Ruth 4

Ruth 4:13-22

Ruth is now made happy in a loving husband, and a liberal provision: she finds at last, that she hath lost nothing by what she left in Moab. Thus does God, even in this world, recompense those who are faithful to him an hundred fold, for whatever they have forsaken on his account. Notice is taken,

1. Of Ruth’s conception. God gave her a son; for from him is the fruit of the womb.

2. The congratulation of the holy women to Naomi hereupon. They praised God for the blessing of a child born, and expressed their kind wishes, by a confident conclusion, that she would find in him a reshorer of her life, the comforts of which former afflictions had imbittered to her; and a nourisher of her old age, which was now coming apace upon her. Nor is her daughter forgotten: they speak of her with a deserved encomium, as if her affectionate tenderness was better than seven sons. Note, (1.) It is Christian-like to rejoice with those who do rejoice. (2.) The support of aged

parents should be the care and delight of children. (3.) God, when he deprives us of one comfort, often more than repays us, in bestowing another.

3. The child is called Obed, serving, as designed from earliest infancy to be educated to serve the Lord Christ, or in view of the service he would afford his aged grandmother. Naomi, pleased at the heart, takes the child, lays it in her bosom, and with tenderest fondness nurses it as her own. Note, On grandchildren often a double portion of maternal fondness rests.

4. The book concludes with the genealogy of David, the grandson of this child that is born to Boaz; and the history takes occasion from thence to trace downward the pedigree from Phares, his more distant ancestor, like unto whom, the elders had prayed, might the family of Boaz be; and they are answered, since from him descends the Messiah, the Son of David, whose seed is more numerous than the sand, and more glorious than the kings of the earth.

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