TODAY IN THE WORD
Bible teachers have used many favorable adjectives to describe Ruth, the faithful young woman from Moab who became the great-grandmother of David. This fact alone is enough to show why Ruth needs to be included as we discuss God’s preservation of His righteous line.

One writer comments that meeting Ruth is like finding a rose growing in the middle of a garbage dump. Another says Ruth “gleams like a beautiful pearl against a jet-black background.”

The reason for these and other comparisons becomes clear when we compare Judges 21:25 to Ruth 1:1. The era of Israel’s judges was a time of spiritual unfaithfulness and foreign domination interrupted only by a few brief victories. It was also a lawless time of Israel’s disobedience to the law of God. The last verse of Judges sums up the situation: “In those days Israel had no king; everyone did as he saw fit.”

But then came Ruth, who lived “in the days when the judges ruled” (v. 1). Typical of the times, this great story of faithfulness to God began with an act that expressed little faith. A man named Elimelech from Bethlehem left home with his family to escape a famine. He chose to go to Moab, about fifty miles east, on the opposite side of the Dead Sea.

By doing this, Elimelech abandoned the place of God’s blessing (v. 6) to live among the descendants of Lot’s immoral union with his oldest daughter (Gen. 19:36-37). The child was named Moab, and his people were often hostile to Israel. Later, the prophet Amos pronounced judgment on Moab (Amos 2:1).

What was meant to be a brief time in Moab for Elimelech, his wife Naomi, and their two sons turned into ten years (1:1-5), during which time all three men died. Naomi was left alone with her two daughters-in-law, Orpah and Ruth.

It’s quite a picture. Israel was a faithless nation, and

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TODAY ALONG THE WAY
One value of our lessons this month is to remind ourselves that we also come from a spiritual line, people in our past and present who have helped bring us to Christ.

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