I love a good love story, don’t you? One that always makes me cry is the story of Ruth and Boaz. Boaz was a wealthy older man who had it all. Ruth, a widow, a Moabite, had nothing. Yet Boaz and Ruth got together and the product of their marriage was Obed, the father of Jesse, the father of David. [Ruth 1-4]
Ruth and Boaz got together because Boaz performed the rite of the kinsman-redeemer. He stepped in and redeemed Ruth from her life of poverty, from her backbreaking work gleaning the fields for food for herself and her mother-in-law Naomi, and from her outcast status as a foreigner in the land of Israel. Boaz redeemed Ruth and moved her from obscurity into the very lineage of King David. Now that’s a good love story.
God provided in the law for redemption. (“Ga’al,” is to redeem, to ransom, to avenge, to act as a kinsman.) When a person became bankrupt, so poor that he had to sell his goods, his family, his very person, the law made provision for redemption. He could get himself out of debt, out of slavery, if possible, but if not, his near relative, his kinsman, could perform that function.
In the law of the kinsman-redeemer, God gave a beautiful picture of His own work of redemption. Over and over in the Old Testament, God refers to Himself as Redeemer and refers to His work of Redemption. It is not only physical redemption that is contained in “ga’al,” but also spiritual redemption. [Psalms 69:18, 103:2-4.]
Redemption by our God is His love story to us. It’s Ruth, at the feet of Boaz, knowing she has no other recourse, no other way out of a life of backbreaking pain and poverty. It’s us at the feet of Jesus, kneeling by the Cross of our Kinsman-Redeemer, knowing no other recourse, no other way out of a life of soul-breaking pain and spiritual poverty. Ah, what a great love story!
