🎙 So What: Unraveling the Curious Blessing of Ruth with the Matriarchs: A Deep Dive into Biblical History

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Welcome to our ancient future story, navigating Scripture through the Eyes of Family, where I share with you biblical stories like a family member would share a story around a dinner table. As children of God, we are a part of God's family and His family story has a lot of history. Each week we will take one story and talk about it the cultural, historical, geographical and sociological impacts. We will be looking at these stories from the perspective of our ancestors, through the lens of ancient times, in hopes of learning more about our family. This is our ancient future story. Welcome back to our ancient future story. I'm Vic and I am so excited to share with you our fifth so what in our last so what of our series Today's so what is so what? The elders blessed Ruth with the matriarchs. At the end of Ruth 4, when Boas stands before the elders to redeem Ruth, the elders bless their union with the names of the matriarchs Tamar, rachel and Leah. This struck me as odd, because why would you pick those three matriarchs? I mean, rachel and Leah make sense because they are the mothers of the tribes of Israel, but Tamar seems a bit random. So today we're going to dive into why they blessed them with these three matriarchs and how that actually affected Israel in the long run. So grab your cup of coffee or something to drink and let's dive into so what? There are a few things we need to know to understand this blessing. First, who are these people? Rachel and Leah were sisters, daughters of Laban. Rebecca's brother, who, you might remember, took Jacob in while he was running from his brother, esau, after stealing the birthright. Jacob loved Rachel and he struck a deal with Laban that he could marry Rachel if he worked for him for seven years. Laban agreed, but after those seven years Laban gave Jacob Leah instead. Curious Jacob asked Laban why did he not uphold his side of the bargain? And Laban replied because we believe that the oldest should be married first, before the younger. So Jacob asked if he could marry Rachel and Laban agreed, with the caveat that Jacob would work another seven years for him. Jacob got burned by the birthright he had stole from Esau. So after 14 years of work he was able to marry Rachel and in Genesis 29-30 you can see all the children that Jacob, leah and Rachel had. This brought us the twelve tribes of Israel. So the fruitfulness of Leah and Rachel makes sense in this blessing. But there are also a lot of discord between the sisters because Jacob loved Rachel and not Leah. A great example of this turmoil between them comes from Genesis 30-14-16, where Rachel traded a night with Jacob for food Rubin, leah's son, had made. Tamar, on the other hand, came on the scene a couple generations later, in Genesis 38, judah, the fourth son of Jacob and Leah, had a son named Ur, and Judah arranged a marriage for Ur with Tamar. But Ur was wicked in the size of Yahweh, so Yahweh put him to death. For Ur, the Levitical Law of Redemption. Judah sent his second son, onan, and told him to redeem Tamar, but Onan refused and this was also evil in the eyes of Yahweh, so he put him to death. Also, judah told Tamar Remain a widow until my youngest, sheila, grows up. So Tamar did. She went back to her father's house, but when word got out that Judah was coming to town, she changed out of her widow garments and into prostitute gowns, because she had seen that Sheila had grown up and had not been given to her as a Levitical marriage. She tricked Judah into sleeping with her, but she takes his signet, ring cord and staff. She will later use these to prove that he was indeed the father when she comes up pregnant a few months later. This was her way of ensuring the lineage of her late husband, ur, because Judah had refused to give her the younger brother to her, per the Levitical marriage. So why does the elders bless Boaz and Ruth by Tamar? It could be because of the situation she was in. Tamar was involved in redemption process and blessed with twin boys. So perhaps the intent in this blessing was to say that Ruth would be blessed with a son who would carry on his father, a limilex lineage. But there is also quite a bit of drama in her story as well, which brings us to the other part. We need to know about the blessing Much like the oaths that were considered final once they were given they could not be changed or taken back, saying with blessings like the one Isaac gave Jacob, or like Jacob gave the twelve sons of Israel, because of who they are, kind of like a prophecy over their life. And we see a similar pattern with the blessing over Ruth. In the generations to come, ruth indeed, blessed with a son who they named Oped, and Oped grows up to have a son named Jesse. Now in our Bible we do not know much about Jesse's history, his childhood or how he grows up. We only refer to him as the father of David, but the Midrash, the ancient Jewish commentary, and other rabbi teachings give us some insight on who Jesse was. In his part in the blessing, jesse was the grandson of Boaz and Ruth, which, though he held a high position in the community as leading authority on the Torah. However, his legitimacy on the authority was called into question because of his grandmother's lineage from Moab. Some did not consider Jesse a true Jew. Because of this line, jesse himself, gripped with this confusion and doubt over his own legitimacy, he felt that it was only right for him to divorce his wife, nitzavit, because she was a pure Israelite and he was not. So Jesse went to a Canaanite maid servant. But this Canaanite maid servant informed Nitzavit of Jesse's plan and said Let us learn from your ancestors and replicate their actions. Switch places with me tonight, just as Leah did with Rachel, and they did so without Jesse knowing. Nitzavit conceived David that night and, because it appeared that Nitzavit had been unfaithful, david and Nitzavit were hated. Look what happened. Jesse ended up in the same situation that Rachel and Leah and Jacob were in. Nitzavit was found out to be pregnant with David, causing David to be considered an abomination in his own family. So why do we care that the elders blessed Boaz and Ruth with the matriarchs Rachel, leah and Tamara? Because these stories and legacies of these women repeated themselves, proving the legitimacy of one's own heritage and then scheming to ensure the family line. The blessing truly acted as a prophecy over the lineage of Ruth. There was fruitfulness, of course, but there was also discord and hatred among them, which we will dive into further in our next series on Psalms 23, where we will see David in a new light the hated outcast shepherd who would become king. See you next time. Thank you for listening to today's episode of our ancient future story. I hope that you really enjoyed it. This episode was written and produced by Vic Harmon. Music is embarking on an adventure by Evan McDonald. Please support the show by subscribing and rating us, and be sure to follow us on Instagram and Facebook at our ancient future story. See you next time. Bye.