RUTH

     This is a short story recording an incident during the period of the Judges.  An Israelite family moved from Judah to the land of Moab during a famine.  The husband died, the two sons married foreign women, both sons died, the mother (Naomi) returned to her home town of Bethlehem. 

One of her daughters-in-law (Ruth) accompanied Naomi, adopting Isrealite as her own.  Ruth married again, this time to Boaz, a wealthy Israelite, and became the great-grandmother of King David.

     Besides showing intimate details of life in those times, the book of Ruth demonstrates how a foreigner .was absorbed into  Israelite life and history, thus prefiguring the Christian gospel by which Gentiles are absorbed into God's church.  Ruth is a Gentile (Moabitess) in the ancestry of Jesus.