The Providence and Mercy of God
This is a sub-chapter from the head-chapter The Providence of God from my book The Sovereignty of God: The Forgotten Doctrine, here adapted to the NKJV translation.
Entreat me not to leave you, Or to turn back from following after you; For wherever you go, I will go; And wherever you lodge, I will lodge; Your people shall be my people, And your God, my God (Ruth 1:16 NKJV)
God is amazingly gracious, and he shows mercy to whomever he wants. We will quickly visit the book of Ruth (Ruth 1–4, please read the story in full). The story takes place during the time when the judges in Israel ruled, and it is a difficult time in many ways.[1] There is a famine in Israel and Elimelech and Naomi and his family are moving to the land of Moab. Naomi’s husband dies and her sons take Moabite women as wives. In Deut. 7:1 Moab is not among the countries listed, with which Israel should have no communion whatsoever. But in Ezra 9:1–2 and Nehemiah 13:23–25, it is clear that the people, priests, and Levites have committed a great sin in marrying Moabites and other people outside of Israel. And God says, ”An Ammonite or Moabite shall not enter the assembly of the LORD; even to the tenth generation none of his descendants shall enter the assembly of the LORD forever” (Deut. 23.3 NKJV). This makes the story of Ruth so fantastic; God is really a merciful God. Davey writes that many Jewish scholars and the OT commentators read between the lines that Naomi’s husband and her sons are dying in the land of Moab because of divine punishment. They had moved to Moab, taken Moabite wives.[2]
After Naomi’s sons die, she decides to go back to Israel and Ruth goes with her mother-in-law. Hear Ruth’s answer when Naomi asks them to return home, ”Entreat me not to leave you, Or to turn back from following after you; For wherever you go, I will go; And wherever you lodge, I will lodge; Your people shall be my people, And your God, my God. Where you die, I will die, And there will I be buried. The LORD do so to me, and more also, If anything but death parts you and me” (Ruth 1:16–17 NKJV).[3] Ruth is a true proselyte. She leaves everything to go with Naomi, her family, her country, her culture, her religion.
When Naomi returns, she has nothing, but on Elimelech’s side she has a powerful man and relative Boaz, and God has decreed that Boaz and Ruth should be part of God’s providence, not only in Naomi and Ruth’s life but in the whole divine plan of salvation. Ruth goes out into the field to pick up the ears of grain and the Bible is clear that it is God’s providence that causes Ruth to end up in Boaz’s field, ”And she happened to come to the part of the field belonging to Boaz” (Ruth. 2:3 NKJV). The Hebrew words used here is the verb קָרָה (qarah) meaning ”to meet, to occur, to happen,”[4] and the noun מִקְרֶה (miqreh) meaning ”a chance event,” ”a happening,” ”a fate.”[5] It happened by chance, would we say, for Ruth, it was a common decision, ”I stay here and pick ears,” but in reality, it happened because of God’s providence; God makes sure that Ruth gleans on Boaz’s fields. Nothing happens by chance. “Then she left, and went and gleaned in the field after the reapers. And she happened to come to the part of the field belonging to Boaz, who was of the family of Elimelech” (Ruth 2:3 NKJV).
When Boaz comes to the field, he says to his workers, ”The LORD be with you” and the harvesters answer him, ”The LORD bless you” (Ruth. 2:4 NKJV). It says something about who Boaz is, as a human being and as a manager. He is the servant of the LORD. He spots Ruth and asks who she is and finds out that she is Naomi’s daughter-in-law. Even then, Boaz knows he is a possible redeemer for Naomi and Ruth.[6] He goes to her and says that she should continue to glean in his field and he has given the men strict orders not to touch her; Ruth wonders why Boaz shows her such favour, that is for what Ruth has done for Naomi, and that Ruth has accompanied her to a foreign land, and Boaz says, ”The LORD repay your work, and a full reward be given you by the LORD God of Israel, under whose wings (כָּנָף | kanaf) you have come for refuge” (Ruth. 2:12 NKJV). Ruth expresses her gratitude to Boaz, ”Let me find favor in your sight, my lord; for you have comforted me, and have spoken kindly to your maidservant, though I am not like one of your maidservants” (Ruth. 2:13 NKJV); Boaz lets her eat with him and the harvesters and she then continues to glean all day.
When Naomi hears that Ruth has gleaned at Boaz’s field, she is very happy because Boaz is ”a relation of ours, one of our close relatives (redeemer)” (Ruth. 2:20; see also Deut. 25:5).[7] Naomi wants Ruth to have security and asks her to do what she instructs. She will wash and anoint herself and dress nicely (Ruth. 3:3) and go down to the threshing place and lie down at Boaz’s feet after he has gone to bed, and she also says that Boaz himself will instruct Ruth after that (Ruth. 3:4–5). Ruth does so, and Boaz discovers later in the night that Ruth is at his feet, and he asks her who she is, and Ruth replies that she is Ruth, his maid, and that he is her redeemer, and that Boaz shall spread his covering over her, ”I am Ruth, your maidservant. Take your maidservant under your wing (כָּנָף), for you are a close relative” (Ruth. 3:9 NKJV). In our world, it means that Ruth asks Boaz to marry her. Here Ruth uses the same word that Boaz has previously used for Ruth, that ”The LORD repay your work, and a full reward be given you by the LORD God of Israel, under whose wings (כָּנָף) you have come for refuge” (Ruth. 2:12 NKJV). In both places, the Heb. noun כָּנָף is used with meanings as ”wing,” ”extremity,” and ”skirt” of a garment, which Ruth refers to when she tells Boaz to spread his covering over her (Ruth 3:9); and, the idiom to spread one’s wings over means to take to wife. This poetical way of describing a marriage proposal is also used by the LORD in Ezekiel 16:8, “When I passed by you again and looked upon you, indeed your time was the time of love; so I spread My wing (כָּנָף) over you and covered your nakedness. Yes, I swore an oath to you and entered into a covenant with you, and you became Mine,” says the Lord GOD” (Ezekiel 16:8 NKJV). And Ruth does not have to fear a rebuke. Boaz is obviously happy that Ruth is coming to see him and not young men, he says, ”And now, my daughter, do not fear. I will do for you all that you request, for all the people of my town know that you are a virtuous woman” (Ruth. 3:11 NKJV).[8]
Boaz also says that there is a closer redeemer than himself and that he first must sort out that issue. Boaz is clearly a man filled with God and wants to do all things according to God’s will and law; he promises Ruth that if the redeemer who is first in line does not want to be a redeemer to her, he shall be, ”as the LORD lives!” (Ruth. 3:13 NKJV). Boaz goes up to the city gate and takes several men as witnesses and then tells the redeemer what the situation is. The redeemer is willing to buy the land. Unclear what Boaz thinks when he hears him say that he will redeem it, but Boaz then says, ”On the day you buy the field from the hand of Naomi, you must also buy it from Ruth the Moabitess, the wife of the dead, to perpetuate the name of the dead through his inheritance” (Ruth. 4:5 NKJV). Then the redeemer is not interested because he does not want to damage his own inheritance, Boaz, on the other hand, is.[9] Boaz is next in line, and he buys everything that has belonged to Elimelech and his dead sons, and at the same time he acquires Ruth as his wife for himself. Surely some choke on the concept of acquiring.[10] But they seem to love each other, and Boaz has shown nothing but great love and care for both Ruth and Naomi, and Ruth is the one who takes the first step to becoming Boaz’s wife (Ruth. 3:9). Boaz embraces Ruth as his wife, and when he went in unto her, ”the LORD gave her conception, and she bore a son” (Ruth. 4:13). The Bible is clear that God gave her conception, and since the son born is called Obed, King David’s grandfather, it shows even more clearly God’s providence, care, and sovereignty.
God shows time and time again in the Bible that he does what he wants, that he has mercy on whomever he wants, and he does it whenever he wants. In Jesus’ lineage in Matt. 1, we have five women, and three of them stick out: Tamar, Rahab and Ruth.[11] None of these three women were Israelites, two of whom turned out to have or had had a dubious morality, but all three are allowed to appear in Jesus’ lineage as a sign of God’s grace and mercy, that God sovereignly chooses whomever he wants, can use whomever he wants, even their sinful acts, as a sign of his majestic providence and good will. The story of Boaz and Ruth as ancestors of the greatest of all redeemers Jesus Christ is one of the most beautiful stories in the entire Bible. Boaz, who himself was the son of Rahab and thus of foreign descent; and one can only marvel at Boaz’s godliness and Ruth’s trust in Naomi, Boaz, and God; and above all, one marvels at the great grace and providence of God.
[1] (Davey 2013), 12.
[2] (Davey 2013), Ruth 1:1–5.
[3] The other son’s wife was Orpah.
[4] WSOTDICT writes, ”It states that something happens, comes about, whether good or bad”.
[5] WSOTDICT writes, ” It refers to something that occurs without human planning or intervention”.
[6] (Davey 2013), Ruth 2:1–13.
[7] Here the word redeemer is used and the Heb. verb גָּאַל. The term redeemer has several meanings, if a brother dies childless, he will marry his wife (Deut. 25:5–10), these marriages are called Levirate marriages. It guarantees her livelihood and preserves the deceased man’s name. It could also be about redeeming land that a relative is forced to sell (Lev. 25:25–28) or avenging a murdered relative (Num. 35:19).
[8] What is translated as a ”woman of excellence” uses the same words as in Prov. 12:4; 31:10 about the good wife. The Heb. word חַיִל meaning: ”power,” ”wealth,” ”army,” ”virtuous,” ”competent.” There is nothing impassioned or sexual in this situation.
[9] They write that Elimelech, Naomi’s husband, was entitled to an heir. And the man who bought the field had the obligation to raise an heir to the dead through Ruth. If a son were born, the land would pass to him and Elimelech’s estate would remain with his family. The redeemer would lose what he bought and still has another family to support. (Carson et al. 1994), Ruth 4:1–22.
Therefore are Boaz’s deed so gracious and it can only be due to love for God and love for Ruth that drives him.
[10] Here the Heb. verb קָנָה meaning ”to buy,” ”to own,” to acquire” is used. It is used, for example, if God buys back his people, he is their redeemer. Jesus is our redeemer who pays the price with his blood, we do not belong to ourselves anymore, we belong to God who has bought us for a price. ”And ye are Christ’s; and Christ is God’s” (1 Cor 3:23); “What? know ye not that your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost which is in you, which ye have of God, and ye are not your own? For ye are bought with a price: therefore glorify God in your body, and in your spirit, which are God’s” (1 Cor. 6:19–20). We are God’s, we are bought for a price.
[11] We also have Bathsheba, who is the wife of Uriah and who gave birth to Solomon, and she was an adulteress along with King David (2 Sam. 11:2–12:24), and Mary, the mother of Jesus.
Tamar was probably a Canaanite woman and married to Judah’s son Er, which was evil in the sight of the LORD, so he killed him, and Judah gave her his second son, Onan, who, instead of giving his brother an offspring, spills his seed on the earth in direct rebellion to God, and the LORD also killed him; Judah promises her that when his youngest son Shelah grows up that he will take Tamar as his wife, Judah does not fulfill that promise, and Tamar takes matters into her own hands and dresses up as a prostitute and has twins with Judah, who was her father–in–law (Gen. 38:6–39). Rahab was or had been a prostitute when she met the spies in Jericho (Josh. 2:3–21) and she is also one of those listed among the faith heroes, in Heb. 11.