Why isn't God mentioned more in the book of Ruth?

In a separate book from the history of their inveterate sin, in so persistently going after other gods, the Holy Spirit records the touching history of Ruth. It is another glimpse of domestic life. The story of Micah (as I judge) is that of the general condition of the people, and is given in the same book as the general history. But Elimelech and his family are marked off as distinct from the mass. Yet how feeble his faith! The land of promise had ceased to be such for him. Sin had brought judgment in the shape of famine, and he goes into the country of Moab for bread. But this affords another instance of the overruling wisdom and grace of God, who would have another Gentile (see Tamar and Rahab) brought into the ancestral line of the promised Messiah. The Lord Jesus, even in the Jewish line from Abraham, was connected with the Gentiles who will come in for their part in millennial blessing, when the King of Israel reigns supreme. The genealogy in Luke shows the Lord Jesus made in the likeness of man, but it was marvellous grace to the Gentiles that the Lord, even in His Jewish ancestry, should have a Gentile element. Ruth's personal faith, and desire to be numbered with the people whom God had called and blessed, is refreshing amid the general departure. "Thy people shall be my people, and thy God, my God." (See Ruth 1:16-17.) Orpah kissed Naomi, and left her; but Ruth clave unto her, and she has the distinguished honour of a place in the royal line of David, and of David's King. (Matt. 1.)

But were all these remarkable happenings just a series of coincidences? By no means: they were the movings of the hand of God, though He Himself remained hidden. God was behind the scenes of man's busy little world; but then, as has very well been observed, He moves all the scenes that He is behind. Moreover He moves them in favour of His people, if not always for their temporal preservation and advancement always for their spiritual good and the advancement of His own purposes.

The Book of Ruth tells us also of the days of the judges, when there was no king in Israel; but it shews us the fair side of those days, in the operations of the grace of God, who (blessed be His name!) never failed to work in the midst of the evil, as also in the steady progress of events towards the fulfilment of His promises in the Messiah, whatever may have been the simultaneous progress of the general evil.

Ruth, a stranger seeking shelter by faith under the wings of the God of Israel, is received in grace, and the genealogy of David, king over Israel according to grace, is linked with her. It is the genealogy of the Lord Jesus Himself after the flesh.

This is not the language of natural affection simply: that stops short of this last. And where this can be said, though it may come in in a subsidiary way, yet it cannot be a secondary thing. The faith of Ruth is, indeed, a beautiful thing to contemplate; and a striking proof of how that which God has planted can flourish in the midst of contrary circumstances and oppositions of all kinds. How little does Naomi here commend her God of whom Ruth speaks! The famine in Bethlehem, mocking it as the "house of bread"; the withdrawal of Elimelech, denying what his name expressed; his death; the Moabitish marriages, one of them her own; then the quick widowhoods; now the mother-in-law's appeal to go back, as Orpah had gone back, to her people and her gods: this is all we know of her surroundings, but which of them is favorable to faith? Ah, it is God that favors it and upholds it; and all the opposition only rouses it into a passion of longing and resolve. There might be little encouragement: was there not all the more a deep and deepening necessity, which found only in Israel's God the possibility of satisfaction, if not yet the satisfaction itself? Could such longing go without satisfaction, or could He who alone could meet it be a dream, or afar off from the need created?

Alas! an almost exact picture of conditions prevailing in the world today! It is in such circumstances that the name "Elimelech" appears. Belonging to the city of Bethlehem Judah (the house of bread and praise); bearing the name "whose God is king" he goes to sojourn in the fields of Moab — reaping nothing but death and barrenness. We touch the details but briefly. God is in command — He visits His people with bread — the devotion of Ruth and her cleaving to Naomi and subsequent union with Boaz, result in the blessed God reaching His great objective — His king, David (Beloved). In my early Christian life I was gently rebuked when I remarked to an older brother (we were discussing the book of Ruth) that I never took much notice of genealogies. "You have missed the great objective of the book," he replied. If this little incident energizes the young brethren to realize that "all Scripture" is divinely inspired, spiritual progress will result. "No king in Israel" — "God as king" unsought — but God reaching His great thought in the last word of the book — "DAVID." This is the first mention in Scripture of that name. Brethren, however dark conditions in Christendom are, the blessed God has secured everything for His glory and the blessing of His people in David's Son and Lord — God's beloved Son.

Historically the Book of Ruth presents important links in the genealogy of the Lord Jesus after the flesh. The Book closes with a short genealogy of ten names ending with David the King. In the opening chapter of the New Testament these ten names have an honoured place in the genealogy of the King of kings, but with this difference that the Spirit of God has introduced, in connection with these names, four women — one of them being Ruth the Moabitess. It is significant that with each of these women there is connected a story of failure and shame, only making manifest that "where sin abounded grace did much more abound." So that historically the Book of Ruth is the record of the grace of God that, thirteen centuries before the King came, was securing the line by which He was to come, and, in so doing, triumphing over all the failure of the people, and magnifying grace, by bringing a Moabitish stranger into the line of the King.

It was a day of failure and weakness among the people of God and yet it becomes clear that, undeterred by all failure, God was pursuing His way and carrying out His purpose to establish His King. Yea more. God was using the circumstances of the day, and the very failure of the people, to bring these purposes to pass. Who would have thought that a famine in Bethlehem would have any connection with the birth of the King in Bethlehem thirteen centuries later? Yet so it was, for the famine was one link in the chain of circumstances that brought Ruth the Moabitess into the line of the King.

We see how everything is ordered of God, not by Ruth. She does not know in whose field she is gleaning: "Her hap was to light on a part of the field belonging unto Boaz." Humanly speaking, it was Rebekah's hap to be at the well when Abraham's servant came in search for a bride for his master's son; it was the hap of the woman of Samaria to meet the Stranger from Judea, who had such words of life and grace to tell her. But we know that what is man's "hap" is God's purpose, the purpose of love of Him who sees the end from the beginning and plans it all. His eye was upon Rebekah, and He made her go out to the well the first to meet the servant of Abraham. He constrained the woman of Samaria to go where she would meet the Son of God, and have her life transformed by the message He brought her. He knows and He draws each of us, at the appointed time and in the appointed way, to the place of blessing. How wonderful are His ways, and what love there is behind what seem to be the merest incidents. God is absolutely sovereign. All our blessings are from Him alone. The work of grace, from beginning to end, is His. Therefore to Him alone is all the praise.

Nor, as it appears, did Ruth on setting out to glean intend to seek the field of Boaz, her mother-in-law's kinsman. Early in the morning she went forth humbly as a poor stranger to gather up a gleaner's portion of corn wherever opportunity offered, not however, without a firm trust that the God of Israel under Whose wings she had come to take refuge, would guide and protect her. "And Ruth the Moabitess said to Naomi, Let me, I pray, go to the field and glean among the ears of corn after (him) in whose sight I shall find favour. And she said to her, Go, my daughter. And she went; and she came and gleaned in the fields after the reapers; and she chanced to light on an allotment of Boaz, who was of the family of Elimelech" (Ruth 2:2-3). To outward seeming, Ruth by "chance"' chose the field of Boaz, but to faith it was by God's devising and directing that she went to the field of a pious and gracious man who was her mother-in-law's kinsman by marriage, and in whose eyes she quickly found favour.

As with the antediluvians, so with Israel, God leaves not Himself without witness. Among them He called out Abel, Enoch and Noah, and now He elects Ruth, having given her a position in a family of Israel. The time was not come for a Gentile testimony independent of the ancient people. But this little remnant — Elimelech and his family — is marked off from the nation, their history is not given incorporated with that of the guilty people but in a little book by itself. It hints at the purpose of God to separate His own from among the mass of the ungodly. He has a separate book where He writes the names of His saints, even the book of life. This family failed in faith, they lost sight of the fact that the land they were leaving was God's gift to them, and let the famine be ever so grievous, He knew how to provide. Elimelech looked at the famine and had faith enough to perceive that it was judgment upon Israel, but forgot the power that was able to keep those that trusted in Him. This man and his household depart into a foreign land to dwell among the enemies of God. Would it not have been far better to have abode where God placed him? to have suffered even with guilty Israel, than to flee, as it were, from His presence and seek relief where surely the want of faith led him? To him, as an Israelite, the consequences were most distressing; he died away from his inheritance, in the midst of a people that of old sought Satanic aid to destroy Israel. And his two sons, sinking deeper in disobedience, marry daughters of Moab. The chastening hand of God finds them out, and they die. Naomi is left alone with her daughters-in-law. Husband and sons gone, who are now to provide for Naomi? All is lost, what can she do in a strange land? In these distressful moments did she regret the want of faith which led them so far from home? Ah, it was with her as with many another of God's chosen ones. Far better wait to bear heavy trials where God has cast our lot, than to seek a way of escape by human means, which are always the fruit of lack of confidence in God, and bring spiritual loss. Naomi left the land because of famine. Husband and sons die, and though there be no famine in the land of Moab, it is still famine for her.

The God of mercy steps in, the news comes that Jehovah hath visited His people in giving them bread, and she is brought back to the land which ought never to have been left. The loving-kindness of God never fails, His mercy endures forever. Mark the overruling wisdom of God; if the chosen witnesses fail in testimony for God, His grace raises up a brighter witness for Himself in the person of a Gentile. One of the daughters of Moab will leave her kindred, and her people, and her nation's gods, to follow Naomi into a strange land, saying, "Thy God shall be my God." Here was a witness for the true God raised up from among the idolatrous Moabites to be His brightest witness among the feeble remnant in the land. Truly not one of them had made such sacrifices as Ruth made. And how great the reward! she enters the line of David's ancestry, yea, of David's greater Son. But what a rebuke in the simple faith of Ruth for Naomi who left the land not submitting to God! yet a rebuke in the form of restoring grace, crowning her in her widowhood with tender mercies and loving-kindness. It is the manner of His love; and saints now bear testimony to the same manner. Ruth comes in among the people, who, though so guilty, were still owned as God's people. He visited His people with bread. (Ruth 1:6.) She knew them to be His people, and though her faith was veiled under strongest attachment to Naomi, she says not merely, "thy people shall be my people," but adds, "thy God shall be my God." Thus, amid the violence and corruption of Israel, a little company bears testimony to the God of Israel. It is but a brief sketch, yet is the hand of God as visible in marvellously providing for the well-being and honour of Ruth — and through her for Naomi — as it was in the judgments that fell upon Israel. In the midst of the darkness God gives a bright scene of family and household piety, to which we turn with gladness from the surrounding national and social wickedness. What a contrast to the impiety of the idolatrous household of Micah's mother! (Judges 17) The book of Ruth, however, is but a passing and transient gleam. Still it proves that in the 'worst times God never left Himself without witness, it declares His faithfulness to the weakest of saints, it manifests His power that all things must bow to His will and subserve His purpose of grace; for a Moabitess is brought in, through Elimelech's failure, to partake in the highest honour which could then be conferred upon any woman of Israel.

“And she arose, she and her daughters-in-law, and returned from the fields of Moab; for she had heard in the fields of Moab how that Jehovah had visited His people to give them bread. Wherefore she went forth out of the place where she had been, and her two daughters-in-law with her; and they went on the way to return to the land of Judah” (vv. 6-7). On hearing the news that the Lord had shown grace to His people Naomi rose up and set out to return to her own land. Israel's condition had remained unchanged, but God Himself had put an end to the days of providential judgment which had befallen the nation, and this poor widow, bowed down under the weight of affliction, could again hope for better days. As we have said, grace is the first and dominant note of Ruth. All the blessings contained in this book depend on the fact that “Jehovah had visited his people to give them bread.” The Old Testament uses this well known expression to characterize the benefits that will be brought to Israel by the Messiah. “I will abundantly bless her provision; I will satisfy her needy ones with bread” (Ps. 132:15). Oh! if only the nation had so desired, these blessings would have been her portion permanently when Christ appeared in her midst, multiplying bread for 5000 and for 4000 men!