From Sodom to Jesus
Did you know Ruth was related to Abraham?
If you had asked before I wrote King Jehoshaphat’s Prayer, I would have argued with the question instead of answering it. “No, she isn’t.”
Everyone knows she’s a Moabitess! Hated enemies of the Israelites, subjects of a dozen stories of war and prophecy and enmity.
And, it turns out, family.
See, the Moabites come from a man named Moab. And Moab was the son of Lot (and, confusingly, also his grandson). And Lot was the nephew of Abraham, his brother Haran’s son. Lot’s daughters’ incest resulted in centuries of conflict between Israel on the west side of the Jordan River and Moab on the east.
But God can redeem even that story.
And so it is that we see Boaz, a man of Abraham’s line, wed to Ruth, a woman of Lot’s descendants. And their son is Obed, and his son is Jesse, and his son is David, and his son is Jesus of Nazareth.
