Scarlet Tie 2.4: Ruth and Boaz

Salmon, a man who had inherited the promise God made to Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Judah and Perez, married Rahab, the prostitute.

Together they procreated a son they called Boaz.

The next time the bible talks about Rahab’s son, Boaz he is an old, unmarried landowner in Bethlehem. That is in the book of Ruth. Maybe no self respecting Hebrew wanted his daughter to be married to the son of a whore.

Chuck Missler (page 271 in his book, “Cosmic Codes”) has teased out a nice interpretation of the book of Ruth as a metaphor for the concept of Redemption.
The bible provides two ways of thinking about the idea of redemption. They are:
1 A person dying to save the life of another. You get that idea in the story of the ram being killed instead of Isaac, the lamb’s blood on the door posts of the Hebrews in Egypt, celebrated each year by Jews in the Feast of Passover.
2 A person providing a first born to carry on the blood line by impregnating the widow of a deceased next of kin. You get that idea in the story of Judah’s dead son having offspring procreated by his next of kin and his widow.
The story in the book of Ruth concerns a family that left Bethlehem in a time of famine. They sought their fortune across the Jordan River. Naomi and her husband and two sons left their home and settled in Moab where the sons married local girls. Then things went bad. All the men in Naomi’s family died and she decided to return to Bethlehem. One of her Moabite daughters-in-law, Ruth accompanied her.
In Bethlehem, Ruth resorted to gleaning, a form of social security by which the poor were allowed to pick over the grain left behind by the farmers after they had harvested their fields. (Leviticus 19:9, 23:22).

She happened upon the fields of Boaz, and he directed his servants not to molest her, and to lead her to the richest pickings in the field. She returned heavy laden to Naomi, who asked her how she came by such an amount of grain. Ruth told her she had gleaned the fields of Boaz, and Naomi released that he was a relative who might be called upon to redeem her fortunes in the way that Judah redeemed his son’s life. Says Rahab’s son to Moabite, awakened from a dream Ruth asked Boaz to redeem her husband’s life, and after establishing that the next of kin was not prepared to do this,
Another has the kinsman’s right tis he who must redeem But should he not redeem your life ≈
Boaz, as second in line, took Ruth to be his wife.
Another has the kinsman’s right tis he who must redeem But should he not redeem your life then you shall be my spouse
Ruth and Boaz had a son and they called him Obed (Ruth 4).
And you shall be the mother of a righteous royal house
At the birth celebrations, someone recounted the story of Judah and Tamar and their son Perez. Obed had a son called Jesse. And Jesse had a son called David – the king of Judah pronounced righteous by God and promised a dynasty that would rule for ever from Jerusalem... And though that house in time may fall, its stump shall still take root And from that stump shall come a branch that bears most righteous fruit

Says Rahab’s son to Moabite, awakened from a dream “Another has the kinsman’s right tis he who must redeem But should he not redeem your life then you shall be my spouse And you shall be the mother of a righteous royal house And though that house in time may fall, its stump shall still take root And from that stump shall come a branch that bears most righteous fruit