however your life unfolds. It is an invitation to hold fast to the superior, never-failing hope that God is God and He does not change.
“Be merciful to me, O God, be merciful to me, for in you my soul takes refuge; in the shadow of your wings I will take refuge, till the storms of destruction pass by” (Psalm 57:1).
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