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May 13, 2007
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Relationship
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Pastor Brian Shimer
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"Ruth and Naomi: the Kinsman Redeemer"
The Book of Ruth
- There is a verb in the Hebrew language from which we get our modern word "redemption". It is pronounced go'al. This verb comes from Israel's world. It emerges from the laws and social customs of the ancient tribal society of which the Hebrews were a part. To understand the term, you have to understand the culture from which it emerged. The distinction between our bureaucratic society and a tribal society is not that ours is more sophisticated, nor better, nor more complex. The distinction is in a wholly different approach to life.
Israelite society was tribal and in a tribal society family is absolutely central. Family was central like it can never be to us for then your job depended on your family, and your status in society depended on your family, and your ability to make a living depended on your family. There was no central government at this point in Israel's history. In this tribal culture there was no centralized government, no police officers, no magistrates, or head of planning and zoning. All of societal structure came through the family not the state!
The most important pieces of information about you then were: your gender, your father, and the place you fell in the family birth order.
If you came from a matriarchal society -- then gender most important would be female, for that would have made you a leader.
If you came from a patriarchal society then the gender that was most important was male, for it was through the male that all things were handled.
Israel was a patriarchal society. Now, God used such a society to reveal His plan and His desire for us, His people. We are not told to mimic the culture, but to understand it in order to comprehend what God is speaking into our lives. And as we look at the culture a moment, remember, this cultural system is not inherently bad, but it is different from ours. For the most part culture is neither good or bad, it just is.
So, had you been born in Israel in this era, you would have been born into a family, and in that family there would be the patriarch, either your father or grandfather and everything he said was the way things would be.
All authority over the household and responsibility over them rested on the patriarch. It was his privilege to say who lived, who died, and to defend, protect and maintain the family unit regardless of the costs.
The structure of your family would be centered around the patriarch who would be surrounded by his immediate family (usually to the 2nd generation) and these would live in a series of dwellings in a walled community called the Bet Ab - Bet is the Hebrew word for house, and Ab, which which we get the word "ABBA" means Father. So, it is a word meaning the "Father's House".
- The firstborn son of the Patriarch would be the one positioned to inherit a double-portion upon the death of the Patriarch. This was not an act of favoritism, but of necessity. This son would become the Patriarch after his father and so it would rest upon him to provide for and defend the Bet Ab.
To a tribal society, indeed to all societies until our modern day, the most important parts of your life were land and children. Everything centered around the land, the place, where your Bet Ab was located and the children born to you. These were the most important aspects of your life, so you would do all to protect these gifts to your life.
There were two laws which God gave to the Hebrews which were put in place to protect these gifts to their lives. The first was a law regarding the land - that promised that if a man had to sell his property because of property, then in the year of Jubilee it would be returned to him. This was an unheard of protection to the continuation of the Bet Ab of that family, even if for a period of years the land was lost due to poverty (Lev 25:25).
The other was the levirate law by which if a brother died without an heir, then his brother was to take the widow as his wife and father a child by her in his brother's name. This was a means to continue the brother's family line.
In addition to these laws there were multiple laws by which God provided directives to the Israelites to provide for the poor and widows among them. One of these was the command not to harvest a field twice but only once - so that all the sheaves and standing grain that was left would be available for the poor and aliens among them to glean from the crops.
- Now back to the verb "go'al" -- If a member of the Bet Ab was separated from it for whatever reason, the Patriarch was to risk all in order to bring that member back. This "bringing back into the Bet Ab" was to "go'al" this person.
Now, with that in place we can look at the situation we have just had read in the book of Ruth.
We have been told there was a man who lived in Bethlehem named Elimelech who married a woman named Naomi and had two sons with her. In the first 3 verses already we understand something about their lives - there is something wrong.
Even though the man's name meant "God is his King" he married a woman whose name meant "Pleasure" and had two sons whose names meant "pining" and "sickly". One commentator joined these together in this manner saying that when a man who is meant to have God as his King, instead turns to pleasure the results will be misery and ultimately, as we heard Naomi say, the result will be bitterness.
But the circumstances that Naomi finds herself in by the 5th verse is more devastating than can be communicated. Here not only her husband dies but both sons. Gone is any hope of provision for her life. She is a nobody, outside the Bet Ab, with no means to return to a Bet Ab. She can return to her home country, but only as a nobody, in great "bitterness" as she says of herself in this first chapter.
In that era in Israel, there was no employment for women. So it was a desperate circumstance.
Now you heard her plan to return to Israel and she encourages her daughters in law not to go with her for she says to them in verse 11, "Why would you come with me?" and then quotes from the Levirate Law by which they would need to wait for a brother of one of the two who died to become their husbands in order to bring them into a Bet Ab.
You know that Orpah (who is the biblical character after which the Oprah is named except the letters got reversed!) did return to her home, but Ruth does not.
With no promise of any future except that of being poor and destitute, still Ruth gives us this incredible picture of faithfulness to her mother in law. Rather Ruth is saying I know the rules of the bet ab, that she ought to return to her father's house, but instead desires to be Naomi's daughter, saying: "Your people will be my people and your God my God. Where you die, I will die, and there I will be buried. May the Lord deal with me, be it ever so severely, if anything but death separates you and me."
What a promise to make - what a picture of deep and abiding friendship between these women. The word says in verse 14 that Ruth "clung" to her mother in law - a verb picturing a depth of commitment, as a wife and husband are to cling to one another and as we are to cling to the Lord.
- Now remember the Levirate law which said a brother must redeem the widow from her distress by taking her into his Bet Ab and raising a child by her in the dead husband's name. So, the story of Ruth unfolds that she goes to glean in the fields and ends up in the field of a man who is a relative of Elimilech's named Boaz. Boaz has already heard how this girl has shown such faithfulness to Naomi and tells her to glean only from his field so that she can be protected.
So in the second chapter we watch as a friendship develops between these two. Naomi sees this as an opportunity for redemption telling Ruth that Boaz is "one of our Kinsman redeemers". This literally means that he is the one with the "right to redeem". So, he is able to put the levirate law into action.
Naomi tells Ruth to go to the threshing floor and note where Boaz is sleeping, uncover his feet and then wait until he awakens. Ruth tells Boaz in 3:9: "I am your servant Ruth. Spread the corner of your garment over me, since you are a kinsman-redeemer." This is not a risqué action, at all, but one in line with the law of Israel - she is offering herself to him so that he may redeem her, he may cover her by bringing her into his Bet Ab.
But Boaz says there is a closer relative who must first be given the opportunity. So, the next day he goes to ask this man if he will buy back the property. This is part of the land law which allows a relative to redeem property for the one who has lost it. However, since he would also need to redeem Ruth with the property, this man refuses to do so, which leaves Boaz next in line. So, he "go'al"ed Ruth and Naomi. He thus was bringing their lives back to them, he was redeeming them so that the name will not be cut off. (Ruth 4:9-10). Then with Ruth conceived the child, Obed, whose name means worship, who was the grandfather to King David.
- Now, to redeem Ruth meant that Boaz had to buy the land back for her family. This redemption cost him something and he paid the price and gained his bride Ruth in the process. To "go'al" someone, costs something.
When Abraham's nephew Lot is captured and taken away with all his entire Bet Ab in the book of Genesis, Abraham takes his entire household numbering 300 men and goes and fights for Lot's rescue and restores him. It cost Abraham something to do this, but as the patriarch he does it, he "go'al"s Lot!
When the prophet Hosea is told by God to go and buy back his wife who had left him again and entered into prostitution, he most likely had to go to the market to buy her back. She was possibly being sold in the slave market, but he does it, it cost him something to do it, but he go'al's her, he redeems her.
So, redemption is the act of the patriarch, the one in power, the one with resources, bringing someone who has been marginalized through difficult life circumstances, bringing them back into the bet ab, giving them the protection of the bet ab, providing them with a place, inheritance, security.
Listen anew to John 14: 1-2 in the context of this reality - what Jesus is speaking of is not a mansion in heaven, but a place in the Father's house and if in the Father's house, then in a place of safety from all that can harm us.
As Peter wrote, "For you know that it was not with perishable things such as silver or gold that you were redeemed from the empty way of life handed down to you from your forefathers, but with the precious blood of Christ, a lamb without blemish or defect…" (1:18-19).
Another view of this great action seen in this book is visible through the meaning of the names used for the characters.
When Elimelech, "my God is king" married Naomi, "pleasure" he fell into the bitterness of death. Out of that comes Ruth, in the beauty of humility, taking her place as a destitute stranger, dependent upon the grace of Boaz, "the strong one, the one of wealth and strength." He redeems her and binds her to himself in marriage. When "beauty" is married to "strength," the house is filled with "worship. That seems to picture the message of the redemption given by God through Jesus, our Boaz-the one who had the right to redeem, to go'al us (this observation from notes on Ruth by Ray Steadman, "The romance of Ruth").
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