Four quiet chapters about loyalty in a famine — and how the family line of Jesus runs through a foreigner.
During the period of the Judges, famine drives Elimelech's family from Bethlehem to Moab, where he and both sons die, leaving Naomi destitute with two Moabite daughters-in-law. Naomi resolves to return home and urges both women back to their families. Ruth's declaration of covenant loyalty—using the Hebrew chesed—binds her irrevocably to Naomi and to Israel's God.
Set during the turbulent era of the Judges (ca. 1100 BC), this narrative was likely composed or finalized during or after David's reign to establish his genealogical legitimacy through a Moabite ancestor. The Bethlehem-Moab axis reflects real economic pressures and the complex Israelite-Moabite relations attested elsewhere in Scripture.
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