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Who wrote Ruth and why?

Because of the?similarity in language between Ruth and the books of Judges and Samuel, Jewish and Christian tradition and the Babylonian Talmud believed that Samuel wrote the book of Ruth.? Written sometime during the 42 years of King Saul’s reign, its purpose was to prepare the people of Israel for David to become king after Saul.

Note: As with everything about the Bible, modern scholars are confounded about this.

As we’ll see next time, David was a direct descendent of Judah, the first of the Royal Line of the House of Judah.? In fact, the author will take great pains in Ruth 4:18-22 to show that David was the tenth generation from Perez, the illegitimate son of Judah (see Genesis 38).

What happened there is one of the biggest scandals of the Old Testament, which has quite a few of them. ?Jacob’s son Judah, who convinced his brothers to sell Joseph of the Many-coloured raincoat rather than kill him, was the first of the kin to violate the edict of Abraham and Isaac and marry a Canaanite lady, Shua the daughter of Hiram the Adullamite.? They had three boys, Er (“forsaken”), Onan (“sorrow”) and Shelah (“deception”).? Er, a wicked man, grew up and marries Tamar.? Alas, he died without issue.? So as we learned this week, the next eldest son was to be the kinsman-redeemer and marry Tamar to keep Er’s family name alive.? Onan was up to the task, but didn’t want Tamar’s kids to inherit the first-born’s double share when Judah died, so he did the Old Testament equivalent of using condoms.? God got upset with this, so Onan also died without issue.? It was now Shelah’s turn to marry Tamar for the sake of Er’s inheritance, but he was still too young, so Judah told Tamar to wait.? So she went to her father’s place and waited for Shelah to come marry her, and waited, and then waited some more. ?Shelah grew up but was never going to marry her.

Now the plot thickens.? Remember, this is Boaz’s and David’s illustrious ancestor Judah we’re talking about.? Anyway, I’ll leave the story here; if you want to see what happens next (which is directly related to the book of Ruth, believe it or not), please read Genesis 38.

Anyway, Tamar tricks Judah and gets both her revenge and a male heir to inherit Er’s double-portion.? Unfortunately, the male heir, Perez (“breach”, a twin, the great x8 grandfather of king David is illegitimate, and we covered that Law of Exclusion today in class.? But David, being the 10^th generation downstream is cool again and the Messianic line continues on to Jesus, with only a few more (well, actually, quite a few more) hiccups along the way.

By the way, intermarriage with Canaanites is considered one of the reasons that God punished Jacob’s family of Israelites with the famine that ultimately forced the brothers to go to Egypt to beg food (where they met up with Joseph as the Great Vizier).? That story also contrasts the brothers Judah (essentially a good fellow) and Joseph (a great one).

My point is that the author of the book of Ruth knew this family history of dirty laundry and was using it to validate Ruth, Boaz, and David.?

• Ruth was accepted by God’s Grace into God’s family because she put her faith in the God of Israel. (This sounds very New Testament, doesn’t it.)

• Boaz was willing to pay the price to redeem Ruth (and, of course, his kinsman’s widow Naomi), even at the jeopardy of his own inheritance.

• ?David of the Royal Line of Judah is absolved of Judah’s sin with Tamar by the requisite ten generations.

The stage is now set for another descendant of Judah (and David and Boaz and Ruth and Perez and Tamar and Er) to emerge from the Royal line 1,000 years later in the little town of, you guessed it, Bethlehem, where the action in Ruth also takes place.

You also asked, “How did the writer know that Jesus, the Messiah would be born into this line at a much later date?”

Samuel didn’t know Jesus “from Adam” (to use an unfortunate modern phrase), but he DID know that the Messiah (called “Shiloh” in our study today) would come from the Royal line of Judah.? David would establish the House of David as the royal line, thus bringing the coming of the Messiah that much closer.

As I implied today in class, the Bible is much more than merely a dry recitation of God’s plans.? All along the way, that crafty al Satan (the “accuser” or “adversary”) finds clever ways to unravel God’s plans, like having Joseph (a prophetic forerunner of Jesus) sold into slavery, or Tamar being cheated out of propagating the royal line, or Naomi being widowed in a foreign country, or, the ultimate, Jesus being crucified!? Each time, Satan chortles, “I’ve got Him now!? He can’t follow His own 613 laws and still get out of this one!”

That’s one of the things about this marvelous book called the Bible that makes it so exciting.