“Ruth’s Wise Choice”
From a Bible card published by the Providence Lithograph Company, 1907
Earlier this year, I wrote a Bible study on “The Book of Ruth“. It was not some gloss-it-all-over study, either, and I took the time to pick out enough gems to hopefully make people think about her character as being representative of what the Church’s character should be like.
If you search the Internet, there is a lot of confusion about the legal lineage of the offspring of the union between Ruth and Boaz, and I have a good reason to bring that up for a future article. Believe it or not, it ties into the Book of Revelation, Jacob blessing his grandchildren and a certain passage in Isaiah which some have allowed to confuse them into believing a trinity. It also refutes the claim of yet another false prophetess that seems to be making trouble within the COG community.
There also seems to be confusion regarding who Ruth was originally married to. There is no need for confusion, for the book itself tells us. As I wrote in Part 1:
Orpah is the first daughter-in-law, as she is mentioned first. However, Ruth is the wife of Mahlon (Ru 4:10). It seems unusual, and it implies that either Chilion, the younger, married first or that Orpah was older than Ruth.
Normally, you would have expected the older son to marry first, and one would likely assume that the oldest daughter-in-law would have been married to the oldest son, but that doesn’t appear to be the case here. Most likely, Chilion married before his brother, and the ages of Orpah and Ruth are immaterial here, but it cannot be ruled out that Orpah may have been the younger as well.
Details. Sometimes they get lost in the story. That’s why we must be diligent in our studies.