Everybody loves a good underdog story. There’s nothing like watching the unlikeliest of individuals persevere through their difficulties, defy all odds, and come out the other side as victors or heroes. We find these types of tales all throughout Scripture. Joseph was sold into slavery by his own brothers and falsely accused of trying to take advantage of his master’s wife before he became second in command to the Egyptian Pharaoh. David was just a young shepherd boy with no battle training, and yet he managed to slay a giant who defied the true and living God. Paul was a murderer of Christians before he received a vision of Christ and converted, and despite the many difficulties he encountered after his conversion, he is known today are one of the earliest and greatest Christian evangelists. Though these three men (and many more throughout the Bible) overcame seemingly insurmountable obstacles, they did not do so on their own. They each were empowered by the Lord who filled them with strength and provided for their needs. It was the Lord who redeemed them.
There’s another underdog story in the Bible that has been especially popular amongst Christian woman. It’s a story of a young Moabite widow who, though she endured much suffering and heartache, ended up playing a much bigger role in God’s redemptive plan than she ever could have imagined.
Like most underdog stories, the book of Ruth doesn’t have a happy beginning. First, the text establishes that the book takes place in “the days when the judges ruled” (Ruth 1:1, ESV). The period of the judges was a very tumultuous time for Israel, as they went through cycle after cycle of adopting the sins of their pagan neighbors, receiving their due judgment, and repenting and begging God for salvation from their enemies. In addition to this, there was a famine in the land, which caused a man named Elimelech, his wife Naomi, and their two sons to leave Israel and sojourn to the land of Moab. Elimelech and his two sons died while they resided in Moab, leaving Naomi a childless widow with no one to provide for her.
One day, Naomi heard that the Lord had visited His people and there was no more famine in Israel, so she decided to return to her homeland. Before their deaths, her sons had married Moabite women, and while one of these women decided go back to her family, the other—a young woman named Ruth—chose to go to Israel with Naomi.
These two women set off for Bethlehem, and when they arrived, Ruth offered to glean among the fields. The Law of Moses set up a provision for widows and sojourners, prohibiting the people from harvesting every crop in their fields. They were commanded to leave some behind for those who didn’t have the means to feed themselves (Deuteronomy 24:19). Being both widowed and childless, Naomi and Ruth had no means to provide for themselves, so Ruth went to glean.
The field she came to just happened to belong to a man named Boaz, who hailed from the same clan as Elimelech. When he discovered Ruth had come to Bethlehem with Naomi, his relative’s widow, he made special provisions for Ruth. He commanded his young men in the fields not to touch her, and he allowed her to eat and drink with his other servants and workers. He even told his reapers to leave extra bundles of grain behind for her to glean.
That day, Ruth returned home with an ephah of barley, which would have been enough to feed them for over a week![1] Naomi inquired who it was that had been so generous to Ruth, and she replied that it was Boaz. This made Naomi exceedingly glad, as Boaz was one of their redeemers—a near relative who had the ability redeem his relatives in poverty. Naomi encouraged Ruth to continue gleaning in Boaz’s fields until the end of the harvests and eventually urged her to go to Boaz and ask him to redeem her—essentially, to take her as his wife and provide for her.
Ruth went to Boaz that evening and asked him to be her redeemer. Boaz was honored that such an honorable young woman would seek him out, and he agreed to redeem her. However, there was another relative—another redeemer—who was nearer to Elimelech than he was and had the right to redeem before he did. The next day, Boaz sought out this other redeemer to see if he would redeem the women, but the man showed no interest in taking Ruth as his own wife. So, Boaz redeemed Ruth and Naomi and married Ruth, and the Lord blessed them with a son, whom they named Obed.
At the very end of this short book, we discover that “Obed fathered Jesse, and Jesse fathered David” (Ruth 4:22). This David is the same David I mentioned at the beginning of the post, the same David who would become the second king of Israel. Little did Ruth know when she was gleaning the fields to feed herself and her mother-in-law that she would become the great grandmother of a king who was said to be a man after God’s heart (Acts 13:22). More than that, we know from Scripture that one of David’s many descendants was Jesus, the Son of God and Savior of the world (see the genealogy in Matthew 1, where Ruth is one of only five women listed). Ruth, the poor and widowed Moabitess, became an ancestor of Jesus Christ, the prophesied Messiah who would come to break the curse of sin on our world. Ruth received her redemption while also helping pave the way for the entire world to experience the redemption of Christ.
We’re all the underdogs in our stories. We’re tired. We’re weak. We’re unable to truly help or save ourselves. But the good news is that we have a God who strengthens us, who provides for us, who redeems us from our sins and our sorrows. All we have to do to experience His glorious redemption is to put our faith in Him. And who knows what wonderful things He’ll accomplish through our trust and obedience? Even as underdogs, we all have a role to play in God’s redemptive story. And it starts with believing in Jesus as our refuge and redeemer.
“The LORD redeems the life of his servants; none of those who take refuge in him will be condemned.” Psalm 34:22
[1] K. Lawson Younger Jr., “Scene 3. Naomi Evaluates the Meeting (2:17b-23),” in Judges/Ruth, The NIV Application Commentary Series (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2002).
