Social and Religious Life in Bethlehem in the Days of Judges -The Story of Ruth - King David's Ancestors

(THE BOOK OF RUTH)

YET another story of a very different kind from that of Samson remains to be told. It comes upon us with

such sweet contrast, almost like a summer's morning after a night of wild tempest. And yet without this story

our knowledge of that period would be incomplete. It was "in the days when the ju dges judged" 321 - near

the close of that eventful period. West of the Jordan, Jair and Eli held sway in Israel, while east of the river

the advancing tide of Ammon had not yet been rolled back by Jephthah, the Gileadite. Whether the

incursions of the Ammonites had carried want and wretchedness so far south into Judah as Bethlehem

(Judges 10:9), or whether it was only due to strictly natural causes, there was a "famine in the land," and this

became, in the wonder-working Providence of God, one of the great links in the history of the kingdom of

Bearing in mind the general characteristics of the period, and such terrible instances of religious apostasy

and moral degeneracy as those recorded in the two Appendices to the Book of Judges (Judges 17-21), we

turn with a feeling of intense relief to the picture of Jewish life presented to us in the Book of Ruth.323

Sheltered from scenes of strife and semi -heathenism, the little village of Bethlehem had retained among its

inhabitants the purity of their ancestral faith and the simplicity of primitive manners.

Here, embosomed amidst the hills of Judah, where afterwards David pastured his father's flocks, and where

shepherds heard angels hail the birth of "David's greater Son," we seem to feel once again the healthful

breath of Israel's spirit, and we see what moral life it was capable of fostering alike in the individual and in

the family. If Boaz was, so to speak, the patriarch of a village, in which the old Biblical customs were

continued, the humblest homes o f Bethlehem must have preserved true Israelitish piety in its most attractive

forms. For, unless the Moabitess Ruth had learned to know and love the land and the faith of Israel in the

Bethlehemite household of Elimelech, transported as it was for a time into the land of Moab, she would not

have followed so persistently her mother-in-law, away from her own home, to share her poverty, to work, if

need be, even to beg, for her. And from such ancestry, nurtured under such circumstances, did the

shepherd king o f Israel spring, the ancestor and the type of the Lord and Savior of men. These four things,

then, seem the object of the Book of Ruth: to present a supplement by way of contrast to the Book of

Judges; to show the true spirit of Israel; to exhibit once more the mysterious connection between Israel and

the Gentiles, whereby the latter, at the most critical periods of Israel's history, seem most unexpectedly called

in to take a leading part; and to trace the genealogy of David. Specially perhaps the latter two. For, as one

has beautifully remarked: 324 If, as regards its contents, the Book of Ruth stands on the threshold of the

history of David, yet, as regards its spirit, it stands, like the Psalms, at the threshold of the Gospel. Not

merely on account of the genealogy of Christ, which leads up to David and Boaz, but on account of the

spirit which the teaching of David breathes, do we love to remember that Israel's great king sprang from the

union of Boaz and Ruth, which is symbolical of that between Israel and the Gentile world.

Everything about this story is of deepest interest - the famine in Bethlehem, "the house of bread," evidently

caused, as afterwards its removal, by the visitation of God (Ruth 1:6); the hints about the family of

Elimelech; even their names: Elimelech, "my God is king;" his wife, Naomi, "the pleasant," and their sons

Mahlon (or rather Machlon) and Chilion (rendered by some "the weak," "the faint;" by others "the jubilant,"

"the crowned").325

The family is described as "Ephrathites of Bethlehem-judah." The expression is apparently intended to

convey, that the family had not been later immigrants, but original Jewish settlers - or, as the Jewish

commentator have it, patrician burghers of the ancient Ephrath, or "fruitfulness" (Genesis 35:19; 48:7; comp.

1 Samuel 17:12; Micah 5:2). At one time the family seems to have been neither poor nor of inconsiderable