To the Jewish people and to the writer of the Book of Ruth as a Jew genealogy was of more account than to us, and a place in David's ancestry appears as the final honour of Ruth for her dutifulness, her humble faith in the God of Israel. Orpah is forgotten; she remained with her own people and died in obscurity. But faithful Ruth lives distinguished in history. She takes her place among the matrons of Bethlehem and the people of God. The story of her life, says one, stands at the portal of the life of David and at the gates of the gospel.
Yet suppose Ruth had not been married to Boaz or to any other good and wealthy man, would she have been less admirable and deserving? We attribute nothing to accident. In the providence of God Boaz was led to an admiration for Ruth and Naomi's plan succeeded. But it might have been otherwise. There is nothing, after all, so striking in her faith that we should expect her to be singled out for special honour; and she is not. The divine reward of goodness is the peace of God in the soul, the gladness of fellowship with Him, the opportunity of learning His will and dispensing His grace. It is interesting to note that Ruth's son Obed was the father of Jesse and the grandfather of David. But was Ruth not also the ancestress of the sons of Zeruiah, of Absalom, Adonijah and Rehoboam? Even though looking down the generations we see the Messiah born of her line, how can that glorify Ruth? or, if it does, how shall we explain the want of glory of many an estimable and godly woman who fighting a battle harder than Ruth's, with clearer faith in God, lived and died in some obscure village of Naphtali or dragged out a weary widowhood on the borders of the Syrian desert?
Yet there is a sense in which the history of Ruth stands at the gates of the gospel. It bears the lesson that Jehovah acknowledged all who did justly and loved mercy and walked humbly with Him. The foreign woman was justified by faith, and her faith had its reward when she was accepted as one of Jehovah's people and knew Him as her gracious Friend. Israel had in this book the warrant for missionary work among the pagan nations and a beautiful apologue of the reconciliation the faith of Jehovah was to effect among the severed families of mankind. The same faith is ours, but with deeper urgency, the same spirit of reconciliation reaching now to farther mightier issues. We have seen the Goel of the race and have heard His offer of redemption. We are commissioned to those who dwell in the remotest borders of the moral world under oppressions of heathenism and fear or wander in strange Moabs of confusion where deep calleth unto deep. We have to testify that with One and One only are the light, the joy, the completeness of man, because He alone among sages and helpers has the secret of our sin and weakness and the long miracle of the soul's redemption. "Go ye into all the world and preach the gospel to the whole creation: and lo, I am with you." The faith of the Hebrew is more than fulfilled. Out of Israel He comes our Menuchah, Who is "_an hiding place from the wind and a covert from the tempest, as rivers of water in a dry place, as the shadow of a great rock in a weary land_."