Your people shall be my people, and your God my God.

by Alejandro Roque Glez.

“And they took them wives of the women of Moab… the name of the other Ruth… your people shall be my people, and your God my God: Where you die, will I die… the Lord Yahweh do so to me, and more also, if ought but death part you and me… and the women said to Naomi, Blessed be the Lord, which has not left you this day without a kinsman, that his name may be famous in Israel.”

(Ruth 1:4-16; 4:11-22)

These prophetic words related to the Hebrew Boaz and Ruth began to be fulfilled two generations later, when under that family and descent is born the famous king of Israel David (4:17, 22); but even when Boaz and Ruth did not imagine, it was through this family-tree––and to whom was destined this prophetic announcement––that such blessing should finally be materialized thousand years later when Jesus Christ, the Son of God, is born as a result of the former marital union between Boaz and Ruth, according to the flesh. This promise was repeatedly remembered and spoken by God to David at different times during his life (Ps 89:3-4; Is 9:6-7), as Yahweh God’s anointed king.

Jesus Christ is thus the ultimate meaning of this prophecy, and that is why God foretells it through the Holy Spirit, leaving this passage of the life and marriage of Boaz and Ruth enrolled in the Sacred History; conclusively showing his omniscience related to the offspring of the promised Messiah, and as evidence for us to verify, and no longer simply believe by faith.

This historical evidence, through the family tree of Joseph, Jesus’ legal father under the law (Mt 1:5, Lk 3:32), it is also confirmed by providing us not only about the family in which the Messiah would come, but also the place of his birth in Bethlehem, when his countrymen told him: “And all the people that were in the gate, and the elders, said: We are witnesses. The Lord Yahweh make the woman that is come into your house like Rachel and like Leah, which two did build the house of Israel: and do you worthily in Ephratah, and be famous in Bethlehem” (4:11).

This prophecy in relation with the birth of Jesus in Bethlehem will also see repeated by the prophet Micah, who prophesied in the days of kings Jotham, Ahaz and Hezekiah, covering a period from around 749 to 697 BC. His prophecies strongly criticized the wicked king Ahaz, on the destruction of the capital of the Northern Kingdom Samaria and the future coming of the Messiah Redeemer; unquestionably pinpointing the place of his birth when––in times like this story of Boaz and Ruth––he prophesied inspired by the Holy Spirit: “But you, Bethlehem Ephratah, though you be little among the thousands of Judah, yet out of you shall he come forth to me that is to be ruler in Israel; whose goings forth have been from of old, from everlasting. Therefore will he give them up, until the time that she which travails has brought forth: then the remnant of his brothers shall return to the children of Israel” (Mic 5:2-4).

Something important to note is that Ruth, who as indicated became the genealogical distant grandmother of Christ through the family ancestry of Joseph––according to the Law father of the child Jesus––was not an Israelite or part of the Jewish people. She was Moabite, a foreign, Gentile, and therefore this is itself a prophecy within another; thereby God with it demonstrates––through her––that centuries later the Gentiles would also be admitted among God’s people.

(What will life be on our planet once the Lord fulfills the promise of his coming? If interested you can read it in the form of a literary narrative, recreated in the author's book entitled: 'The King Victorino').

[These and other Old Testament prophecies are explicatively compiled in the author's book entitled: 'Minor Prophets of the Old Testament;' in print and digital editions]

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