Ruth, although a Moabite, trusted in the Lord God of Judah. The God of the Moabites was Chemosh. Moabites were an unrighteous tribe which had fought the Israelites along with the Ammonites upon their coming to Canaan.
Moab was the son of Lot and his eldest daughter by incest. According to the Book of Jasher, Lot’s daughters, thinking that the world had ended at Sodom and with their husbands dead, that the world was ending. To regenerate the world, they would take it upon themselves to repopulate it, thus lacking faith in God even after seeing that God is Almighty. (By the way, they once were faithful to God but taking re-creation upon themselves expressed distrust of God, regardless of what Calvin thought.)
As such, the Moabites were a tribe in which Jews were not allowed to marry due to the “tenth generation,” an idiom meaning never to marry.
Ruth, therefore, is one of the “whosoever” that God wants never to perish in John 3:16. As an ancestor of Jesus through Mary. Jesus had the blood of Moab running in His veins, but also the archetypes of Lot and his daughter. On the other side, Jesus had the Breath of God in His Soul. Jesus was certainly the Son of Man through Mary and Ruth and the Son of God as the Holy Spirit overshadowed Mary.
Although the flesh of Jesus had iniquity in it, Jesus did not sin because He had God in His Soul. “Whosoever is born of God doth not commit sin; for his seed remaineth in him: and he cannot sin, because he is born of God” (1 John 3:9).
That specifically applies to Jesus who was born of God and without any other father. Jesus did not sin because the Seed of God dwelled in Him. Jesus could have sinned; and that is why Satan tempted Him. Although He could sin, he did not sin ever!
So, what is sin? Firstly, consider the spiritual condition upon entry into the world: David said that he was “shapen in inquity” (Psalm 51:5). By the time the flesh of David crawled the birth canal, David had not sinned. There is no sin in existing.
Shapen in that passage is hul in the Hebrew that is a twisting or writhing (BLB Institute 2021). Ironically, night and day in Genesis 1 is “warming” and “twisting from the warming.” Both describe processes, and the birth of a child is a process just like the birth of the Cosmos, with the same substances (heaven and earth — space and matter), but with much different durations.
As with Adam, there is no sin in existing, and sin only comes afterward. Newborns have not sinned but still have iniquity. (Think of iniquity as the decadent nature of man to sin and is instinctual because of the brutishness within.)
Iniquity is ‘aon in the Hebrew (ibid). That word means “depraved” — morally corrupt, or wicked.
Why depraved? Eve was beguiled by the “Serpent” (Gen 3:13) and she was the mother of all living (Gen 3:20). Beguiled (nasa’) is “seduced.” If that is taken literally, then the “Serpent” seduced and carried out intercourse. Whether it was spiritual or physical intercourse remains unknown, but due to the libido of mankind, perhaps it was with carnal knowledge from the Tree of Knowledge having a body of knowledge of evil. (Preachers do not preach that possibility because it would make humans less than human. However, some theologians admit that possibility).
David suggested with “shapen in inquity” that he was born with guile in himself. Guile can mean “duplicity” and that means “doubleness” (Merriam-Webster 2021). David, just as everyone, was born double-minded with duplicity. Jesus defined that inborn duplicity when He said, “The spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak” (Mat 26:41). Hence, man is of God but also of the Wicked one such as Cain (1 John 3:12).
Cain was of the Wicked One and Eve who “created” Cain, it seems, with the new prestige that she had acquired. She was then the “god” as Genesis 4:1 alludes. The name, Eve, means “life” and “symbiosis” (Abarim Publications 2014) and the latter means “interaction between two different organisms living in close association” (Merriam-Webster 2021). I submit that those different types of organisms may have been mankind and another kind.
The point to this is that Jesus was “shapen in iniquity” with the marriage of Ruth and Boaz particularly, but still never sinned!
Jesus was glorified as is written:
38 He that believeth on Me, as the scripture hath said, out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water. 39 (But this spake he of the Spirit, which they that believe on Him should receive: for the Holy Ghost was not yet given; because that Jesus was not yet glorified.) (John 7:38-39)
The question therein is What is glorification? It is a change — a spiritual transformation wherein ordinary is made into splendorous. It appears that glorification is a process and that it commenced at the transfiguration whereat Jesus was adorned with the Light of God; and it was finalized just as Jesus said… at the crucifixion when Jesus gave up the Ghost. No longer did Jesus have the corrupted flesh of His antecedents but the splendorous flesh like Adam’s was originally… not “very good” but perfect!
Jesus was not the reasonable sacrifice as Christians are but the perfect sacrifice as God Himself!
God planned that! When Ruth trusted the Lord God of Judah, she knew that she would find a man with a generous heart. She knew that in that field would be a relative of her then dead husband’s so it would be according to the Law.
In the previous installment, it is written that at least two Laws were obeyed: (1) the gathering of the harvest and (2) the obligation for a brother (or relative) to marry the widowed wife.
Jesus was the fulfillment of those two Laws (Mat 5:18) and just as breaking one Law is as if breaking them all, fulfilling the Law is fulfilling them all.
It was not the Law that brought salvation when Ruth found grace with Boaz, but the seed was planted right there in the world just as Cain was the “tare” that was planted outside Paradise. The Law was only on the Way to “Yahweh Saves” (the meaning of the Name, “Jesus”). It was still only Jesus who saves!
That was the Way of all the Law. It was just the process to get to the finish line, and it was all finished when Jesus gave up the Ghost (John 19:30). With that said, the Law as the Way was finished, and “by grace you are saved thorough faith” (Eph 2:8).
Faith is trust over time. The time for Ruth was when God gave a woman born in iniquity with depraved blood the idea that grace could be found if she followed the Law.
A Moabite husband would not do because God said so. The place to find grace was where a man (Boaz) would fulfill both Laws.
Boaz was a righteous man who a trusting woman found by grace. It did not matter that she was not of the religion of Abraham or not, or even whose blood flowed in her veins. What mattered was that she trusted the God of Abraham rather than the God of Moab. Ruth was the “whosoever” that God had in Mind!
On the day that Ruth encountered Boaz, God brought together two different kinds, Abraham's kind and Lot's kind, who would mix in symbiosis for years later a new Kind would mature from their seed, with the flesh of man and the Spirit of God.
(picture credit: morning chores)
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