Story of Ruth
Book from Old Testament

A man named Elimelech, from Bethlehem-Judah, left his hometown when a famine struck. He and his wife Naomi, along with their two sons Mahlon and Chilion, left for Moab. Elimelech died, leaving Naomi with her two sons.

These two sons married Moabite women: Orpah and Ruth. Ten years passed, and Mahlon and Chilion both died. Naomi decided to return to Judah, hearing that the famine had passed, but she entreated her sisters-in-law to remain in their homeland of Moab. After all, this was their home, and why should they accompany her back to her homeland now their husbands were dead? They have a house in Moab and will be provided for.

Although both women initially pledged to stay with Naomi, Naomi urged them to leave her, Orpah agreed weepingly. But Ruth stayed by Naomi's side and vowed to accompany her back to Judah. Back in Judah, there was wealthy relative of Naomi's dead husband, a man named Boaz. Ruth went into the field to gather corn for the harvest, where she caught the eye of Boaz. Boaz promised to treat Ruth, an outsider in the land of Judah, as an equal, and welcomed her. Ruth was overcome by his kindness, and asked what she, a stranger, had done to deserve it. Boaz replied that he had heard how she left behind her own parents in Moab to accompany her mother-in-law into a strange land.

Ruth went home to her mother-in-law that evening, and told her what had happened. Naomi told Ruth that Boaz was a near-kinsman, and as such he will protect and provide for them. Ruth went to Boaz that night and knelt at his feet. She told him she was his handmaid and they were kin. Boaz replied that there was a man who was an even closer kinsman to her than he was, and this other man had, essentially, first refusal on whether he wished to marry Ruth. However, if this other man said he didn't want to marry Ruth, Boaz declared he would happily do so. And he gave her six measures of corn to take back to Naomi as pledge.

Boaz called a counsel of elders, including this other kinsman of Ruth's, and explained that Naomi had her dead husband's parcel of land to sell, but that if the kinsman wished to claim it, he must also agree to marry Ruth. There followed a strange custom involving a shoe, whereby a man 'plucked off his shoe' and handed it to his neighbour if he wished to forgo his claim to something. This was a kind of 'testimony in Israel' in those days, we are told, a legal ritual which sealed the deal.

So this other man took off his shoe and gave it to Boaz, signaling that he relinquished all claim to Ruth or her dead father-in-law's land. Marrying Ruth would damage his own inheritance from his father (presumably for marrying a Moabite foreigner) so he declined. Boaz announced that he would marry Ruth, and they promptly got married, and Ruth had a son. This son, we are told, in turn had a son named Jesse, who himself had a son, named David.

The End