The Forbidden Grandmother (Day 14: Roots & Shoots)

• The Ornament: Sheaves of Wheat
• The Scripture: Ruth 1:15–18

The Surface Reading

We hear the words of Ruth at almost every wedding: “Where you go, I will go; where you lodge, I will lodge; your people shall be my people, and your God my God.”

On the surface, we read this as a romantic declaration of love. We treat the Book of Ruth as a sweet, pastoral novella—a “Hallmark Movie” about a nice girl meeting a rich man (Boaz) in a field and living happily ever after.

A Closer Look

Guide: Dr. Fentress Williams (The Bible for Normal People, Ep. 253)

Dr. Fentress Williams argues that the Book of Ruth is actually protest literature.

To understand why, you have to look at when it might have been written.

In the days of Ezra and Nehemiah, the religious leaders were terrified of losing their identity. They passed strict laws commanding Israelite men to divorce their foreign wives to keep the nation “pure.”

The Book of Ruth looks like a direct counter-argument to that policy.

It tells the story of Ruth the Moabite—a woman from a hated enemy nation—who turns out to be more faithful, more loyal, and more “Israelite” in her character than the actual Israelites.

The book drops a theological bomb: “You want to ban foreign wives? Well, your greatest King (David) only exists because of a foreign wife.”

This isn’t just a love story; it is a political argument against nationalism. It reminds us that God’s covenant has always been bigger than our borders.

Loyal Love

So why is this story in the Bible? Because it subverts the very prejudice of the people of God.

The hero of the story isn’t a powerful Israelite man; it is a destitute foreign woman who embodies the Hebrew word chesed (loyal love). While the men in the story die or fail, Ruth sticks by Naomi with a fierce, covenantal loyalty.

And notice how she survives: She survives because of the Gleaning Laws we discussed on Day 12. She goes into the field of Boaz to pick up the grain left behind for the poor.

Boaz becomes a hero not because he conquers a city, but because he obeys the law of generosity. He refuses to exploit the vulnerable immigrant; instead, he protects her.

The climax of the story is the genealogy. Ruth and Boaz have a baby named Obed. Obed becomes the father of Jesse. Jesse becomes the father of David.

This is the punchline: King David—the greatest King of Israel—was the great-grandson of a Moabite woman. The “pure” bloodline of the Messiah includes the blood of the enemy. The story teaches us that if we exclude the “outsider,” we might just be excluding our own salvation.

The Question

We often have strict boundaries about who belongs in our churches, our families, or our country. We have our own lists of “Moabites.”

Who is the “foreigner” or the person from the “wrong background” that you struggle to welcome? How does it change your perspective to know that Jesus’s own family tree depended on an immigrant woman?