Every book in the Bible is meant to teach us, as the Article of our Church says, something necessary to salvation.  But what is there necessary to our salvation in the Book of Ruth?

No doubt we learn from it that Ruth was the ancestress of King David; and that she was, therefore, an ancestress of our blessed Lord Jesus Christ:  but curious and interesting as that is, we can hardly call that something necessary to salvation.  There must be something more in the book.  Let us take it simply as it stands, and see if we can find it out.

It begins by telling us how a man of Bethlehem has been driven out of his own country by a famine, he and his wife Naomi and his two sons, and has gone over the border into Moab, among the heathen; how his two sons have married heathen women, and the name of the one was Ruth, and the name of the other Orpah.  Then how he dies, and his two sons; and how Naomi, his widow, hears that the Lord had visited His people, in giving them bread; how the people of Judah were prosperous again, and she is there all alone among the heathen; so she sets out to go back to her own people, and her daughters-in-law go with her.

But she persuades them not to go.  Why do they not stay in their own land?  And they weep over each other; and Orpah kisses her mother-in-law, and goes back; but Ruth cleaves unto her.

Then follows that famous speech of Ruth’s, which, for its simple beauty and poetry, has become a proverb, and even a song, among us to this day.

And Ruth said, ’Intreat me not to leave thee, or to return from following after thee:  for whither thou goest, I will go; and where thou lodgest, I will lodge:  thy people shall be my people, and thy God my God: 

’Where thou diest, will I die, and there will I be buried:  the Lord do so to me, and more also, if ought but death part thee and me.’

So when she saw that she was steadfastly minded to go to her, she left speaking to her.

And they come to Bethlehem, and all the town was moved about them; and they said, Is this Naomi?

’And she said unto them, Call me not Naomi, call me Mara:  for the Almighty hath dealt very bitterly with me.  I went out full, and the Lord hath brought me home again empty:  why then call ye me Naomi, seeing the Lord hath testified against me, and the Almighty hath afflicted me?’

And they came to Bethlehem about the passover tide, at the beginning of barley harvest, and Ruth went out into the fields to glean, and she lighted on a part of the field which belonged to Boaz, who was of her husband’s kindred.