The Romance of RedemptionFour chapters that explain Revelation 5

A love story that is also a prophecy

Ruth is eighty-five verses long, set “in the days when the judges ruled” (Ruth 1:1), and it is one of only two books of the Bible named for a woman. Read as literature, it is a love story. Read as prophecy, it is the clearest working model in Scripture of what a redeemer is and what redemption costs.

Bible prophecy is more than prediction and fulfillment. Much of it is pattern: a real event that God shaped so that it shows, ahead of time, something greater. He says so Himself.

¹⁰I have also spoken by the prophets, and I have multiplied visions, and used similitudes, by the ministry of the prophets.

Hosea 12:10 · KJV

The story of Ruth really happened, and every detail in it is deliberate: the names, the famine, the harvest season, the shoe, the six measures of barley. Each one moves the love story forward, and each one also carries a second story, the romance of redemption.

The story in four movements

The book has four chapters, and each one is a step in the same love.

The names tell it too

Hebrew names mean something, and in this book they read like a summary of the plot.

Naomi sums up her own story in a sentence: “I went out full, and the LORD hath brought me home again empty” (Ruth 1:21). The rest of the book is about how she is filled again.

The people and what they picture

Boaz is called a type of Christ. That does not mean he was Christ. His role in the story shows what our Redeemer had to be, and once Boaz is placed, the others take their places around him.

The setting is preaching too

The curse Ruth was born under

Moab began in the incest of Lot and his daughter (Genesis 19:36-37). Moab hired Balaam to curse Israel (Numbers 22:1-8), and the women of Moab then drew Israel into idolatry at the cost of twenty-four thousand lives (Numbers 25:1-9). Moab worshipped Chemosh (Numbers 21:29; 1 Kings 11:7), and that worship included burning children on an altar (2 Kings 3:26-27). Four prophets pronounced judgment on the nation (Isaiah 15-16; Jeremiah 48; Ezekiel 25:8-11; Amos 2:1-3). And the Law shut the door in a single sentence.

³An Ammonite or Moabite shall not enter into the congregation of the LORD; even to their tenth generation shall they not enter into the congregation of the LORD for ever.

Deuteronomy 23:3, read aloud again in Nehemiah 13:1-3 · KJV

Ruth is a Moabitess, and that is the problem the book exists to solve. She stands for every sinner: cursed, far from God, with the Law itself barring the way (Ephesians 2:11-13).

How she gets in

She cannot change her birth, and she does not try to earn a place. She throws herself on the mercy of God: “thy people shall be my people, and thy God my God” (Ruth 1:16-17). Count the promises in that oath and there are seven, and she seals them in the name of the LORD, not in the name of Chemosh.

The prophet had already said as much: “Neither let the son of the stranger, that hath joined himself to the LORD, speak, saying, The LORD hath utterly separated me from his people,” for “mine house shall be called an house of prayer for all people” (Isaiah 56:3, Isaiah 56:6-7).

Boaz knew this from his own home. His mother was Rahab, the Gentile woman of Jericho who was spared because she believed (Matthew 1:5; Joshua 6:25).

Grace in the Messiah’s genealogy

Five women are named in the Messiah’s genealogy, and four of them carry a history that should have kept them out (Matthew 1:3, Matthew 1:5-6).

The tenth generation

The elders at the gate bless Boaz with a strange wish: “let thy house be like the house of Pharez, whom Tamar bare unto Judah” (Ruth 4:12). Perez was the son of Judah by his own daughter-in-law (Genesis 38:24-29), and the Law had a sentence for such a birth too.

²A bastard shall not enter into the congregation of the LORD; even to his tenth generation shall he not enter into the congregation of the LORD.

Deuteronomy 23:2 · KJV

The book ends with a genealogy (Ruth 4:18-22). Count it from Perez.

1. 1Perez
2. 2Hezron
3. 3Ram
4. 4Amminadab
5. 5Nahshon
6. 6Salmon
7. 7Boaz
8. 8Obed
9. 9Jesse
10. 10David

David is the tenth. The scepter was promised to Judah (Genesis 49:10), yet Israel’s first king came from Benjamin, because in Judah’s line the tenth generation was still a boy keeping sheep. A book set in the days of the judges, when there was no king, closes on the name of the king God was preparing.

Grace finds her in the field

Ruth goes out to glean. Gleaning was the Law’s provision for the poor: a landowner reaped his field once, left the corners standing, and did not go back for what was dropped.

⁹And when ye reap the harvest of your land, thou shalt not wholly reap the corners of thy field, neither shalt thou gather the gleanings of thy harvest. ¹⁰And thou shalt not glean thy vineyard, neither shalt thou gather every grape of thy vineyard; thou shalt leave them for the poor and stranger: I am the LORD your God.

Leviticus 19:9-10 · KJV

She does not choose the field. The text says that “her hap was to light on a part of the field belonging unto Boaz” (Ruth 2:3). “Hap” is the old English word for chance, the root of our word “happen,” and the sentence means that she happened to end up in the part of the field that belonged to Boaz. That is how it looked to her. Scripture does not believe in chance: “The lot is cast into the lap; but the whole disposing thereof is of the LORD” (Proverbs 16:33).

Then watch what Boaz does before she has asked him for anything.

Ruth asks what every saved sinner asks: “Why have I found grace in thine eyes, that thou shouldest take knowledge of me, seeing I am a stranger?” (Ruth 2:10). Boaz answers with a blessing: “a full reward be given thee of the LORD God of Israel, under whose wings thou art come to trust” (Ruth 2:12).

When Naomi hears the name of the man, she sees what has happened: “The man is near of kin unto us, one of our next kinsmen” (Ruth 2:20). The word she uses is goel, kinsman-redeemer.

The threshing floor, and what it asks of us

The threshing floor scene is widely misread, so the plain facts come first. Boaz was a generation older than Ruth (Ruth 3:10), and by the custom of the time he would not propose to a younger woman, least of all one still dressed as a widow. There was also a nearer kinsman with the first right (Ruth 3:12). Uncovering his feet and lying down there (Ruth 3:4, Ruth 3:7) was the recognized way for a woman to make the request, and she takes the place of a servant to make it.

Nothing improper happens in the chapter. When Boaz says “Tarry this night” (Ruth 3:13), the Hebrew verb is lun, to lodge: the plain word for a traveler stopping somewhere overnight, with no sexual meaning. It is the word Ruth used when she promised Naomi “where thou lodgest, I will lodge” (Ruth 1:16). She had bound herself to share Naomi’s roof wherever that might be, and now Boaz offers her the same kind of shelter. He will not send her home through the dark. She stays the night under his protection, as a guest. He calls her “a virtuous woman” (Ruth 3:11), and before dawn he acts to protect her name (Ruth 3:14).

Under the custom, Naomi’s instructions run in four steps (Ruth 3:3), and they are the steps of every sinner who comes to Christ.

1. 1

   Wash

   “Not by works of righteousness which we have done, but according to his mercy he saved us, by the washing of regeneration, and renewing of the Holy Ghost” (Titus 3:5). “Ye must be born again” (John 3:7).

2. 2

   Anoint

   “But ye have an unction from the Holy One, and ye know all things” (1 John 2:20, 1 John 2:27). Only the Spirit of God can teach us the things of God (1 Corinthians 2:9-10), and this is the neglected half of most people’s Christianity.

3. 3

   Put on your raiment

   She takes off the garments of widowhood and mourning (compare 2 Samuel 12:20). Christ becomes our righteousness, a robe that comes down over the sinner so that God sees us in Him (Romans 3:22), “accepted in the beloved” (Ephesians 1:6; Isaiah 61:10).

4. 4

   Stake your claim

   “Spread therefore thy skirt over thine handmaid; for thou art a near kinsman” (Ruth 3:9). The Hebrew word for skirt is the word for the wings of the LORD in the blessing Boaz gave her (Ruth 2:12). She is asking him to be the answer to his own prayer. God uses the same picture of Israel: “I spread my skirt over thee, and covered thy nakedness” (Ezekiel 16:8).

The six measures of barley Boaz sends back are for Naomi, not for Ruth (Ruth 3:15-17), and they are a message. Six is the number of working days before rest (Genesis 1; Exodus 20:11). Naomi reads it at once: “the man will not be in rest, until he have finished the thing this day” (Ruth 3:18).

Her standing changes as the book runs, and so does the name she gives herself. On the threshing floor she is no longer “the Moabitess.” She says, “I am Ruth thine handmaid” (Ruth 3:9).

The four things a redeemer must be

Two laws meet in Boaz. The law of redemption let a near relative buy back the land, or the person, that a poor Israelite had been forced to sell (Leviticus 25:25, Leviticus 25:47-49). The law of levirate marriage let a childless widow call on her husband’s brother to marry her and raise a son in the dead man’s name (Deuteronomy 25:5-10). The man who took up these duties was the goel, and four things were required of him. Each one is answered in Christ.

Boaz met all four out of his own wealth (Ruth 4:9-10). Christ met them with His own blood: “not with corruptible things, as silver and gold… but with the precious blood of Christ” (1 Peter 1:18-19; Hebrews 9:12).

The redemption at the gate

Boaz takes the case to the city gate, where legal business was done, and seats ten elders as witnesses (Ruth 4:1-2). The nearer kinsman comes by, and the text will not give his name. Boaz hails him as “such a one,” a Hebrew phrase that means Mr. So-and-So.

Offered the land, the man answers, “I will redeem it” (Ruth 4:4). Then Boaz names the condition: whoever buys the field must also take “Ruth the Moabitess, the wife of the dead,” and raise a son to inherit it (Ruth 4:5). The man backs out: “I cannot redeem it for myself, lest I mar mine own inheritance” (Ruth 4:6). A son born to Ruth would inherit the field he had just paid for, and he would lose both the field and the money.

Why the nearer kinsman cannot do it

He pictures the Law. He can deal with the property, and he can do nothing for the bride. The Law was never given to redeem. It was given to show a man his true condition: “by the deeds of the law there shall no flesh be justified in his sight: for by the law is the knowledge of sin” (Romans 3:20). Paul calls it a ministry of death and of condemnation (2 Corinthians 3:7, 2 Corinthians 3:9; see also Galatians 3:21).

So he draws off his shoe and hands it to Boaz, the recognized sign of a transfer (Ruth 4:7-8). The custom came from taking possession of land by walking on it (Genesis 13:17; Joshua 1:3).

Boaz buys everything that belonged to Elimelech, Chilion, and Mahlon, and he purchases Ruth to be his wife (Ruth 4:9-10; compare Acts 20:28). He redeems the land for Naomi and takes the Gentile as his bride in the same act. The women of the town tell Naomi that the LORD “hath not left thee this day without a kinsman” (Ruth 4:14-15), and the child born to Ruth is laid in Naomi’s lap and named as a son born to Naomi (Ruth 4:16-17).

Obed, the father of Jesse, the father of David (Ruth 4:17, Ruth 4:22; Matthew 1:5).

Why Revelation 5 depends on this

Land in Israel belonged to God: “The land shall not be sold for ever: for the land is mine” (Leviticus 25:23). It could be leased but not permanently sold, and it returned to the family at Jubilee (Leviticus 25:10, Leviticus 25:25-28). The title deed was a scroll, written inside with the terms and on the outside with the conditions under which a kinsman could redeem it. Jeremiah bought a field on exactly this basis on the eve of the exile, sealed and witnessed, so that his heirs could one day claim it back (Jeremiah 32:6-15).

Then John weeps in heaven, because “in the right hand of him that sat on the throne” is “a book written within and on the backside, sealed with seven seals,” and no one is found worthy to open it (Revelation 5:1-4). A sealed scroll written on both sides is a title deed. The earth has been lost to a usurper, and heaven, earth, and the world below are searched for a man who can claim it back. A hero will not do. He must be a kinsman of Adam with the right to redeem, who is able, who is willing, and who will pay the whole price.

One of the elders tells John to stop weeping, because the Lion of the tribe of Judah has prevailed. John turns to see the Lion and sees “a Lamb as it had been slain” (Revelation 5:5-6). The Lamb takes the scroll, and heaven begins to sing.

⁹Thou art worthy to take the book, and to open the seals thereof: for thou wast slain, and hast redeemed us to God by thy blood out of every kindred, and tongue, and people, and nation; ¹⁰And hast made us unto our God kings and priests: and we shall reign on the earth.

Revelation 5:9-10 · KJV

Those who waited for the redemption of Jerusalem were not disappointed (Luke 2:38; Hebrews 9:12).

Observations to sit with

1. In order to bring Ruth in, Naomi had to be driven out.
2. What the Law could not do, grace did (Romans 8:3-4).
3. Ruth does not replace Naomi. The child is reckoned to Naomi (Ruth 4:17).
4. The son of the redeemer and his Gentile bride is laid in Naomi’s lap as “a restorer of thy life” (Ruth 4:15). The mercy shown to the Gentiles comes back to Israel (Romans 11:25-26, Romans 11:30-31).
5. Ruth learns Boaz’s ways through Naomi, and Naomi meets Boaz through Ruth.
6. Boaz, not Ruth, confronted the nearer kinsman (Ruth 4:1). The Law is not something the bride has to answer.
7. The whole of it turns on a redeemer who was under no obligation and did it anyway (John 10:18).