Lovers of the Old Testament I: Boaz

Israel, as a nation, keeps racing towards the end of the judges’ era, and a few mundane and not-so-mundane stories unfold. These stories bear great significance because of their connection to the bible’s overarching story, but they also reveal what God’s vision for the redemption of a lost society through redemptive love looks like.

If you were to imagine a good society, what would it look like? Perhaps you would imagine a fair, equitable society where everyone gets what they deserve. But here lies the problem. There are events that affect generations unborn. So, many are trapped in a sequence of consequences that they never started. An example of this would be the generations of the foreign nations that first lived in the lands God gave Israel.

Every nation around Israel was essentially exempt from God’s covenant. They could not enjoy God’s promises and they were on the wrong side of God’s justice. Based on God’s sovereign choice, this exemption was fair. But we see that God’s idea of good stretches beyond what we consider fair alone. As a matter of fact, faith in God would radically change your view of a good society. You stop thinking only about what is fair, but you start thinking about what is good. And it is in the wake of this that in comes the idea of mercy and grace.

A society that aims to be good is incomplete if there is never a time of refreshing, redemption, forgiveness and charity. Some people will get more love than they deserve. Some will give more love than what is deemed humanly possible. Some sinners will go unpunished. Not because God is unfair, but because God is abounding in love and grace and mercy. A good society is one that mirrors God’s justice and mercy. No sin is left unjudged, yet mercy does abound and pardons abound. It is a mystery we are not fully equipped to grasp by ourselves, but this mystery has been revealed and represented to us by one act of justice and mercy; the death of Jesus on the cross. We see all sins quantified and judged in Christ's body and a pardon defined in His resurrection. Therefore everyone contained within this act (which is everyone who has faith in it) becomes a recipient of God’s pardon. God did not leave their sins unjudged, he graciously let His son bear it.

I think that the story of Boaz paints this picture perfectly, too.

It was the time of the Judges and the Israelites had sinned, so their lands were ravaged by famine. To ensure their survival, a man named Elimelek took his wife, Naomi, and two sons and settled in Moab. Elimelek died and when his sons grew up, they married Moabite women; Ruth and Orpah. But these sons also died, leaving Naomi and her daughters-in-law widowed and vulnerable. Naomi had to return to Israel. Perhaps she thought that she could enjoy the benefits of the Torah, which mandated the Israelite community to care for the widow. This was a hard, uncertain lifestyle. Unwilling to expose them to that, she urged her daughters-in-law to find husbands for themselves among their own people while she returned to Israel. But Ruth refused. She was unwilling to leave Naomi by herself. Instead, she embraced a lifestyle of hardship and uncertainty so that she could be close to and care for her poor, widowed, and vulnerable mother-in-law.

Ruth went out to the fields to pick leftover grain from the harvests, as was the custom of the poor (the Torah allowed it and field owners were to leave grain behind for the poor and fatherless). Out in the fields, she met a man named Boaz. He was a relative of Naomi’s and on learning about Ruth’s loyalty to Naomi and her diligence on the field, he extended his generosity to her.

Ruth 2:8-9

'So Boaz said to Ruth, “My daughter, listen to me. Don’t go and glean in another field and don’t go away from here. Stay here with the women who work for me.

Watch the field where the men are harvesting, and follow along after the women. I have told the men not to lay a hand on you. And whenever you are thirsty, go and get a drink from the water jars the men have filled.” '

From Boaz’s perspective, Ruth, in choosing Naomi, chose to forsake the ways of her pagan people and take refuge in the God of Israel and he was determined to represent the magnanimity of this God to Ruth. Here, check out what he said to her about this.

Ruth 2:11-12

Boaz replied, “I’ve been told all about what you have done for your mother-in-law since the death of your husband—how you left your father and mother and your homeland and came to live with a people you did not know before.

May the Lord repay you for what you have done. May you be richly rewarded by the Lord, the God of Israel, under whose wings you have come to take refuge.”

I think it is safe to assume that unlike popular belief, Boaz's generosity to Ruth was not just the actions of a smitten man wooing the object of his affections, but the outworking of a deep understanding of Yahweh's mercy and justice. The Moabites may have been exempt from the promise, but God still remains welcoming of those who choose Him like Ruth did. God used Boaz’s generosity to pass a strong message of His abundant grace.

Love, kindness and generosity are little pockets through which God dramatizes His surplus grace and sufficient mercy to those whose circumstances have doomed them. In the strict confines of a fair and equitable society, the criminal gets exposed to the raw fires of justice and the less privileged, injustice. But when a sin is pardoned and the less privileged is elevated, goodness permeates the society and shifts it forward. Ruth's story shows us that this is not a passive thing that only those who are abundantly blessed can participate in.

We see Naomi's steadfast commitment to see Ruth settled, which did not necessarily translate into wealth for her as the provision of her needs still depended on Ruth's agency. We also see Boaz’s steadfast commitment to seeing Ruth properly integrated into Israelite society when he goes out in search of a kinsman redeemer that was more eligible than he was. Even if he wanted Ruth for himself, for the sake of Ruth's good, he was willing to see her married to someone else. It was only when the other kinsman rejected Ruth that he chose to take her to himself.

Boaz loved Ruth, but his love was vivified by his steadfast disposition, which had very little to do with Ruth and a lot to do with his indepth understanding of God's faithfulness towards everyone who turns to Him.

Naomi, who was so close to being a desolate woman, with her son's name wiped out of history forever was restored to position when Ruth bore a child to Boaz.

The restoration, redemption, adoption, faithfulness and steadfastness dramatized in the story of Ruth, Naomi and Boaz corellates greatly with God's searching and steadfast disposition to sinners. He is not willing that they should perish, but that they should like Ruth forsake their old ways and customs and people and come and take refuge among His people. He is also willing to remove the consequences of their sins and let them go on like they never did anything. Ruth would have enjoyed the full benefits of an Israelite wife being married to Boaz even if she was a Moabite by birth.

Even more symbolic is the fact that Boaz becomes David’s great-grandfather and one of the figures of the Messianic lineage, making him an ancestor of Jesus. What beautiful divineness!

I invite everyone reading this to take up Boaz’s form of radical, proactive and selfless generosity, so that through us, God can reveal His idea of a good society. As humans, we are trapped in our definition of fairness and justice, which is either usually terrible or incomplete. This is why we should be willing to lay it down and seek to embrace God’s goodness and mirror it to our world instead.

Has this changed the way you read the story of Ruth and Boaz? Let me know in the comments!

I hope that in the future, I get to share more of the things that stood out to me from studying my bible and getting to know my God. I invite you to this same community of God-knowers who have faith in and believe the testimony of the man Jesus Christ who was God in the flesh, who died for your sins and was resurrected for the justification of anyone who believes this good news; that it pleased God to punish Jesus for your sins and resurrect him as you, so that the urge to sin against God is no longer irresistible to anyone who believes.

If you need a bit more context, you can start here.

Love and cheers ❤️