Who Would Have Dreamed?

Read Ruth 4:13–15

IT’S ALL ABOUT THE BABY

Birth announcements are big business these days: baby scan photos, gender
reveal balloons, elaborate Facebook statuses. But today, in Ruth, we have an
altogether different birth announcement.
The last half of the book has been an exciting ‘will-they-won’t-they’ buildup to the coming together of Ruth and Boaz. Yet with seeming breakneck
speed (spot the five verbs in quick succession in verse 13!), we rush past the
wedding celebration, straight past the consummation and so quickly
discover the narrator’s real interest: ‘the Lord enabled [Ruth] to conceive,
and she gave birth to a son’ (v. 13). It’s all about the baby.

UNTO US A SON IS GIVEN

Only twice in Ruth does the narrator describe ‘the Lord’ (Exodus 34:6–7)
doing something. Each one is significant and together they bookend the
story. The first occurs when the Lord ends the famine and provides bread for
his people (1:6). The second comes here, as the Lord enables Ruth to
conceive (v. 13).
Boaz was probably at least a generation older than Ruth, and we know
Ruth had no children from the ten years of her first marriage. Yet the Lord
provides a child.
And so the women of Bethlehem burst forth in praise. They remember
when ‘empty’ and unrecognisable Naomi returned heartbroken to
Bethlehem (1:19). Now, they celebrate that the Lord hasn’t left Naomi
‘without a guardian-redeemer’ (v. 14).
But hang on, why this focus on ‘a guardian-redeemer’? Have they started
talking about Boaz again? What about the baby?

THE REDEEMER IS HERE

As we ponder the women’s words, though, we see it is very much the baby
they have in mind: ‘For your daughter-in-law, who loves you and who is
better to you than seven sons, has given him birth’ (v. 15, my italics).
Of course, what Boaz did was incredibly noble, but only an heir could
secure Naomi and Elimelek’s family line and inheritance. Now that this heir
has been born, the party can really start!
Just look at this baby’s job description: ‘He will renew your life and sustain
you in your old age’ (v. 15). The word ‘renew’ here is the same as ‘return’,
used repeatedly in chapter 1. Just as the Lord had ‘returned’ Naomi to the
promised land, this child reconnects Naomi into an everlasting inheritance
that ‘returns’ her life to her.

KINDNESS ENFLESHED IN KINDNESS

Read verse 15 again and note how the women, with a moving display of
respect to this baby’s mother, highlight Ruth’s role in Naomi’s life: ‘For your
daughter-in-law, who loves you and who is better to you than seven sons,
has given him birth’ (v. 15).
Nowhere else in this book is the verb ‘to love’ used. Without a doubt,
Ruth’s love for her mother-in-law is the real love story.
The fact that Ruth is worth more than ‘seven sons’ is quite something given
we’ve just celebrated a son! But this has been Naomi’s surprising journey of
discovery: finding the Lord’s extravagant loving kindness ‘enfleshed’ in the
most unexpected of places, her Moabite daughter-in-law.

REFLECTION

At Christmas, we see the supreme example of God’s kindness ‘enfleshed’, as
God the Son takes on human flesh, the true God of true God becoming fully
human in order to love us beyond compare. Take some time to join your
praises with those of the women in Bethlehem, for the Lord has not left us
without a Redeemer. He will renew our life, even beyond the grave.

Listen to ‘Who Would Have Dreamed?’ by Sovereign Grace Music