The Book of Ruth: Faith, Friendship, & Ordinary Righteousness

When you hear the words, "Where you go, I will go. Where you stay, I will stay." You might think marriage vows. Or wall art. But these words from the widow Ruth to her widowed mother-in-law aren't romantic. They're loyalty. 
The book of Ruth is a story about two women, both grieving, one a foreigner, both vulnerable, navigating a world that offered them very little protection, and choosing each other anyway.

Ruth sits tucked inside one of the darkest periods in Israel's history. The era of the Judges is a slow moral collapse, and women fare especially badly in it. Into that context, Ruth arrives not with miracles or burning bushes, but with something quieter: ordinary faithfulness. God is present in this book without ever speaking. There are no dramatic interventions. Instead, it's a widow who renames herself Bitter, a daughter-in-law who makes a legal and theological declaration, and a landowner who notices a vulnerable woman decides to protect her. And a slow, unannounced movement from famine toward fullness, from Mara (bitter) back to Naomi (delightful).

And this arc ultimately leads to the line of David and Jesus Christ.

In this episode, we move between the ancient text and our own friendships, working through what Ruth actually models: willing loyalty that costs something,  protection of people vulnerable or overlooked, and the way God often does his most visible work in hidden ways. The arc of this book is quiet. But it shows us how God wants us to treat each other, using a foreign woman to upset norms and give birth to King David's grandfather.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:46

Welcome back. Today we have a special episode on the Book of Ruth and how it interweaves friendship, redemption, and grief. And we really like this dynamic of talking about friendship because Rachel and I are both friends. We are in friendship. We are in friendship as we speak. And so there's a lot in this very small book. So the book of Ruth is only four chapters. You can really read it in one sitting. Yeah. But it really has a lot in it. And I think it's meant to sit in some of the devastation of the time. And then also how it ends in like a redeeming way. Yeah. And so I really like the arc that it takes. I think it's really cool. So I think it's helpful to note where the book of Ruth lies in the Old Testament. So this is during the time of the Judges, which is a very chaotic, difficult, hard time in the Bible. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:45

It's difficult to read. I'm sure it was even difficult to be living it.

SPEAKER_00 1:50

The book of Judges is this period of time where people stopped following the wisdom of God.

SPEAKER_01 1:55

And they started following the wisdom of man, which we often do. It's how the Bible started. Yeah. But for some reason, I I think it's a narrative reason. The stories with these judges, it just gets worse and worse. It devolves. So every judge is worse than the judge that came before them. And it ends in just, it's just the most awful stuff that you can think of man doing. Like if I was a judge, I wouldn't be thinking any of these things. I know. I might not be a good judge, but I don't think I would be doing any of the stuff these people get into. And so then by the time you get to the end of judges, like it, you're a little almost shell-shocked.

SPEAKER_00 2:31

It's hard to go through, honestly. Right.

SPEAKER_01 2:33

Then you get Ruth, which is a breath of fresh air.

SPEAKER_00 2:36

And it's also a hard time for women specifically, which I think it's a a really poignant part of the Bible to have Ruth, the book of Ruth sitting here, forgetting the wisdom of God. And like you said, as the judges progress, it kind of gets worse as they fall more and more out of following God's lead and more into the flesh. It's kind of like that progression. Women are not treated well in judges.

SPEAKER_01 2:58

And so the other thing that feels special about the placemen is if you're reading through, you've gotten almost used to this absence of God. And what Ruth does is curiously, there's not a lot of and the Lord said, but what it's doing is showing another narrative that it's not yet back to the comforting scriptures where there's connection with the Lord. Yeah. But it's showing us the good side of humanity in contrast to the judges.

SPEAKER_00 3:29

Yeah. And I think that it's so relatable because of that. And you named it. God isn't actually directly talking to Ruth in the book. In the entire book, he's not speaking to her like we see in the burning bush. There's no big moment like that. But I think that's so purposeful, right? It's so relatable. Her book is so relatable because it's ordinary faithfulness. Yep. It's everyday stuff that we see and deal with versus this big dramatic burning bush, which for us isn't as relatable if unless you've had a burning bush, in which case, then maybe we need to do an episode on that.

SPEAKER_01 4:03

Yes. Contact us. Contact us. Exactly. Um it also gets the book gets really cultural too, which I like because it's showing also that even when there's this horrible leadership going on, there are actually still communities in the culture that are still following and worshiping God. And Ruth shows that. Totally.

SPEAKER_00 4:26

So what the book of Ruth does is don't it zooms in on one family. Instead of the judges seem very zoomed out. Yeah. And it's big stuff, right? It's and just, you know, a lot of the Old Testament is. It's it's battles and and there's personable stories as well. But for Ruth, it is just this simple story nestled in this chaos. So the book begins with this family. There's a woman named Naomi, and her name means delightful. And she has a husband and she has two sons. There's also a famine in the land, which kind of reflects a type of wilderness, right? People have fled from God, they aren't connecting to God, and so there's a famine in the land. So, like reflecting that, her husband goes, I don't know where he goes. Her husband jets and he dies. So he's left with her two sons and then their wives. They're an Israelite family, and marrying a Moabite is not Yeah, you're not supposed to already. Yeah, you're not supposed to marry a Moabite. But Naomi's two sons marry two Moabite women. And one of those women is Ruth. And 10 years after her husband dies, both of her sons die as well. So Ruth is left with her mother-in-law Naomi and her sister-in-law Orpah.

SPEAKER_01 5:37

So you have three widowed women now, right? With Naomi being in that mother role, and then the two younger widows.

SPEAKER_00 5:45

So she is understandably empty. She's grieving like anyone would, right? Being a widow and losing her two sons. Yeah. I think we are meant to sit in this really deep sadness that she has, and they really highlight how she is feeling empty and raw because she lost her husband and her two sons.

SPEAKER_01 6:01

Yeah, and layering on to that, it's a really serious situation for them too, because of the famine. Now you have three widows. And in that time, being a widow is dangerous because the husband or the father is the provider. And so now you've lost a father and two sons. That puts them in a really vulnerable position. Absolutely.

SPEAKER_00 6:21

As well as grieving. And now she feels Naomi responsible for these two women amongst her grief. And like we said earlier, in the book of Judges, women aren't treated well.

SPEAKER_01 6:31

Yeah, I wonder if that's even more burden for Naomi then, because now she's got these two foreign women with her. Totally. What does that mean for her trying to integrate back into her Israelite community?

SPEAKER_00 6:46

Like what does she do now? Yeah. Initially, when the famine hit, she was forced to leave Bethlehem for Moab, but after her husband and sons die, she returns to Bethlehem. And so she gives a choice, which is the choice that makes sense, right? Naturally, in cases like this, Orpah and Ruth would go back to their family of origin and seek respite there as widows. Yeah. And that would be a very typical response. And that's what Orpah does. I think Naomi really encouraged both of them to do that.

SPEAKER_01 7:15

She's like, leave me, go back to your people. I'm gonna go back to my