Love lasts, generation to generation

Parallels seen in Ruth, Mary

The Book of Ruth is a story of “hesed,” a Hebrew word often translated as loving kindness and steadfast faithfulness. In Scripture, hesed is a primary attribute of the Lord God — he is faithful and loving from generation to generation. In the Book of Ruth, God’s own hesed is mirrored in the life of Ruth, a non-Israelite who, rather than forsaking her Israelite mother-in-law Naomi, instead pledges her life and future to Naomi and to the God of Israel. In one of the most famous lines in the Old Testament, Ruth tells Naomi, “Where you go I will go, and where you lodge I will lodge; your people shall be my people, and your God my God” (1:16).

God’s hesed is also mirrored in the figure of Boaz, who cares for Ruth and marries her. The scene describing the first meeting of Boaz and Ruth in the book’s second chapter is among the most moving literary descriptions of hesed in the entire Bible. The scene bespeaks a time when men and women spoke to one another with grace and reverence, simply because they worshiped a God of hesed.

In this first scene between Ruth and Boaz, there is also an important point of contact with the New Testament. In Ruth 2:10, Ruth says to Boaz, “Why have I found favor in your eyes, that you should take notice of me, when I am a foreigner?” The Hebrew for the phrase “found favor” gets translated in the Greek Septuagint as heuron charin. Ruth repeats this phrase with a slightly different verb form three verses later in 2:13, when she tells Boaz, “May I find favor in your eyes,” and refers to herself as his “maidservant,” translated in the Greek as he doule.

Readers of the New Testament will recognize these phrases from the Gospel of Luke. In Luke 1:30, the Angel Gabriel says to the Virgin Mary, “Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor (heures gar charin) before God.” As the Angel departs, Mary places herself entirely in God’s hands saying, “Behold the maidservant (he doule) of the Lord. May it be done in me according to your word” (Luke 1:38).

An important parallel thus emerges between Ruth and the Blessed Mother Mary, and both are presented in Scripture as exemplary recipients of God’s always surpassing and unexpected hesed. Both are also distant kinswomen (see Matthew 1:5, 16). Ruth’s faithfulness to God is rewarded in the birth of a child to her and Boaz, who is named, “Obed; he was the father of Jesse, the father of David” (Ruth 4:17). Likewise, Mary’s faithfulness to God is also rewarded with the birth of a Child, the one who is “The Son of the Most High; and the Lord God will give to him the throne of his father David, and he will reign over the house of Jacob forever; and of his kingdom there will be no end” (Luke 1:32-33).

As the birth of the Christ Child draws near, both Ruth and especially the Blessed Mother remind us that God’s faithfulness is from age to age, such that in Mary’s Child at last, the “Grace of God has appeared for the salvation of all” (Titus 2:11).