Faith on the Fringes

Right in Their Own Eyes

After generations of waiting, hundreds of years in Egypt, forty years in the wilderness, and battles fought on the other side of the Jordan, Israel was finally living in the land of promise.

The Jordan had parted.

Jericho had fallen.

Sandaled feet, still carrying the dust of the wilderness, now walked on the land God had promised to Abraham generations before.

They had made it.

But getting to the Promised Land and living faithfully in it would prove to be two very different things.

And faithfulness in this new land would depend, in part, on something remarkably fragile:

Remembrance.

This was long before printed Bibles sat on shelves in every home. The Word of God was not yet a New York Times bestseller that anyone could order, underline, and carry around in a bag.

The Law had been entrusted to Israel and preserved on scrolls. Priests and Levites were charged with teaching it. At appointed times it was read publicly before the people. Parents were commanded to repeat it to their children—when they sat in their houses, when they walked along the road, when they lay down, and when they rose.

The story of what God had said and what He had done was meant to be told and retold.

One generation was meant to place it into the hands of the next.

God knew how easily His people could forget.

So, He built remembering into the rhythm of their lives.

Days to stop.

Feasts to celebrate.

Meals to eat.

Stories to tell.

Words to teach their children.

Leviticus 23 laid out a yearly rhythm of remembrance. These appointed times—moedim—were sacred rehearsals, moments woven into Israel’s calendar when the people gathered again and again before the LORD to remember who He was and what He had done. The Celebration of Passover carried the story of deliverance. Unleavened Bread remembered the haste of their departure. The Festival of Firstfruits and Weeks reminded them who provided the harvest. The Day of Atonement confronted them again with sin and cleansing. Booths required them to live for a time in temporary shelters so that generation after generation would remember how God had carried Israel through the wilderness.

God wove remembrance into their calendar because He knew what forgetting could do.

And Moses had warned them that the greatest danger might not come while they were wandering hungry through the wilderness.

It might come when they were finally full.

When they lived in houses they had not built.

Drank from wells they had not dug.

Ate from vineyards they had not planted.

When they had eaten and were satisfied he warned them:

“Then watch yourself, that you do not forget the LORD who brought you from the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery.” Deuteronomy 6:12

But that is exactly what Judges tells us happened.

Joshua died.

The generation who had seen the mighty works of God began to disappear.

And then another generation arose who “did not know the LORD, nor yet the work which He had done for Israel.” Judges 2:10

Now a generation was growing up with sandaled feet planted firmly in the Promised Land—

and they did not know—they had not experienced the LORD.

Israel turned away. Their enemies overtook them. They cried out, and God delivered them.

Then they turned away again.

Only farther.

By the end of the book of Judges, the nation had descended into almost unimaginable darkness.

Even the judges themselves began to reflect the brokenness of the nation they were supposed to rescue.

Turn away.

Oppression.

Cry out.

Deliverance.

Peace.

But each time they came back around,

they were lower than before.

What looked like a cycle was actually something far more dangerous.

A downward spiral.

By the final chapters of Judges, we are reading some of the most depraved stories in the entire Bible.

Sexual violence.

Murder.

Civil war.

An entire tribe brought to the brink of extinction.

And then more violence committed in an attempt to repair the devastation their own choices had created.

There is no triumphant deliverer at the end.

No judge rides in to rescue them.

The book simply closes with a diagnosis:

“In those days there was no king in Israel; everyone did what was right in his own eyes.” Judges 21:25

That verse does more than describe the final chapter.

It describes the age.

And somewhere inside that downward spiral, Scripture gives us another story.

It is almost as though the camera pulls away from the violence and confusion of the nation and then slowly focuses in on one small place.

The book of Ruth comes after the book of Judges in our Bibles.

But the story of Ruth does not come after the darkness of Judges.

It takes place in the middle of it.

Same land.

Same days.

Same darkness.

But now the lens narrows.

Away from the judges.

Away from the national chaos.

Until we are looking at one field outside Bethlehem.

Not a battlefield but—

A barley field.

Faith on the Fringes

At first glance, there may not be much to see.

Rows of barley bending beneath the weight of the grain. Workers moving through the field, cutting and gathering the harvest. The sound of voices. The rustle of stalks beneath sandaled feet.

It looks like an ordinary field on an ordinary day.

You might not even notice the woman working along the edges.

She is not one of the hired workers. She follows behind them, bending low to gather what has been left behind.

A stalk here.

A handful there.

Whatever the harvesters have missed.

She is a widow.

A foreigner.

A Moabite.

A woman living on the fringes of Israel, gathering grain from the fringes of a field.

Long before this barley was planted, God had spoken to His people:

“Now when you reap the harvest of your land, you shall not reap to the very corners of your field... You shall leave them for the needy and for the stranger.” Leviticus 19:9–10

Someone has remembered.

In the days when everyone was doing what was right in his own eyes, someone had ordered this field according to what was right in the eyes of God.

It is almost as if we can see Leviticus growing right there in the dirt.

But there are things we cannot see when we walk into this field.

We cannot see how the Word took root in the heart of the man who owns it.

We cannot hear the stories that may have been told around his family's table.

We do not know what his mother whispered to him when he was a boy.

Did she tell him about the trumpets outside Jericho's walls?

About the day the walls of that great city fell?

About walking out of the ruins with her father, her mother, her brothers, and all who belonged to her?

Did she tell him what it was like for a woman who had once been an outsider to be gathered into the people of God?

We don't know.

Scripture doesn't let us sit at that table. It does not let us hear those conversations.

We only know that somewhere between a scarlet cord hanging from a window in Jericho and barley growing in a field outside Bethlehem, the Word took hold.

We may not be able to hear how it was passed to him.

But what our ears cannot hear, our eyes can plainly see.

In the edges left unharvested.

In the foreign widow allowed to gather there.

The Word of God bearing fruit in the middle of a generation that had forgotten it.

And here, in the middle of that field, we finally meet the man who owns it.

His name is Boaz.

And he is Rahab's son.

Right in the Eyes of God

This field lies outside Bethlehem,

Beit Lechem.

The House of Bread.

In the territory given to the tribe of Judah.

Judah—the tribe whose name had been associated with praise from the day Leah first spoke it, and over whom Jacob had pronounced that unusual blessing:

There is no king in Israel.

But we are standing in the tribe from which the king will come.

And in the middle of one of the darkest periods in Israel’s history, something remarkable is happening in this little field.

While everyone else is doing what is right in his own eyes,

The man who owns this field is doing what is right in the eyes of God.

We saw the first evidence at the edges of his field.

But the edges were only the beginning.

God had told him to leave the fringe.

He made the fringe wider.

Boaz is a name associated with strength.

Generations later, Solomon would give that same name to one of the great bronze pillars standing at the entrance to the Temple.

And perhaps there is no better picture of the man we meet in this field.

Because Boaz is living in the same Israel we have just watched spiral downward.

He has heard the same cries of war. He has lived through the same uncertainty. He has watched the same culture loosen its grip on the Word of God. The darkness of Judges does not stop at the boundary of his field.

And yet, somehow, neither does the faithfulness of Boaz.

There is nothing particularly dramatic about what he is doing. No army follows him. No enemy falls before him. No prophet stands beside him calling Israel back to God.

Boaz simply gets up in the morning and tends his field.

He harvests his barley.

He speaks blessing over his workers.

He leaves room at the edges for people who have nothing.

And when one of those people appears, he sees her.

In a generation that has forgotten the Word, Boaz remembers.

And because he remembers, the Word has worked its way into the ordinary places of his life—into the way he runs his field, the way he treats his workers, the way he uses his wealth, and the way he responds to a poor foreign widow who has nothing to offer him in return.

This is what faithfulness looks like in the days of the Judges.

It does not always look like a battle.

Sometimes it looks like barley deliberately dropped on the ground.

Sometimes it looks like water offered to a thirsty foreigner.

Sometimes it looks like a place made at the table.

Sometimes faithfulness is simply continuing to order your life according to what God has said when the world around you has decided His Word no longer matters.

Boaz is still looking to God.

And in one of the darkest periods of Israel’s history, that kind of quiet faithfulness shines.

Like a pillar standing in the middle of a collapsing culture, Boaz remains firm in the Word of God.

Room at the Table

There is something else happening in this story that we cannot afford to miss.

Biblical writers did not have space to waste.

Scrolls were expensive. Words mattered. So when a biblical author pauses to tell us when something happened, we should probably pay attention.

The author of Ruth tells us that Ruth and Naomi arrived in Bethlehem:

That matters.

To us, barley harvest may simply sound like a detail about the time of year.

But an Israelite hearing this story would have known what time it was.

Barley was the first of the spring grains to ripen. And with the beginning of the barley harvest, Israel’s sacred calendar turned toward one of the appointed feasts God had woven into the life of His people:

Firstfruits.

When Israel entered the land God had promised them and began to reap its harvest, they were commanded to bring the first sheaf to the priest, who would present it before the LORD.

And here is the part that is easy for us to miss.

They were not to eat from the new harvest until the Firstfruits offering had been presented to God.

Leviticus says:

“Until this same day, until you have brought in the offering of your God, you shall eat neither bread nor roasted grain nor new produce.” Leviticus 23:14

Before Israel enjoyed the harvest, they acknowledged whose harvest it was.

God’s.

The land belonged to Him.

The barley belonged to Him.

The harvest belonged to Him.

The first sheaf was just that—

the first.

The first grain.

The first evidence of a greater harvest still to come.

And standing at the beginning of that harvest is a woman who had not been born into Israel at all.

A foreigner.

A Moabite.

A widow.

An outsider.

We cannot know exactly where Ruth’s arrival fell on Israel’s festival calendar. Scripture does not give us enough information to place her there on the actual day of Firstfruits.

But it does tell us the season she walked into.

And perhaps that is why the author wants us to know when she arrived.

Because as Israel’s calendar turned again toward a celebration declaring that the harvest belonged to God, an outsider was being brought into it.

Not all at once.

Not yet completely.

But closer.

Until eventually, the woman who entered Bethlehem with no birthright in Israel finds herself sitting at the table of an Israelite man.

Boaz gives her bread.

He gives her roasted grain—the very food Leviticus mentions in connection with the new harvest.

She eats until she is satisfied.

And there is food left over.

There is something beautiful about that picture.

At the beginning of the harvest, an outsider is sitting at the table—

and there is more than enough for her.

The author keeps the harvest clock running.

Later he tells us that Ruth continued gleaning through “the barley harvest and the wheat harvest.”

Barley came first.

Wheat came later.

And between those two harvests, Israel counted.

From the offering of Firstfruits, God commanded His people to count seven complete weeks and then one more day.

Fifty days.

At the end of the count came another appointed feast:

The Feast of Weeks.

Shavuot.

The feast associated with the wheat harvest.

So Ruth’s story stretches across the spring harvest season—from barley toward wheat, from the beginning of the harvest toward its fullness.

And all the while, the outsider is moving inward.

From Moab to Bethlehem.

From the fringes to the table.

From gathering what was left behind to eating bread placed before her.

And perhaps it should not surprise us that generations later, Jewish communities would come to read the book of Ruth itself at the Feast of Weeks.

The story of the outsider being brought in became a story associated with the feast at the end of the harvest.

But there are some things even a place at the table cannot give her.

Bread can satisfy her hunger.

Barley can provide for another day.

Kindness can make room for her.

But none of them can restore what has been lost.

Ruth needs more than a place at the table.

She needs a redeemer.

What Does It Mean to Redeem?

Dear Reader,

There is a principle of Bible study sometimes called the law of first mention.

The idea is simple: when we encounter an important word or concept in Scripture, it can be helpful to go back and look at where that idea first appears. Those early uses often give us a picture or pattern that Scripture will continue to develop as the story unfolds.

And there is one word we need to understand before we follow this woman out of the barley field.

Redemption.

To understand what Scripture means by redemption, we need to go backward before we can go forward.

Back to Egypt.

Back to a people living in bondage.

Back to the Exodus, where redemption becomes a defining part of Israel's story.

And here redemption is actually used as an economic term.

If that sounds strange to you, think about the way we still use the word redeem today.

Suppose someone gives you a gift card. You take it into a store, find some knickknack that you want, and carry it to the register. The knickknack belongs to the store.

You cannot simply walk out with it.

A price has to be paid to free the knickknack from its current bondage.

Now, I realize bondage is a rather dramatic word for a knickknack sitting on a shelf. But stay with me.

You hand the cashier your gift card. The price is paid. The knickknack that belonged to the store can now leave with you.

We usually describe that transaction by saying, “I redeemed my gift card.”

But somewhere along the way, our language turned redemption around.

The gift card isn't really what was redeemed.

The gift card was the redemption price.

The knickknack was redeemed.

Something of value was exchanged, and what had been held under one ownership was released and claimed by another.

That is much closer to the picture of redemption we find in Scripture.

And suddenly the silly little knickknack isn't quite so silly.

Because Scripture tells the story of something far more valuable held in bondage—

a people who could not free themselves.

Israel was not a knickknack sitting on a shelf.

They were people in bondage.

Pharaoh held them in slavery. They could not simply walk out of Egypt because they wanted to be free. Their release would require someone with the power to secure it.

Exodus gives us one of Scripture's first great pictures of redemption.

And God said:

He would secure their release.

He would redeem them.

And that first great picture of redemption gives us questions we can carry forward through the rest of Scripture whenever a redeemer steps onto the page.

Who is unable to restore or free themselves?

Who has the power and the right to act on their behalf?

And what will redemption cost?

In Exodus, bondage was easy to see.

Pharaoh had a name.

The taskmasters had faces.

The bricks were real, and the yoke was heavy.

But bondage does not always wear chains.

Sometimes the taskmaster is harder to see.

Come back with me now to the barley field in Bethlehem.

The woman gathering at its fringes is not a slave in Egypt. No Pharaoh owns her. No taskmaster stands over her with a whip.

And yet her life is constrained by circumstances she has no power to change.

She is a widow in a world in which the death of a husband could mean the loss of protection, provision, inheritance, and future.

She is a foreigner—a Moabite—living among a people into whom she was not born.

And to Israel, that name carried history.

Moab was the nation whose king had hired Balaam to curse Israel. Moabite women had enticed Israel into sexual immorality and the worship of Baal at Peor. And when Moses gave the Law to Israel, Moab was singled out with a severe restriction concerning entrance into the assembly of the LORD.

She was an outsider carrying the name of one of Israel’s old enemies.

Death has taken what she cannot bring back. The structures of the world around her have placed some things beyond her ability to recover for herself.

Her loss has become its own kind of bondage.

The taskmaster is harder to see, but the need for redemption is just as real.

Boaz has already done something beautiful for her.

But to be fed and welcomed is not enough when we are in need of redemption.

Because redemption requires more than kindness.

It requires someone who has the right to step into what has been lost, the ability to act on behalf of the one who cannot, and the willingness to bear the cost.

Under His Wing

Night has fallen.

The day's work is finished, and Boaz lies down beside the grain. Sometime during the night, he is startled awake and discovers a woman lying at his feet.

In the darkness, he cannot see who she is.

“Who are you?”

She has not come looking for another handful of barley.

She has come looking for the one who can do for her what she cannot do for herself.

“Spread your covering over your maid, for you are a close relative.”

There is a word hidden in her request.

The Hebrew word translated “covering” is:

Kanaph.

A wing.

The edge of a garment.

And that word carries us back to something Boaz said when Ruth first entered his field.

He had prayed:

“May the LORD reward your work, and your wages be full from the LORD, the God of Israel, under whose wings you have come to seek refuge.” Ruth 2:12

Under whose kanaph you have come to seek refuge.

Boaz had prayed that Ruth would find shelter beneath the wing of Israel's God.

Now Ruth takes the word Boaz prayed over her and places it back into his hands.

Spread your kanaph over me.

Ruth is asking Boaz to become the answer to his own prayer.

And there is a startling boldness in that request.

Perhaps some of it comes from being an outsider. Ruth had not spent her childhood learning every custom of Israel. She had not grown up hearing every word of Torah around an Israelite table.

But she knows what it is to be hungry.

She knows what it is to stand at the fringes.

She knows what it is to carry losses she cannot restore and to face a future she cannot secure for herself.

And she knows one more thing.

She knows who Boaz is.

“For you are a go'el”

Depending on the Bible in your hands, you may not see that word translated the same way.

One translation may call him a close relative. Another a kinsman-redeemer. Another a guardian-redeemer. Still another simply a redeemer.

The translations differ because we don't really have a good English word for what a go'el was.

The word comes from the Hebrew ga'al—to redeem—and at its simplest, a go'el is one who redeems.

But that still doesn't quite tell us what Ruth was saying.

In Israel, your go'el was someone from within your family who had the standing to step in when circumstances were carrying you toward a place you could not get out of on your own.

If poverty forced you to sell the family's land, a go'el could redeem it.

If poverty became so severe that you sold yourself into servitude, a go'el could redeem you.

If death threatened the continuation of a family name and inheritance, a go'el could act to preserve what was in danger of being lost.

This was family stepping into the gap.

And suddenly that word matters very much to two widows who have returned to Bethlehem with almost nothing.

Ruth and Naomi are surviving for the moment. Ruth can glean because God's Word has made provision for the poor, the widow, and the foreigner.

But gleaning will not restore what they have lost.

It will not recover the family's inheritance.

It will not secure their future.

It will not change the vulnerability of two widows with no obvious means of providing for themselves once the harvest is over.

The edges of the field can keep them alive.

But the edges of the field cannot redeem them.

For that, they need a go'el.

Someone within the family with the right to step into their loss.

Someone with the means to do what they cannot do for themselves.

Someone willing to bear the cost of bringing back what is in danger of being lost.

And Ruth knows exactly where to find one.

Boaz is a go'el.

Ruth isn't simply saying,

You are related to me.

She is saying,

You are one who can redeem.

She recognizes the one who has the right and the ability to do for her what she cannot do for herself.

And she seeks him out.

She does not remain at the edge of the field hoping redemption might somehow find her. She comes to the redeemer. She asks him to spread his kanaph over her, believing and proclaiming:

I know who you are.

I know what I need.

And I believe you can do for me what I cannot do for myself.

That is faith with its hand outstretched.

The outsider is asking to be brought in.

The woman who had no birthright in Israel is asking a redeemer to cover her and bring her into a family she could never enter by birth.

And Boaz is willing.

But there is another man.

A nearer relative with the first right to redeem.

At the City Gate

Morning comes, and Boaz goes to the city gate.

This is where the business of Bethlehem is conducted—where agreements are made, disputes are settled, and elders sit as witnesses. What Ruth asked for in the darkness of the threshing floor will now be settled in the light of day.

Boaz sits down, and before long the man he has been waiting for passes by.

The nearer redeemer.

Boaz calls him over and gathers ten of the elders of the city to witness what is about to happen. Naomi has returned from Moab, and the land belonging to the family of Elimelech must be dealt with. As the nearest relative, this man has the first right to redeem it.

Boaz lays the matter before him plainly. If he will redeem the land, he should do it. If he will not, Boaz is next in line.

The man's answer comes quickly.

For one brief moment, it seems the matter is settled. There is a redeemer.

But Boaz has not finished.

Because redemption is not simply about having the right to redeem. There is also a cost.

And we have been waiting for that question ever since we went back to Egypt:

What is the price of redemption?

The land does not stand alone. There is a widow. There is a family name. There is an inheritance that must continue.

And there is Ruth.

Boaz explains that redeeming the inheritance will also mean taking responsibility for Ruth, the widow of Mahlon, so that the name of the dead will continue with his inheritance.

Suddenly, the calculation changes.

“I cannot redeem it for myself, because I would jeopardize my own inheritance.” Ruth 4:6

The man has the right to redeem. He has the opportunity. But when he understands what redemption will require of him, he steps back.

The cost is more than he is willing to bear.

Ruth needs more than someone who has the right to redeem.

She needs someone willing to bear the cost.

And then, just when we think we understand what is happening—someone takes off a shoe.

Well...a sandal.

Fortunately, the narrator stops long enough to explain:

“Now this was the custom in former times in Israel concerning the redemption and the exchange of land to confirm any matter: a man removed his sandal and gave it to another; and this was the manner of attestation in Israel.” Ruth 4:7

The sandal confirmed the transaction.

But why a sandal?

That question takes us back to the land itself.

In the ancient world, the foot was closely associated with possession of the ground beneath it. To walk upon land was a way of expressing one's claim to it, and the sandal became a fitting symbol of the right to tread upon that land.

We can hear that same way of thinking in the language of Scripture.

Before Israel entered the Promised Land, God said:

“Every place on which the sole of your foot treads shall be yours.” Deuteronomy 11:24

And when Joshua stood ready to lead Israel across the Jordan:

“Every place on which the sole of your foot treads, I have given it to you.” Joshua 1:3

Land and feet belonged together in the ancient imagination.

To tread upon the land was to possess it.

And now, at the city gate of Bethlehem, the man with the first right to redeem the land removes his sandal and hands it to Boaz.

He will not be the one to walk this land.

He will not claim this inheritance.

He gives that right to Boaz.

He removes his sandal, relinquishes his right to the inheritance, and steps out of the story.

And there is something interesting about the man we have just watched leave.

We never knew his name.

When Boaz first called him over at the gate, he addressed him with the Hebrew expression peloni almoni—something like “so-and-so” or “such-and-such.”

Scripture never tells us who he was.

And in a story so concerned with names and inheritances, that is hard not to notice.

The man who was afraid redemption might endanger his own inheritance disappears from the story without his name being preserved for us.

But Boaz does not.

The man willing to bear the cost of preserving the inheritance and name of another will have his own name remembered for generations.

Before the elders and all the people gathered at the gate, Boaz declares that he will redeem everything belonging to Elimelech, Chilion, and Mahlon.

And then he names the woman waiting at home.

“Moreover, I have acquired Ruth the Moabitess, the widow of Mahlon, to be my wife in order to raise up the name of the deceased on his inheritance.” Ruth 4:10

This is a story that has been defined by death since the first chapter. Elimelech dies. Mahlon dies. Chilion dies. And with them, a family line has effectively died too.

But when the go'el steps in, redemption reaches into what death has cut off.

Not literally, of course. Boaz cannot bring the dead back to life. But he can “raise up the name of the deceased.” The name can live on. The inheritance can continue. Where death appeared to have ended the story, redemption makes a future possible again.

And notice what the redeemer becomes in order to do it.

A bridegroom.

The widow becomes a bride. The redeemer becomes a bridegroom. And suddenly, the story that began with death is moving toward life. The story that began with emptiness is moving toward fullness.

And the story that began at the beginning of the harvest—

is beginning to bear fruit.

Because redemption confronts what death has taken and creates a future where there appeared to be none.

The Last Word

Four chapters.

That is all the book of Ruth gives us.

Four short chapters set against the sprawling darkness of Judges.

And almost all of it happens through the ordinary faithfulness of people simply living according to the Word of God.

Especially one man.

We saw the faithfulness of Boaz in his field.

He left the edges unharvested because God had said to leave them. He fed the hungry. He protected the vulnerable. He made room for the foreigner.

We saw it beneath his kanaph.

Boaz prayed that Ruth would find refuge beneath the wing of Israel's God. And when she came asking him to spread his own kanaph over her, he was willing to become part of the answer to the prayer he had prayed.

And we saw it in a sandal at the city gate.

When another man stepped away because redemption might endanger his own inheritance, Boaz stepped forward. He was willing to bear the cost of preserving the inheritance and name of another.

Field.

Kanaph.

Sandal.

Nothing spectacular.

Just a man continuing to do what was right in the eyes of God when almost everyone around him had stopped.

And sometime later, Naomi—who returned to Bethlehem saying, “I went out full, but the LORD has brought me back empty”—is holding a child in her arms.

Full again.

Surely this is where the music swells.

Surely this is where the story ends.

But it doesn't.

Instead, the book of Ruth ends with something most modern readers are probably tempted to skip.

A genealogy.

Ten names that, at first glance, feel almost misplaced.

After all that story, all that loss, all that barley, all that redemption—

a list of who fathered whom?

Perez.

Hezron.

Ram.

Amminadab.

Nahshon…

Wait.

Remember what I told you earlier about valuable scroll real estate.

If the biblical writers used precious space to write something down, we should probably pay attention.

Especially to the ending.

Because hidden inside this seemingly ordinary genealogy is the triumphant trumpet blast of the entire book.

We entered Ruth concerned with the survival of two widows.

But while everyone around them was doing what was right in his own eyes, God was quietly moving His story forward through people who continued to do what was right in His.

Through a field.

Through a foreigner.

Through a faithful man.

Through a redeemer.

Through a child.

And now—

through the names.

…Nahshon.

Salmon.

Rahab’s husband.

Boaz.

The faithful man in the field.

He could not have known where his faithfulness would lead.

He simply lived the Word faithfully in the part of the story God had given him.

And God carried the story farther than Boaz could see.

From barley to wheat.

From the fringes to the family.

From death to life.

From emptiness to fullness.

To Obed.

The child in Naomi's arms.

Jesse.

One more generation.

And then—

after a story that began in the dark days of the judges—

the days when everyone was doing what was right in his own eyes,

the days when there was no king in Israel—

God gets the final word.

DAVID