Ruth the Gentile Bride

A Story of Israel & The Church

by Jesma O'Hara


The story of Ruth the Moabitess is a story of one woman's commitment and dedication to her aged, weary mother in law, and to her God, the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. It is also, I believe, a picture of God's will for the church with relation to the Jewish people.

The story begins with a man named Elimelech who, along with his wife Naomi and their two sons, Mahlon and Chilion, left their home in Bethlehem during a famine and journeyed to the land of Moab.

We are then presented, in a few brief sentences, with a history of the family's sojourn in Moab over the next ten years. The brevity of the sentences make it easy to quickly skip over the pain and anguish that Naomi experienced as she was bereft not only of her husband, but her two sons as well. She was left completely alone with her two Moabite daughters in law.

Hidden in these five short verses are some truths concerning the Jewish people and their relationship to the land of Israel and their God, the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.

God had promised the children of Israel blessing and peace if they remained in the land and obeyed Him. The land of Israel will always be the place where God will bless and meet with His people as He has joined them to it in covenant relationship.

(Genesis 12:3; 13:14-17; 15; 17:7&8; 28:13-14; Ps 105:6-11 etc)

The name Bethlehem means "House of Bread" and Elimelech and Naomi chose to leave the place of God's provision for them and their family because things got difficult. They chose to move out from the Lord's protection into a Gentile land.

Their sons' names mean "sickly" and "pining" and they serve as a reminder of what the Lord said would befall His people should they disobey Him. (Deuteronomy 28)

A Picture of the Jewish People Naomi is surely a picture of the Jewish people and all that they experienced during 2000 years of living in Gentile lands. They sought peace and prosperity and instead found persecution and suffering.

Many Jewish women knew the loss of husbands and children in tragic circumstances.

The Holocaust was the final and greatest tragedy in which so many European Jewish families, believing themselves safe in the lands of the Gentiles, found only loss, destruction and grief.

Naomi's words to her friends on her return to Bethlehem, "Call me not Naomi (pleasant), call me Mara (bitter) for the Almighty has dealt bitterly with me. I went out full, and the Lord has brought me home again empty; why call me Naomi, since the Lord has testified against me, and the Almighty has afflicted me?" must surely echo the feelings of many Jewish hearts down through the ages.

In these days in which we live there are still many Jewish people who have known suffering and loss in the land of the Gentiles who are making their way wearily home to Israel from the four corners of the earth.

Bringing the people back to the land of Israel in these days is a central part of what God is doing in the earth. To miss His heartbeat on this is to have missed one of the most remarkable events of the ages.

Throughout scripture restoration to the Lord is always preceded by restoration to the Land. (Ezekial 36 & 37; Jeremiah 31, 32 & 33; Isaiah 61:49; Psalm 102:13-16)

In the bible the Jewish people are often referred to as an olive tree.

A tree cannot bear fruit if it is continually uprooted. It is only as it is allowed to put its roots deep down into good soil that it produces fruit.

So it is with the Jewish people. They will produce their greatest spiritual fruit as they return to the land and put their roots down deep both spiritually and physically.

The Fruitful Land

It is also true that the land is becoming fruitful again as the people return.

It has been in mourning while they have been in exile (Zechariah 7:14) but now that they are returning, it is blossoming like a rose (Isaiah 35:1-2) and Israel is sending produce and flowers all over the world (Isaiah 27:6).

It is also the only place in the world where the desert is actually diminishing (Isaiah 49:18-19).

Left alone with her two daughters in law in Moab, Naomi hears that the Lord has visited His people once again. The famine is over so she decides to return to Bethlehem.

She encourages her daughters in law to return to their own land to make new lives.

Orpah decides to return to her people and her god. Jewish oral tradition says that she became the grandmother of Goliath, the giant Philistine who was an enemy of Israel. Her name means "back of one's neck" and she is a picture of those Christians who have been content to take all the blessings that come with being grafted into Israel (Romans 11:17) - the scriptures, the prophets, the apostles, Jesus, the Jewish Messiah - but choose to turn their back on those who have given them their richest blessings, Jesus' relatives, the Jewish people.

Just as Orpah went back to her people and her god, so a church that believes it has replaced Israel has absorbed much that is unscriptural and pagan. The only guard against this is an understanding of the biblical Hebrew roots of our faith, our spiritual family heritage.

Ruth, whose name means "friend," chooses instead to continue on with Naomi towards the promised Land, uttering those wonderful words of commitment which continue to be a challenge to those of us who have chosen to walk with the Jewish people,

'Urge me not to leave you, or to return from following you;
for where you go, I will go; and where you lodge, I will lodge;
your people shall be my people,
and your God, my God.'

She becomes one of the first to be counted amongst the ten men from every nation who will take hold of the robe of a Jew and say, 'Let us go with you, for we have heard that God is with you.' (Zechariah 8:23).

Two women, walking together towards the Promised Land, one born into covenant relationship with the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, the other entering that relationship through marriage … Jew and Gentile together… the wall of hostility being broken down to produce one new man worshipping the God of Israel (Ephesians 2:14-16).

As they walk towards Israel, Ruth helping her weary mother in law who has suffered so much, we see a beautiful picture of that which was spoken of by the prophet Isaiah (49:22)

'Behold, I will lift up My hand to the Gentile nations,
and set up My standard and raise high My banner to the peoples;
and they shall bring your sons in the bosom of their garments,
and your daughters shall be carried upon their shoulders.'

This scripture is being fulfilled as Christians from many nations working for such organizations as the International Christian Embassy, Jerusalem, are working to bring the Jewish people home from the lands of the north.

They are able to do this because of finance given by Christians worldwide.

(Isaiah 49:12; Jeremiah 3:18; 23:8; 16:15-16)

Once back in the land, Ruth goes into the fields to glean for food for herself and Naomi in accordance with the provision made for the poor in Leviticus (Leviticus 23:22).

Believers in the Jewish God through His Son Jesus have been gleaning for spiritual food in fields prepared for us by Jewish prophets for millennia, usually without offering thanks to those from whom our spiritual heritage springs.

While working in the heat of the day caring for Naomi Ruth is noticed by her future bridegroom, Boaz. He says to her,

'I have been made fully aware of all you have done for your mother in law
since the death of your husband;
and how you have left your father and mother,
and the land of your birth
and have come to a people unknown to you before.

The Lord recompense you for what you have done
and a full reward be given you by the Lord, the God of Israel,
under whose wings you have come to take refuge.'

Jesus, our bridegroom, in speaking about how we should care for His brothers, the Jewish people, says,

'In as much as you have done it to the least of My brethren,
you have done it unto Me.' (Matthew 25:31-46)

Isaiah 40:1-2 tells us to offer comfort and support to the Jewish people.

In doing this we are preparing the way of the Lord, removing stumbling blocks of mistrust and fear which have been built up between Jew and Christian over centuries when the church acted more like Orpah, the one who turned her back, than Ruth, the friend (Isaiah 40:3-4).

The result, will be that, 'The glory of the Lord will be revealed and all flesh (both Jew and Gentile) will see it.' [vs 5] God's Grace and Mercy Ruth, the humble little Moabitess, who by her very origins was forbidden to enter the congregation of the Lord (Deuteronomy 23:3), went on to become the grandmother of David, Israel's greatest king, and his descendant Jesus, the Messiah, the Greater David.

She is a beautiful picture of God's grace and mercy offered to the Gentiles through His Son Jesus, but she is also a prophetic word to the church in our day, that we are to say to the Jewish people,

'Urge me not to leave you, or to return from following you;
for where you go, I will go; and where you lodge, I will lodge;
your people shall be my people, and your God, my God.'

That kind of unconditional love and commitment, one which says, "Let us go with you for we have heard that God is with you," is what God is requiring of us in this day and hour when He is bringing the Jewish people back to the land and back to Himself.

We should also note that Ruth gave her son to Naomi to care for him. The village women said to her,

'May he be to you a restorer of life,
and a nourisher and support of your old age.'

What a beautiful picture of the ministry of the Messiah and what He longs to do for the Jewish people.

How very sad that much of the church, unlike Ruth, chose not to give the Messiah back to the Jewish people, but turned Him into a Gentile, totally unrecognizable to His own people.

Then, having changed Him into a Gentile, they persecuted His brothers in His Name.

It is time for Christians to allow Naomi, in the form of the Jewish people, to have the joy of rediscovering that Jesus is Jewish, that he is family!

The book of Ruth is read in synagogues during the Feast of Shavuot, or Pentecost, when two loaves of bread are offered, signifying the bringing together of two peoples, both Jew and Gentile, to become one people worshipping the Lord.

How perfect are God's ways … how wonderfully He reveals Himself to those who search His hidden truths.

As the Apostle Paul says in Romans 11,

'O, the depths of the riches of the wisdom and the knowledge of God!
How unsearchable His judgements, and His paths without tracing out!'

• " God's dealings with and purposes for the nation of Israel, their dispersal and restoration to both the Land and the Lord in the last days. (Ezekiel 36& 37; Deut 30:1-6; Isaiah 11 & 12) "
  
  
• The two comings of the Messiah and His Kingship based in Jerusalem in the last days. (Isaiah 52:13-53:12; Zechariah 12 to 14; Psalm 2) "
  
  
• The grafting in of a people from all the nations to JOIN, not REPLACE God's first chosen people as channels of His redemptive purposes. (Zechariah 8:23; Isaiah 2:2-3; Isaiah 56 c.f Romans 11; Eph 2 & 3) "
  
  
• His plan to use the believing remnant among the Nations to help restore the Jewish people to the Land and the Lord. (Isaiah 40:1-11; Jeremiah 16:16) "
  
  
• How to live as a redeemed people. (Deut 4:1-14; 5:1-21; 6:4-8)

The Hebrew Roots/Israel message is important because …

• " It gives us the basis we need to understand where we are in God's purposes and how He views things that are happening in our world today. Our nations and the Church worldwide need to come into an understanding of these issues for their wellbeing and maturing. (Zechariah 12 & 13; Joel 3:1-2) "
  
  
• It provides us with an understanding of our spiritual heritage. (Romans 9:4-5)

In his excellent book 'Our Father Abraham', Dr Marvin Wilson has written, "You have to be cognizant about your past if you are to be confident about your future." The Prophet Isaiah says, "Listen to me you pursuers of justice, you who seek the Lord: Consider the rock from which you were cut, the quarry from which you were dug - consider Abraham your father and Sarah who gave you birth." (Isaiah 51:1-2)

• " We are disciples of a Hebrew Lord. Matthew 1 gives the genealogy of our Messiah, beginning with Abraham, the first Hebrew, and following His lineage through King David and the Tribe of Judah. "
  
  
• Through Him we have been joined to a Hebrew family. (Eph 2:1-3; 5; Romans 11) We need to ask ourselves whether we, in the words of the Apostle Paul, 'who were once not a people', have nothing to learn from the family of our Messiah. Galatians 3:29 reminds us that, if we belong to the Messiah, we are the seed of Abraham according to the promise. "
  
  
• We cannot understand our family's book in all of its richness if we do not approach it with an understanding of the people, the culture and the language that birthed it. The great theologian Karl Bath once said, 'The Bible is a Jewish book. It cannot be understood or expounded unless we are prepared to become Jews with the Jews'.
  
  This does not mean that we should al become Jewish 'wannabe's' running around in tallit and kippot, trying to be Jewish. Some Jewish friends have said to me that they find the attempts by some Christians to take on Jewish cultural symbols as the worst anti-Semitism of all. They see it as yet another form of Christian triumphalism.
  
  We are heirs to the BIBLICAL roots of our faith, but NOT to Jewish CULTURAL symbols that have evolved over time, just like some of our Christian symbols.
  
  What Bath means is that, if we are truly to understand the Bible, we have to remove the Greek worldview that pervades much of our understanding and thinking and put on a Hebraic worldview through which to understand God's Word.

In their brilliant book, 'The Shaping of Things to Come', Australian writers Michael Frost and Alan Hirsch put it this way, 'This spiritual resonance should not surprise us, as the Jewish heritage is the primordial matrix out of which Christianity was birthed, and which we would argue is the only matrix out of which it could be organically understood in its fullness. Except for Luke's writings (he was most likely a Jewish proselyte), the New Testament is a document written by Jews. Therefore biblical Christianity's genetic code, its kinship, its plausibility structures, its genius, are all Hebraic to the core and back … Even if early Christianity reshaped Judaism, it worked with basic Hebraic ideas and elements and retained its essentially Jewish structure and religious patterning.. it was a redefinition 'within the family' so to speak…

As it (Christianity) moved further away from Israel geographically, and Judaism politically and socially, the gospel began to define itself over against Judaism, and even began to become shamefully anti-Semitic. This was a tragic historical blunder because it was only out of the Hebraic matrix that a true understanding of the faith of the Scriptures, including the New Testament, could be maintained over the long haul. As a result the elemental biblical worldview was replaced by, at best, a syncretistic blend of the Hebraic and Hellenistic, and at its worst, an outright rejection of the Hebraic in favour of the Hellenistic. This move away from the matrix that gave New Testament Christianity its inner meaning and vigour has deeply infected the Church's understanding of God, Jesus, His people, the mission of the people of God, our ethics and our way of living with unbiblical and sometimes outright pagan understandings and assumptions."

A Gospel that excludes God's purposes for Israel and the Jewish people is an incomplete Gospel. A theology that does not view the Christian faith through the cultural lens of Hebraic Biblical understanding is like offering an honoured guest a McDonalds Cheese burger when reservations have been made at a fine restaurant next door. It 'does the job' but leaves a sense of incompleteness and lack of satisfaction.

When Paul wrote to the Roman believers he reminded them that the Gentile believers were like wild olive shoots that had been grafted in among the true shoots to receive of the richness of the root. He then goes on to admonish them with these words, "Don't boast as if you are better than the branches! However, if you do boast, remember that you are not supporting the root. The root is supporting you!" (Romans 11:18, 19)

The Greek word translated 'support' means 'to lift up', 'to bear', 'to carry.' In other places in the New Testament it is used for 'womb'. It implies life giving nourishment. If a baby in its mother's womb is cut off from her life source even briefly, the baby may die, or suffer retardation in its development.

So it is that the Church, the faith community scattered throughout the world, cannot reach its full potential apart from its older brother, the Jewish people. It cannot hope to have a full understanding of its Biblical heritage and of God's great plan of redemption through the Messiah, if it cuts itself off from the richness of its Hebraic Biblical heritage.

Sadly, there has been throughout much of Christendom, at best, an ignorance of the importance of Israel in God's purposes, resulting in a total disinterest in what is happening in the Land, and at worst, an antagonism which has resulted in anti - Semitic statements and actions. Most churches do not pray regularly for Israel and few take a stand against a lack of justice in International circles and an anti Israel bias in much of the media. In Romans 11 and in Ephesians chapters 2 and 3, Paul reminds us that one of the great mysteries of God, is that, through the good news, non Jews have joined God's family, along with the Jews, and are now able to be equal sharers in what god has promised.

The Jewish people are our older brothers in the faith. Their heritage has become ours through the work of Yeshua. Their history has become our 'faith' history (Galatians 3:26-29). But, as so often happens in families, when a young child is starting to mature and spread its wings, it can pass through a time when it may choose to reject its family heritage, believing it knows more than the older family members, sometimes even feeling ashamed of the rest of the family. The young person is cut off from its roots, experiencing a sense of 'not belonging', and becomes defensive and insecure.

A few years down the track, however, usually when they become parents themselves, family and heritage suddenly becomes very precious and they find themselves emulating the older family members they briefly rejected. This process of reconciliation with the family needs to take place if they are to mature into the person they were meant to be.

So it is with the church, we cannot mature into all God the Father wants us to be, until we have a clear sense of belonging and place in God's plan of redemption.

In his book, "Your People Shall be My People", Don Finto reminds us that the early believers were 'one in heart and mind'. Yeshua prayed that all of His followers would be one so that the world would believe He had sent them. "But we are not one, with over 160 different ecclesiastical and over 23,000 denominations!"

Finto suggests that, in following the law inherent in all of God's creation, we have reproduced after our own kind. By breaking with those who have birthed us, we have produced one division after another.

"The gaping wound of the schism between Jews and Gentiles represents 'grand daddy' of all wounds in the Body of Messiah. All other wounds of division stem from this original wound. Because the Church has grown to believe it superseded Israel and Messianic Judaism, the spirit of super-sessionism has plagued Christianity through the ages … It was Moses who first heard God say, "Israel is My firstborn son." (Exodus 4:22) A firstborn son has an irreplaceable position in the family. Paul was specifically speaking of Israel when he said' "God's gifts and calling are irrevocable." (Romans 11:29)

And finally, unless we enter into an understanding of God's heart for His still chosen people, and an appreciation of the Biblical Hebraic roots of our faith, we miss a special part of the Father heart of God, Who said, "Zion says, "The LORD has forsaken me, My LORD has forgotten me." Can a woman forget her baby or disown the child of her womb? Though she might forget, I could never forget you. See, I have engraved you on the palms of My hands. Your walls are ever before Me." (Isaiah 49:14-16)

Our Father Abraham, by Dr Marvin Wilson, Eerdmans, Grand Rapids, 1989 The Shaping of Things to Come, Innovation and Mission for the 21st Century Church, Michael frost & Alan Hirsch, Hendrickson, Peabody 2003 Your People Shall be My People, Don Finto,

Introducing John & Jesma O'Hara John, a businessman & Jesma have five children, and two grandchildren, Isabella and Asher. Both serve on the Eldership of Hesed Fellowship and are board members of International Christian Embassy, Jerusalem, Australian Branch and Jesma has also been the Editor of their magazine for the past 12 years. Hesed Ministries is involved in supporting a number of projects : Field workers in Israel, Orr Shalom Children's Homes, Kesher Friends of WIZO and Mercy International in Thailand. They also support orphanages and schools for AIDS affected children in Malawi and Kenya. Jesma is Chairman of the Board of Nambour Christian College, co-educational inter-denominational college of over 1200 students, from preschool to year 12. They are also the Australian Representatives of Orr Shalom Children’s Homes. Jesma's Qualifications Masters in Early Judaism and Early Christianity. B A major in Religious Studies Studied in Jerusalem at AMI Jerusalem Centre For Biblical Studies and Research and Educator’s From Abroad Study Course at Yad VaShem.