What is the point of the book of Ruth?

Answer 1

The book of Ruth is a story about redemption. When we turn to God he can redeem us and use us for His glory. Just as he redeemed us through His son Jesus Christ, he reedeemed Ruth transforming her from poverty to wealth, widow to wife, barren to fertile, and unfulfilled to resonating with fulfillment of love from God.

Answer 2

The Book of Ruth is a story of love and devotion. First it is a story of family devotion and the love between Naomi and her daughter-in-law Ruth. Then Boaz falls in love with Ruth, they marry and bear a son, Obed, the father of Jesse, the father of David. Therein lay its importance for early Jews - it provided a family history for David.
Symbolism can be found within the text of the book, in the names of the two husbands who died so young: Mahlon means 'Sickly' and Chilion means 'Wasting away' - hardly names a parent would give a child, but helpful to the story. Some suggest that the story of Ruth may have been written in King David's time to provide some family history about him, but many scholars say the story was more likely recorded centuries later in the time of Ezra.

Carol Meyers (Kinship and Kingship: 'The Early Monarchy', published in The Oxford History of the Biblical World) says the Book of Ruth may tell us nothing about the era of the judges beyond what an Israelite storyteller of a later period knew of it, but even that is worthwhile information, although it must be used cautiously.

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Answer 3

It gives background of King David's ancestry. Ruth was his great-grandmother. She was a non-Jewess living in Moab; and the Tanakh (Bible) wants to explain how she came to be David's ancestress.

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Answer 4

There was a famine in the era of the Judges. A prominent man named Elimelech went to wait out the lean years in the neighboring land of Moab, with his wife (Naomi) and two sons. The sons married Moabite women and later died, and Elimelech also died. Naomi decided to return to Israel, and her daughter-in-law, Ruth the Moabitess, accompanied her with the intention of converting to Judaism. The two were destitute, and supported themselves by gleaning grain (Leviticus 23:22) in other people's fields. Naomi advised Ruth to glean in the field of Boaz, since he was a relative of Elimelech.

Boaz commanded his field-workers to be considerate toward her.

Naomi, seeking a husband for the young Ruth, sent her to Boaz's threshing-floor when he would be there, in the hope that he would want to marry her. Boaz informed her that there was another relative who, according to custom, had prerogative to redeem Elimelech's field and marry her. The next day, the other man refused to take Ruth, and she and Boaz were married.

More information:

Ruth was a superlative servant of God.Naomi and her family had sojourned in Moab during a famine. Ruth, a Moabitess, became Naomi's daughter-in-law. She had a long stretch of time during which she observed Naomi's righteousness, and she (Ruth) became convinced that she must serve the One God and abandon her former idolatry. She went on to become so righteous that God allowed her to become the ancestress of King David.

More about the Hebrew Bible

Answer 5

The Book of Ruth is a story of love and devotion. First it is a story of family devotion and the love between Naomi and her daughter-in-law Ruth. Then Boaz falls in love with Ruth, they marry and bear a son, Obed, the father of Jesse, the father of David. There is fuller summary of the Book of Ruth here.

Answer 6

It's the story of a peasant girl who through righteous deeds is lifted out of poverty and becomes part of the Davidic Ancestry.

Answer 7

A non-Israelite becomes part of the ancestry of King David and Christ.

Answer 8

Ruth shows that God uses people from all backgrounds and social classes to accomplish his work.

Answer 9

To show that God almighty stands by the oppressed and the needy.