Bible Commentaries

Boaz a Type of Christ

Ruth 2:4).

What a welcome Boaz gave to Ruth: "Hearest thou not, my daughter? Go not to glean in another field, neither go from hence, but abide here fast by my maidens" ( Ruth 2:8). Ruth was astounded. How did Boaz know anything about her? "Then she fell on her face, and bowed herself to the ground, and said unto him, Why have I found grace in thine eyes, that thou shouldest take knowledge of me, seeing I am a stranger?" ( Ruth 2:10). Some people never can be strangers. We may never have seen them before, but to see them once is to own a kinship; we know their touch, we know their voice, we have seen them before in some dream of love or some vision of sacred fancy; they are strangers only in a very limited sense,—profoundly and truly they are of our own kith and kin, of the same quality of soul and heirs of the same expectation. "Boaz answered and said unto her, It hath fully been shewed me, all that thou hast done unto thy mother in law since the death of thine husband: and how thou hast left thy father and thy mother, and the land of thy nativity, and art come unto a people which thou knewest not heretofore. The Lord recompense thy work, and a full reward be given thee of the Lord God of Israel, under whose wings thou art come to trust" ( Ruth 2:11-12). That is the way to welcome a heathen traveller. Make the pagan feel at once that all the past is forgotten, forgiven, and a new glad morning has dawned upon the enfranchised soul. Said Ruth 3:1, we read, "Then Naomi her mother in law said unto her, My daughter, shall I not seek rest for thee—shall I not seek a Menuchah for thee—that it may be well with thee?" The house of her husband was called the Menuchah of the wife—that is to say, the asylum of rest and protection. The orphanage is the Menuchah of the orphan. All homes, Christian institutions, asylums founded in the spirit of Christ and for the use of Christ, might be appropriately termed Menuchahs—places of rest, asylums of security, pavilions defended by the almightiness of God. There was a certain land promised to Israel. In the hope of attaining that land Israel lived and toiled for many a year. What would Israel call that promised land? The Menuchah. To reach that Menuchah was the hope of Israel; to stand upon the soil of that promised Canaan was to be sure of the nearness and protection of the God of Abraham, of Isaac, and of Jacob. Then, in its highest religious meaning, the Menuchah signifies the peace, favour, rest and protection of God. Jesus Christ said, "Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will be your Menuchah—I will give you rest"—sabbatic rest, complete peace, infinite reconciliation, the harmony in which there is no discord, the rest unbroken by a dream, undisturbed by any fear in the night-watches. All this is made the more vividly clear if we look at the case of Boaz and Ruth. Boaz was a near kinsman. There was one nearer still, but he declined to take up the functions of the family Goel; then what we might call the Goelship fell to the lot of Boaz, and he assumed the responsibility and prosecuted the task. Then Boaz was, moreover, a rest—the man who afforded a sense of security to the poor wandering Moabitess. He was the Menuchah, the grand living asylum, in whose love Ruth found peace and security.

Transfer all these images to the Lord Jesus Christ, and see how beautifully they apply in every instance to the Messiah. He is our Goel; he will mightily redeem us: he will take back from the hands of the enemy all the prey which the enemy has seized; the foe will have to deliver up whatever he has possessed himself of that belongs to God and humanity. The Goel will see us put into a secure position; a position of righteousness, of solid defence, of truth and probity. Then is he not the soul's Menuchah—the soul's resting-place, the soul's eternal asylum? Have we not sought peace everywhere and failed in the pursuit? Have we not hewn out to ourselves cisterns, and found them to be broken cisterns that could hold no water? Have we not made a bed for ourselves in the wilderness, and found that we were pillowing our heads upon the sharp thorns? Amid all life's tumult and the maddening pain of the soul, there has come this sweet voice: Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will be your Goel, your Menuchah; I will mightily deliver you and lead you into the rest of God. This is what we teach about Jesus Christ. These are the sublime truths we associate with his name. In all history men have needed a Goel or a deliverer, a Menuchah or a rest; and all the anxiety, strife, pain of the world's history, seemed to point in the direction of One who himself would combine the strength of the Goel and the grace of the Menuchah.

Thus a great historical gate is opened. Boaz was the father of Obed, Obed was the father of Jesse, and Jesse was the father of David—the darling of Israel and the man after God's own heart. How little we know what we are doing! Who can tell what the next link in the chain will be? Let us persevere in our work as God may give us opportunity and grace. Sometimes it is very heavy; sometimes quite dreary; sometimes the sun is practically blotted out, and all the sky is in mourning. But if we rest on eternal principles, if we believe in the omnipotence of God, we shall live to see the return of the sun, and in the brightness of morning we shall forget the blackness and the sadness of night.

Looking at the Book of Ruth as a whole, we are struck with the marvellous working of providence. The book had a sad opening. It opened like a cloudy day. It began with famine and misery, and went onward into widowhood twice told; and the first chapter is like a rain of tears. We could not understand why it should be so—why there should be a famine in Israel. The famine might have been otherwhere: why not afflict the heathen with famine, and let Israel, and Christian peoples, as we now term them, enjoy bountiful harvests, pulling down their barns to build greater? Why does the lightning strike the very steeple of the church? On the story goes, and God is working in it all. In the darkness his hand seems to be groping after something that he may loop on to something that had gone before. The movement of God is a movement of very subtle and intricate connections. Sometimes we wonder how the next link can be found, and often it is found in the night-time when we cannot see either the finder or the link he has found. Look at such portion of society as is open to our survey, and see how wonderful are the associations which have been made in life—the unexpected relationships, the strange coincidences, the marvellous creations of help, deliverance, and friendship culminating in the most practical affection. How are these people brought together? There was no plan in it on the human side; there was nothing on the human side but surprise; yet how the movement has proceeded, and how out of mysteries has happiness been consolidated! You heard a discourse, and it became the turning-point in your life; you listened to a prayer, and whilst it was arising to heaven you made solemn oath and vow that you would be better, and that vow has been redeemed: you went into a public assembly, and saw a face, the seeing of which has changed the whole course of your life. The providence of God is not an Old Testament story; it is the action of the day, the movement now circling around us,—the rustling of the leaves, the ploughing up of the land, the singing of the birds, the occurrences at home and abroad. Behold the hand of the living God, and in that hand put your trust. The most mysterious action of this providence was the bringing-in of the Gentiles. A new thing has been wrought in Israel: a Moabitess is numbered among the chosen children. Now that we read the story backwards we see the meaning of it all. Reading it as the facts occurred, the reading was often rough and most difficult. How true it is that we must wait to the end to see the real meaning of the beginning! When God's way is finished, God's way will be clear. We ought to take an interest in the introduction of Ruth into the sacred lineage, because she was the first-fruits of the people to whom we belong. She was a heathen woman, an outsider, a Gentile, and we belonged once to that outlawed class. Mean it is of us to say we do not take any interest in the conversion of distant nations, when we ourselves were once a distant nation, and have been converted to the faith and crown of Christ. We are not true to our own history, or grateful for our own deliverance, in the degree in which we are indifferent to the conversion of those who are afar off. Ruth was our first-fruits; Ruth was our kinswoman in the larger sense. Blessed be God for the introduction of our sister into Israel. She was in the direct line of the Son of God. The Gentile woman became a progenitor of God's own Christ. A strange genealogy! Having perused it line by line we know what it is:—the great king, the unknown man, the harlot, the Gentile Ruth ,—they all stand there, a symbolic humanity, so that when the Son of God comes, he comes not in one direction alone, not as born of the Jew only, but of a line of kings; in him all men are gathered up—the mightiest, the weakest, the wanderer, the homeless. Verily this Man was the Son of God—the Incarnate Deity!

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