Twenty-twenty has been a long, tiring year. We’re physically tired, and we’re emotionally tired. Months and months of pain, loss, and uncertainty has drained our souls. We long for this pandemic to end and for justice and peace in our nation.
We’re tired from working long hours, from our kids being cooped up in our apartment 24/7, and from enduring change after change after change.
Our weary souls ache for rest.
The book of Ruth is about just that. It shows us where we can, even in the midst everything happening in our world right now, find deep rest for our souls.
Ruth’s Weariness
The book of Ruth starts out with a woman named Naomi who lives with her husband and two sons in Bethlehem. One day there’s a famine in the land, which is ironic, because Bethlehem means “city of bread.” Because of the famine, Naomi and her family move to Moab, which historically was one of Israel’s enemies, and eventually her sons both marry Moabite women, Orpah and Ruth. But sadly, after about 10 years, Naomi’s husband and then both her sons die.
There’s a lot here we can relate to. Maybe, like Naomi and Ruth, you’ve experienced the tragic loss of a loved one. Maybe you’ve lost your livelihood from the economic impact of COVID-19. Maybe, like many people where I live in Manhattan, you recently moved because of what was happening where you were.
The story continues. Having lost everything in Moab, Ruth and Naomi decide to return to Bethlehem when they hear the famine there has ended. But in the ancient world, there weren’t a lot of ways for women to provide for themselves. They return to Bethlehem at the beginning of the barley harvest, and Ruth is able to glean in the fields of their relative Boaz, who turns out to be very generous towards them. But eventually the harvest ends, and Naomi and Ruth are back where they started, in the same poverty they’ve been trying to overcome for 10 years.
Imagine how demoralizing that must have felt! Here’s Ruth. She’s a young woman whose husband recently died. She’s in unfamiliar territory, literally—she moved to an enemy country. And even after all her travel, she’s still alone, except for her one roommate, Naomi, and they have no way to provide for themselves. They must have felt so weary.
Ruth Seeks Rest
And so, Naomi asks Ruth, “My daughter, should I not seek rest for you, that it may be well with you?” (Ruth 3:1; cf. 1:8-9)
And Naomi has a whole plan for how to attain this rest. She’s seen how generous Boaz has been to them, and she’s hoping that he will provide the rest they long for. It turns out he is “a redeemer” (a close relative who can provide for them in their need), so Naomi tells Ruth to propose to him.
Boaz accepts, but he first needs to ask permission from the “redeemer nearer” than he (Ruth 3:12). But as a demonstration of his devotion to Ruth and perhaps even as a sort of pledge, Boaz sends Ruth off with a gift. He gives her six measures of barley, which might have been as much as 95 pounds of barley![1]
When Ruth returns home, Naomi affirms her total faith in Boaz. She tells Ruth to wait. And the word used conveys the sense not only of waiting, but also the worry-free attitude Ruth could have as she waited.[2] In the midst of uncertainty, Ruth and Naomi wait in faithful expectation of the promise of their redeemer to “settle the matter” and bring them rest.
To a certain extent this part of the book of Ruth describes the period in which we live our entire lives.
Like Boaz promised that Ruth would be redeemed, so God has promised to redeem us. Jesus in fact has already purchased our redemption by dying on a cross for our sin. And like Boaz sent Ruth away with a gift and pledge, so Jesus has sent us his Holy Spirit as a pledge (Ephesians 1:14). But like Ruth was still awaiting the resolution, so we await the day when God will bring us rest.
At this point in the story, Ruth was still poor and without any way to provide for herself. Our world is today is likewise still filled with all forms of unrest—sickness and death, injustice, volatility, loneliness, conflict. But the book of Ruth shows us that deep soul rest is possible even now if we, like Ruth, wait for the day of our redemption, trusting that our redeemer will finish what he has started. That gives us a peace that is stronger than any situation we can find ourselves in.
There’s a beautiful old hymn that says:
“Dear refuge of my weary soul, On Thee, when sorrows rise, On Thee, when waves of trouble roll, My fainting hope relies. To Thee I tell each rising grief, For Thou alone canst heal; Thy Word can bring a sweet relief, For every pain I feel.”
The problem is, instead of taking our weariness to God, we look for rest in all the wrong places. We’re stressed, so we turn to escapism, like scrolling through our endless feed, getting drunk at a party, or shopping for new clothes—anything to distract for just a moment.
Or we try to control every variable around us, so everything goes according to our plan. Or we seek rest in a good career and financial security. Or we think if we just find the right guy or the right woman, and settle down and have a family, then we’ll be at peace.
But none of those things will give us the rest our souls long for. They’re far too temporary and uncertain. And this isn’t just a neutral thing either. God offers us rest, and when we seek it elsewhere, we’re rejecting him. It’s like if Ruth had rejected Boaz’s offer and instead returned to poverty in Moab.
The book of Ruth points us to the only one who can give us true, complete, and lasting rest.
Ruth Receives Rest
Boaz meets with the other relative, and he says he cannot redeem Ruth, “lest I impair my own inheritance” (4:5). It would be too costly for him to provide for Ruth and Naomi. So Boaz redeems Ruth through this costly marriage, and when they marry, they give birth to a child in Bethlehem named Obed, which comes from the Hebrew word “to serve.”
When the child is born, the women of Bethlehem say to Naomi, “Blessed be the Lord, who has not left you this day without a redeemer, and may his name be renowned in Israel! He shall be to you a restorer of life and a nourisher of your old age, for your daughter-in-law who loves you, who is more to you than seven sons, has given birth to him” (Ruth 4:14-15).
Generations later, their prayers were answered. This son was the grandfather of king David (4:22), the king who secured rest for Israel against her enemies. But the ultimate answer to their prayer came over 1,000 years later when another son was born to another poor woman traveling to Bethlehem.
He was from the line of Ruth and David. And as he was about to be born, a priest in Israel named Zechariah, filled with the Holy Spirit, cried out, “Blessed be the Lord God of Israel, for he has visited and redeemed his people and has raised up a horn of salvation for us in the house of his servant David” (Luke 1:67-68).
Christ, Our Rest
This son, Jesus Christ, is the promised redeemer, the true Servant of the Lord whose costly marriage to his people—a marriage that cost him his life—restores our life and brings us rest.
One day he will remove every sin and darkness from our lives. He will transform our weak and weary bodies into new, glorious bodies. And all our deepest needs and desires will be satisfied as we exalt in him forever.
And if you trust in him, you can experience a taste of that rest even now. If you place your confidence not in your own ability to control your life, but in this Redeemer, if you seek peace not in your circumstances, but in this Redeemer, then you can sleep well at night no matter what the day ahead has in store, because you know that your redeemer has blessed you and has promised to bring you rest.
As the Psalmist says, “Return, O my soul, to your rest; for the Lord has dealt bountifully with you” (Psalm 116:7).
[1] Hubbard, Ruth, 222; cf. Eskenazi and Frymer-Kensky, Ruth, 66. [2] Cf. Ibid., 227; Bush, Ruth, 186.