FROM TODAY’S RECAP: - Video: Ruth Overview - Map: Land Allotment of Israel - Leviticus 19:9-10 - Proverbs 31:10 - The Bible Recap - Day 031 - The Bible Recap - Day 078 - Video: 1 Samuel Overview - TBR Bookshelf Graphics - Finishers Page - Israelux Note: We provide links to specific resources; this is not an endorsement of the entire website, author, organization, etc. Their views may not represent our own. SHOW NOTES: - Follow The Bible Recap: Instagram | Facebook | TikTok | YouTube - Follow Tara-Leigh Cobble: Instagram - Read/listen on the Bible App or Dwell App - Learn more at our Start Page - Become a RECAPtain - Shop the TBR Store - Credits PARTNER MINISTRIES: D-Group International Israelux The God Shot TLC Writing & Speaking DISCLAIMER: The Bible Recap, Tara-Leigh Cobble, and affiliates are not a church, pastor, spiritual authority, or counseling service. Listeners and viewers consume this content on a voluntary basis and assume all responsibility for the resulting consequences and impact.
Full Episode
Hey Bible Readers, I'm Tara Lee Cobble and I'm your host for the Bible Recap. Today we finished our ninth book of the Bible, and we're rapidly closing in on 100 days in the Word. So I think you should do something to celebrate. If you know other people who are doing the Bible recap, maybe you should get together and have a little party or something.
If kids can have a party for hitting 100 days in school, you can do it for hitting 100 days in the Bible. Come on, this will serve you better than algebra any day. No offense to the math teachers among us, we love you. You're invited to the party too. Bring ice cream. Okay, let's drop in on Ruth's story.
It takes place during the time of the judges when all kinds of wickedness is filling the land of Israel. The book opens with a married couple, Elimelech and Naomi, leaving their hometown, Bethlehem of Judah, to escape a famine. They settle in Moab across the Jordan River, which is pagan territory. We'll include a link to a map in today's show notes so you can see where this is.
After Elimelech and Naomi and their two sons get to Moab, the sons do the very thing Moses warned them against. They marry women who worship other gods. Eventually, Elimelech and his sons all die, leaving Naomi and her Moabite daughters-in-law behind to fend for themselves.
Naomi is in dire straits because as a widow with no offspring, there's no way for her to be provided for, and especially not in a foreign land that has no rules for providing for widows like Israel does. Fortunately, she gets word that Bethlehem isn't in a famine anymore, and she packs her bags. She tells her pagan daughters-in-law to go back to their homes where they can start over.
Orpah goes back home, but Ruth makes a shocking decision. She attaches herself to a destitute, depressed widow and leaves her country to move to a foreign land. She chooses the hard path. As she's making this commitment to Naomi, Ruth invokes an oath to God, and when she makes that oath, she refers to him as Yahweh. This lets us know that something has happened to the heart of this Moabite.
Her allegiance has transferred from her pagan gods to Naomi's God, Yahweh. They make it back to Bethlehem, but Naomi is really bitter at this point. She believes God is mistreating her. She has no idea what's in store. God's blessings were on their way even as Naomi complained about him, and every detail of timing and placement was orchestrated for her good.
She sends Ruth to work in the field of one of her relatives to gather barley. They are relying on the laws God set in place in Leviticus 19, which ordered the Israelites not to glean the perimeters of their fields so that the poor people and the sojourners could gather all the extra and be provided for by the surplus of the rich.
Naomi's relative landowner, Boaz, sees Ruth working hard and asks about her. This guy is way out of her league. She's a foreign widow and he's a wealthy leader among the community. This is your classic wrong side of the tracks love story. But Ruth's work ethic and her kindness to her mother-in-law catch his eye. And maybe her appearance too, but the book never tells us that.
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