How bitter should we be toward God? We face famine, displacement, death of loved ones, destitution and even exile to a foreign land. When will God show up?
Naomi is a sad study: during famine in Israel, her husband moves the family east into Moab, her husband dies, her sons marry Moabite women and then before she has grandchildren, both sons die. She is a widow in a foreign country that doesn’t favor widows or Jews. Life is hard; she hears that the famine in Israel has lessened and determines to go back to where life began. Only one daughter-in-law is committed to loving her and desires to go with her. Life is so difficult that when she returns back to Bethlehem and is recognized as Naomi she says she now identifies as Mara ‘for the Almighty has dealt bitterly with me’ (play on words: Naomi means pleasant, Mara means bitter).
They have nothing. Everything, all the rights, died with the husbands. Naomi is too old for field work but the daughter-in-law, Ruth, goes out to work the opportunity provided in Mosaic law to glean in harvest fields. 1
What good could possibly come from so much loss, such suffering, such deprivation, such poverty? Through a series of God-shows-up moments, God’s providence has Ruth gleaning in a field belonging to a relative of Naomi’s deceased husband. That man, Boaz, takes notice of the character of Ruth and her care of Naomi and makes the way for them to share in his harvest. When it becomes evident Boaz is second in line with rights as kinsman-redeemer to Naomi’s husband and sons’ property, Boaz works to secure that right for the benefit of Naomi and Ruth under Boaz’s care. Once he has the right, he then proceeds to marry Ruth.
Now, Ruth is an alien, an immigrant, a foreigner, a Moabitess yet when you read the end of the story, you find a child is born to Ruth and Boaz. The townswomen visit Naomi—
Yes, this David becomes King David and when you read the genealogies of Jesus’s earthly family, Boaz and Ruth are part of the Davidic heritage. Life isn’t always as it may seem. ‘Obed’ the name of the son of Boaz and Ruth means ‘serving’ and just maybe this all served the Lᴏʀᴅ and was ‘fruitful’ for His purposes.