(2 Samuel 11; Matthew 1:5-6)

“Judah the father of Peres and Zerah by Tamar . . . Salmon the father of Boaz by Rahab, and Boaz the father of Obed by Ruth, and Obed the father of Jesse, and Jesse the father of King David.” So far we have come; God has used the stubborn faith, independent wits, and deep hearts of these three remarkable women to bring Israel its greatest king, God’s chosen ruler, a man after his own heart, to whom God has promised the throne of his people for his descendants forever. Jewish nationalists might find each of these women questionable ancestors, but each by her actions has proven herself a hero of the faith, worthy to belong in such a great lineage.

But now! Now, we come to a very different sort of story, where the woman is not hero, but victim; now, we come to pure scandal. This great king has lived a life of blessing; he has faced severe opposition, but has always triumphed unscathed. Apparently, however, power and security have gone to his head, for here—not long into his reign—all that will change; here we read of a sin, or a complex of sins, that wreaks such terrible consequences on David and Israel that Old Testament scholar Walter Brueggeman compares it to the fall of Adam and Eve. Here we see the blessing and purity of David and his reign forever broken, forever marred; from now on, the golden king’s life of blessing is ended, and he will live a life under curse. From here through the end of the book, and even on into the books of the Kings, we have an almost-unbroken litany of family disasters; God preserves the nation, but David’s heart is crushed.

And how did it all begin? With the king neglecting his duty. “In the spring of the year, the time when kings go out to battle”—David stayed home. In those days, the king was first and foremost the war leader of the nation, and so it has always been with David as with other monarchs; but this year, when the roads dry out enough to be passable, when the weather clears enough to be bearable, David stays home. One afternoon, he takes a nap, and sleeps late; waking up bored, restless, with a burr in his soul reminding him that he belongs at the front, not in his own palace, he decides to go cool off on his roof—houses in that part of the world were built with flat roofs for just that purpose.

His is a high roof, and his palace is near the peak of Mount Zion, on which Jerusalem sits, so he has a commanding view of the city; and looking down, he sees a beautiful naked woman. Don’t blame her for this—she’s behind the walls of the courtyard of her house, where no one should be able to see; it’s David who’s in the wrong place. As it turns out, she has just completed her period and is finishing the purification required by the Law, but David doesn’t care a whit about that; what he cares about is that she’s beautiful, she’s naked, and he wants her. Now. (Shades of his ancestor Judah.)

Now, David’s a married man—in fact, he has at least three wives that I can think of; at this point, he should have gone and taken a cold shower, but instead he sends a messenger to ask who this woman is; he’s told, “This is Bathsheba, daughter of Eliam, the wife of Uriah the Hittite.” That she’s identified by her husband is normal; the fact that he’s a Hittite, a foreigner, means that he’s one of the mercenary soldiers who made up the backbone of David’s army, while the fact that his name is Uriah, which means “Yahweh is my light,” tells us that he was a worshiper of the God of Israel. What’s more, 2 Samuel 23 tells us that he was one of the Thirty, the elite squad of David’s army—equivalent to the US Special Forces, or Britain’s SAS. This was an important man in the army of Israel.

Given that, why is his wife also identified—first!—as the daughter of Eliam? We can’t be sure, but it seems likely that the reference here is to Eliam the son of Ahithophel; this Eliam was another member of the Thirty (which is probably why his daughter married Uriah), and his father Ahithophel was David’s most trusted councillor. In short, what David hears is that Bathsheba is closely connected to some of his most valuable servants and most important supporters, which means he really ought to leave her alone.

But he’s in the grip of lust, and he takes no thought for that; he sends messengers to bring her to the palace, and he has sex with her. We’re not told what she thinks about this, because the narrator is focused on David, and from David’s point of view, what she thinks doesn’t matter; he’s the king, and whatever she thinks, she’s going to do what he wants her to. So David gets what he wants—and in a little while, the bill comes due: Bathsheba sends him the message, “I’m pregnant.”

David probably panics at first, but then he settles down and conceives a plan: bring Uriah home, he’ll sleep with his wife, and they can pass the baby off as hers. Unfortunately, Uriah isn’t going to indulge himself when the Ark of the Covenant, the holy throne of God, and the whole army are living in tents on the battlefield, so he insists on sleeping in the palace guardroom with the rest of David’s servants. He shows himself a man of great integrity, more loyal to David and Israel than David is—and certainly more loyal than David deserves, just at the moment—and the core of this tragedy is that his integrity costs him his life. David sends a message to his general, Joab, to have Uriah killed—and in the crowning touch, he sends it by Uriah’s own hand.

Well, Joab obeys, but he doesn’t like it—especially since, to keep everyone from realizing what’s really going on, he has to put a whole squad of troops at risk; from a military point of view, he has to throw away the lives of a number of his best men (including Uriah) just to cover up for the king. It’s clear from Joab’s comments that he’s putting the blame for this squarely on David’s shoulders, and it seems likely that he’s figured out that there’s a woman involved in this; which means he probably has a pretty shrewd idea exactly what woman, and how, and why. He’s a loyal servant to the king, but his fury at what he’s been forced to do, and for such a sordid reason, is clear.

But David doesn’t care, handing the messenger a platitude and a proverb for his trouble. Uriah’s dead, Bathsheba will be available once she finishes her mourning for her husband—seven days was the usual period—and he’s foolish enough to think no one’s the wiser. And indeed, when Bathsheba hears the news, she mourns her husband, and then David sends for her again and marries her, and she gives birth to their son. All is well.

Except for one small problem: “The thing that David had done displeased the LORD.” David has forgotten what Onan forgot, what Judah forgot, what Cain forgot—you can’t slip anything past God—and God is not happy. After all, of the ten commandments, David has just broken three: first, he saw his neighbor’s wife and wanted her—that’s coveting, the tenth commandment; then he had sex with her—that’s adultery, the seventh commandment; and then he had her husband killed—that’s murder, the sixth commandment. What’s more, he had Uriah killed in order to cover up the adultery, so the murder was in service of a lie, which is also a sin. That’s a lot of evil packed into a very short time; and while it would be bad enough if one of us did all that, David was the king, God’s anointed ruler, and as such, he was held to a much higher standard. His conduct was reprehensible—he has “utterly scorned the Lord”—and God will not let it pass.

So, God sends the prophet Nathan to confront David with his sin. That story is told in chapter 12, which I encourage you to read; for now, I just want to point out the steep price David pays. The new baby will die, and David’s family will be cursed. His children will be at war with each other and with him; at the peak of the troubles, his son Absalom will launch a coup, drive him from his home and his city, and signify this by having sex with David’s concubines in full view of the people of Jerusalem. That act, incidentally, will be suggested to Absalom by Ahithophel, Bathsheba’s grandfather, who had been David’s closest and most valued counselor; it’s not hard to imagine why, given the opportunity, he will choose to side with Absalom against David.

Out of all this disaster, there is only one solitary grace note: after the death of David and Bathsheba’s first child, we’re told that “David consoled his wife Bathsheba, and went to her, and lay with her; and she bore a son, named Solomon.” The judgment on David stands—all his repentance cannot undo that—but God forgives; to David and Bathsheba is born the son whom God has chosen to carry on the royal line, to be king in Israel after David. Through Solomon, the son of Bathsheba, the line will continue which will ultimately bring Jesus the Messiah.

In one way, this seems inappropriate. David took Bathsheba from her husband by force; why should this sordid story lead to the birth of David’s successor? After all, David had other wives; just to name one, there’s Abigail, whose story is told in 1 Samuel 25. Abigail was clearly the equal of Tamar, Rahab, and Ruth, worthy to stand in their company; why didn’t God choose one of her sons? Why choose a son of the wife of Uriah, who would be a constant reminder of David’s great sin? It’s not something we would predict, yet it’s what God does; and from that, we have much to learn about him.

Out of evil and scandal, God brings good; from the black, black roots of sin, he grows a white flower of grace. His plan is to redeem the world, and there is no one and no part of it he cannot redeem; even such evil acts as these do not defeat him, and even so great a sinner as David may be restored. Even in the face of such darkness, God accomplishes his purposes and carries on his plan; and in this, we may see the shadow of the cross, where the greatest crime the world has ever seen would be the moment of the greatest glory and victory it has ever seen, the moment of its redemption. God is the God who brings white flowers from black roots. Or perhaps we might say, red flowers, red as blood: the red Rose of Sharon, the Messiah, Jesus Christ, descended from David and Bathsheba, whose coming we await.

Jesus declared, “I have not come to save the righteous, but sinners”—and he said that with tongue planted firmly in cheek, because even the most righteous are still sinners; the real division wasn’t between those who sin and those who don’t, but between those who admit it and those who won’t. That’s why the apostle Paul said, “It is a true statement and worthy of acceptance that Jesus Christ came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am the foremost.” The foremost leader of the church in all its history called himself the foremost of sinners. Can any of us claim to be better than Paul?

This is critically important for us, because if only those who never do something really wrong are qualified to be used by God, then let’s not beat around the bush—we’re hosed. If there is to be any hope for us, it must be that Jesus meant what he said, and Paul was right; and if there is to be any hope for the church, it must be that a bunch of us sinners all working and living and growing together, guilty of sins we admit and sins we refuse to admit and sins we don’t even recognize as sins, can still somehow be used by God in his plan for the salvation of the world—not because we do such a great job, but despite the fact that we really don’t.

That can be a hard thing to believe, and so we often don’t; instead, we either drift into insecurity and fear and negativity, feeling that we have to be good enough and can’t manage it, or we adjust our standards for our lives so that we can feel that we’re good enough, and God just can’t really be as unreasonable as all that. But if we look to the Bible, we don’t find any support for that point of view; rather, what we find is stories like this one of David and Bathsheba—stories that tell us that even the greatest and most godly people out there have done evil and disastrous things, and though God has disciplined them and allowed them to face the consequences of their sin, yet he has continued to love them anyway, and continued to work through them anyway to accomplish his purposes. White flowers from black roots; sinners saved by grace, through whom God works—warts and all—to save others. This is God’s method of operation; this is the gospel in action. And it’s implicit even in the birth of Jesus; just as his family line and heritage reflects the will of God to bring all the nations into his people, so in the story of David and Bathsheba it shows us his redemptive grace.

(Ruth 1:1-18, Ruth 4:13-17; Matthew 1:5-6a)

There are a couple things to say right off the bat before we dive into the story of Ruth, the third woman Matthew includes in his genealogy of Christ. First, you ought to have your Bibles open; we couldn’t read the whole book of Ruth, but we’re going to cover the whole book. Second, if you weren’t here last week, you need to know that the writers of Hebrew genealogies felt free to skip people; Rahab wasn’t actually Boaz’ mother, but his great-great-ever-so-great-grandmother. From Rahab to Ruth is actually about 200 years, from Joshua’s time to the end of the time of the judges. This was the time of the conquest of the land—and then its periodic reconquest from various oppressors. After Joshua died, Israel got into a pattern: they would be faithful to God for a while, then fall into idolatry, then someone like the Moabites would conquer them. They would cry out to God for someone to deliver them, and he would send someone to drive away the oppressor and win their freedom; and for a time they would be faithful to God. Then they would lapse back into idolatry, and the pattern would repeat.

It was toward the end of that period that a major famine drove a man named Elimelech to take his wife and two sons and head off to Moab to try to make a living. Not long after, he died, leaving his wife Naomi with their two sons. Her situation is tenuous—no longer able to count on her husband for support, she must lean on her sons, who aren’t yet married; if anything happens to them, she’s all alone. Understandably, she won’t complain if they marry local women, and so they do, and for a while, everything’s good; but then, before they have any children of their own, both her sons die.

At this point, Naomi figures she has no one; there’s nothing to do but go back home to Bethlehem. She’s heard that the famine is over, so she ought to be able to eke out some kind of living. To her surprise, her daughters-in-law insist on going with her. She argues with them—there’s nothing I can do for you, she tells them; I’m not going to have more sons to marry you. She succeeds in persuading Orpah to turn around and go home. Ruth, however, flatly refuses, telling Naomi, “Don’t argue with me! Where you go, I will go; where you live, I will live; your people shall be my people, and your God my God. Where you die, I will die, and there will I be buried.”

This is a permanent commitment for her—not only is she going with Naomi no matter what, she will never turn around and never go back. Her commitment to Naomi, and through her to Naomi’s family and people, is absolute; even in death, she would sleep in fellowship with Naomi’s family, not her own. To seal her promise, she follows it up with a dramatic statement: [draw finger across throat] “Thus may the Lord do to me and more if even death parts me from you!” This oath had its origin in covenant ceremonies, as one accepted the promise of severe penalties for breaking the covenant; Ruth is not content to leave her commitment to Naomi as mere words, but turns it into a covenant, sealed with a great oath. It’s important to note here that in verse 8, Naomi said to Orpah and Ruth, “May the Lord do hesed to you, as you have dealt with my sons and with me”—if you were here last week, you should remember that Rahab used that phrase as well—and that hesed, that great word for the abiding love and faithfulness God shows his covenant people, is all over this book. Ruth here is being held up as a real example of hesed in the extraordinary love and loyalty she shows her mother-in-law.

Faced with this, Naomi gives up and takes Ruth home with her. They get back to Bethlehem around the beginning of the barley harvest, which is a lucky “coincidence”—i.e., God acting incognito. Because the harvest is going on, Ruth immediately volunteers to feed the two of them by going out to glean in the fields—to follow behind the harvesters to pick up grain they dropped or missed. As a poor widow, it’s her right under the Law to do so; but if the owner of the field were to refuse to cooperate, the results could be ugly, especially given that she was a foreigner, an outsider with no one to protect her, and that Moab was Israel’s enemy. Still, for Naomi, she’ll risk it.

“As it happened”—“coincidence” again—she ends up in a field belonging to Boaz. Now, Boaz is a member of Elimelech’s extended family, a relative of Naomi’s by marriage; and in fact, he’s a relative to whom Naomi and Elimelech had been close. What’s more, he’s a rich man, highly respected, with great influence in the community, and a godly man as well—that much is clear from the behavior of his servants. They allow her to glean, and she works herself hard; when Boaz shows up and asks about her, the overseer identifies her as Naomi’s daughter-in-law from Moab, notes that she asked politely to be allowed to glean, and then reports, “She’s been working from dawn’s first light until now without a single break.”

Clearly, he’s impressed. Boaz is, too, and not just by this report. He goes to Ruth and says, “Listen carefully: don’t go glean in another field—don’t leave my land—but stay with the women who are collecting and binding the cut grain and glean right behind them; I’m going to order the young men working out here not to bother you. If you get thirsty, feel free to drink the water we’ve set out for the workers.” In saying that, he’s given Ruth status as part of his household, set his protection on her, and put her in the best possible position for gleaning.

She’s overwhelmed by his generosity (understandably); she drops to her knees, bowing until her face touches the ground, and asks, “Why have I found such favor in your sight, that you have paid me special notice, when I’m a foreigner?” The answer is her loyalty to her mother-in-law, her willingness to leave everything and go into exile to remain with Naomi—something which no doubt meant even more to Boaz because Naomi was part of his family. For that, he does the best turn for her that he can, and then prays that God will give her every blessing. Indeed, he does his part to make sure that happens: when mealtime comes, he invites her to eat with him, and then orders his reapers to leave extra grain for her.

It’s important to note that in chapter 2 verse 2, when Ruth volunteers to go out and glean, she says, “behind someone in whose sight I may find favor.” In other words, she’s not just going out to gather food, she’s hoping to catch someone’s eye; she’s looking for a husband, so that she may have children to carry on Naomi’s family. Remember what we talked about two weeks ago, the importance of not letting the line die out? It’s the same issue here: Naomi’s husband Elimelech is dead, his two sons are dead, and Naomi’s too old to have more children; if the family is to continue, Ruth must bear a child to carry on Elimelech’s line. Now, she has indeed found favor in someone’s eyes—Boaz—someone who is clearly both wealthy and good. When she returns to Naomi with a huge bundle of grain, plus some cooked food left over from lunch, Naomi is completely astounded; obviously someone has paid Ruth special attention. Who?

When Ruth answers, “His name is Boaz,” Naomi bursts out in an exclamation of praise to God and blessing on Boaz. When she calms down, she explains: Boaz is one of their relatives. In fact, she says, “He’s one of our kinsman-redeemers.” The Hebrew term here, go’el, was an important legal term. A go’el had several responsibilities. If a person had to sell part of their inheritance, part of the family land, a close relative who had the necessary resources would act as a go’el to buy the land and bring it back into the family. If someone were forced to sell themselves into slavery to pay their debts, the go’el would buy them back. In the case of injustice to a member of the family, the go’el was responsible to see that justice was done. And it appears that in cases like Ruth’s, the custom was that the go’el was responsible to marry the widow. After all, the practice of levirate marriage, which we talked about with Tamar, could only go so far; if there were no single brothers to marry her and give her dead husband an heir, someone had to do it.

This obviously sets Naomi thinking; and after a while, she puts her plan into motion. Remember in the first chapter, Naomi prays that God will bless Orpah and Ruth? God has given her the opportunity to bring about those blessings for Ruth, and she’s determined not to miss it. She tells Ruth, “Take a bath, put on some perfume, and get dressed up, then go down to the threshing floor. Boaz will be celebrating; don’t let him see you. He’ll be spending the night there. When he goes to sleep, uncover his feet and lie down there.” There are three things to note here. One, the verb “uncover” usually occurs in a phrase used to describe improper sexual relations. Two, the word “feet” is a common euphemism for the genitals. Three, the verb “lie down” is one of the usual verbs for sex. Now, this doesn’t mean that Ruth does anything improper—as far as I can tell, she simply lay down fully clothed at Boaz’ feet—but the overtones here are deliberate, for this is a sort of seduction, if a chaste one: she is there to ask Boaz, as their go’el, to marry her. (That’s the significance of “spread your cloak over your servant.”)

With this plan, Naomi and Ruth are staking a lot on Boaz being a man of good character, and they aren’t disappointed. Boaz is startled, but pleased, and declares, “This last act of hesed is even better than your first. You could have landed one of the choice young men, whether poor or rich, but you chose family loyalty instead.” He understands that she wants to marry him, at least in part, in order to give Naomi and her dead husband an heir. He doesn’t see this as a problem, however, and so he gladly agrees; but he cautions her, “There’s another relative closer than I who has the first right to act as kinsman-redeemer here. I’ll talk to him in the morning. If he wants to carry out this duty, let him; otherwise, I will.”

The next morning, Boaz goes down to the city gate, where all legal decisions were made, and no sooner does he get there and sit down than that relative comes walking by. Boaz stops him, grabs ten of the city elders, and presents the situation—beginning with something we haven’t heard to this point: their relative Elimelech owned a piece of property which now needs to be redeemed. This relative has the first right to do so; if he doesn’t, Boaz will. It seems like a good deal for this relative. He can get the land cheap, Elimelech has no surviving heirs to lay claim to the property later, Naomi isn’t going to have any more kids, and he boosts his reputation by carrying out a family duty. It looks like a win-win situation, and so he agrees to buy the land.

Ah, but before he can make the formal declaration to the elders of the city, Boaz has a surprise for him. “The day you buy the field, you will also commit to marry Ruth, the dead man’s widow, to give him an heir.” That provokes consternation. This relative was thinking of Naomi and Elimelech, but Elimelech died before his sons; the property actually belonged last to Ruth’s husband, making her, not Naomi, the widow in question. Unlike Naomi, Ruth was young enough to bear children, and if he married her, she probably would. He’d have to pay for the field, and then her child would inherit, meaning less money for the children he has now; supporting that child would further reduce the amount he could leave to his current children. This news turns the purchase from an investment into an unwanted expense, and so he passes on the right to redeem to Boaz.

The rest, you know: Boaz married Ruth, and she gave birth to a son, Obed. As seems to have been the case under these circumstances, the baby was considered both the heir of Ruth’s dead husband Mahlon, and thus of Naomi and her family, and of Boaz. As such, he was a great blessing to both families, for Boaz seems to have been childless up to this point, and they rejoiced greatly. However great their joy, though, they didn’t know the half of it; for as verse 17 tells us, Obed would be the grandfather of King David, the second and greatest king of the people of Israel.

Now, here again we have a foreign woman brought into Israel; but where, with Tamar and Rahab, they are brought in by their courage and their faith, with Ruth it is first and foremost her hesed, her extraordinary love, loyalty, faithfulness and commitment, that makes her a part of the people of God. At the beginning, Naomi praises her daughters-in-law for their hesed, but when push comes to shove, Orpah goes back home. She’s not condemned for that in the least—she’s following the wise counsel of her mother-in-law, doing the smart thing. It’s a perfectly fine act. It just isn’t hesed, for hesed goes above and beyond the call of duty—like Ruth. She continues to do hesed to her mother-in-law—by going home with her, by taking the risk to go out and glean, by taking the risk to lie down at Boaz’ feet, and by asking Boaz to marry her to give Elimelech an heir so that his line, and Naomi’s, might continue. All the way through, Ruth is held up as a shining example of hesed, of godly love and faithful commitment, which is why she has an honored place among the ancestors of David, and ultimately of Jesus.

There’s one other thing to note here, one which foreshadows the work of Christ: the book of Ruth shows us God acting below the radar of history, through common people and ordinary circumstances. One cannot call Naomi, Ruth, or Boaz truly ordinary people, but they’re the sort of people who get dismissed as ordinary because they aren’t famous; Boaz is rich and influential, yes, but only in Bethlehem, which is a town of no great consequence on the national scene, let alone by the world’s standards. And yet, through these three people and their God-given character and wits, God acts to continue the line which will ultimately lead to the birth of his Son.

And when his Son is born, it will be, again, in that town of no great consequence, that sleepy little burg of Bethlehem, to someone the world considers unimportant and thus ordinary; and who will be called to witness the birth? Shepherds. The most blue-collar workers imaginable. Yeah, the kings are coming, too, but they won’t show up until later. The Savior of the world will be a man of no reputation, a common builder, who will live a life of common things: eating peasant bread, working with calloused hands, walking everywhere. Yet through that life, below the world’s radar until the very end, would come the redemption of our fallen race.