Read Time: 9 minutesRuth 3–4
The book moves from the gleaning-field to the threshing floor and the gate — from grace shown to redemption secured. Naomi sends Ruth to Boaz at the floor where he winnows barley, and the whole scene is a study in the boldness of faith laying claim to a promise. Ruth washes, anoints herself, puts on her raiment, and comes softly in the dark to uncover his feet and lie down — not a seduction, as the careful framing makes plain, but a petition: she has come to claim the redeemer to his duty.
When Boaz wakes at midnight and asks who she is, Ruth’s answer is the hinge of the book: I am Ruth thine handmaid: spread therefore thy skirt over thine handmaid; for thou art a near kinsman. The skirt is the keystone, and it is the same word — kanaph, wing or skirt — that Boaz had spoken over her in the field, under whose wings thou art come to trust. Ruth takes the redeemer’s own blessing and presses it back on him: you named the wings of Yahweh I have come under; now be those wings yourself, spread your skirt over me. It is the very word and gesture Yahweh uses of his covenant with Israel — I spread my skirt over thee… and entered into a covenant with thee, and thou becamest mine (Ezek 16:8). The Gentile widow asks the kinsman to make the marriage-covenant the figure already promised; faith claims the redeemer to his word.
But there is an obstacle, and it is the doctrine of the chapter: there is a kinsman nearer than I. A redeemer with a prior legal claim stands between Ruth and Boaz, and he must be cleared before Boaz can act. So chapter 4 opens at the gate — the place of legal witness and judgment — where Boaz lays the matter before the nearer kinsman and the ten elders. The nearer kinsman will redeem the land gladly: it adds to his estate. But when he learns he must also take Ruth the Moabitess to raise up the dead man’s name on his inheritance, he draws back — I cannot redeem it for myself, lest I mar mine own inheritance. He can have the field without the bride, but not the bride without risk to himself, and so he steps aside, drawing off his shoe as the legal sign of transfer.
The nearer kinsman is a figure worth reading. He is the one with the prior claim who cannot finally redeem — the Law, which had the first right over Israel but could not give life, could not take the Gentile bride, could not raise up seed to the dead without marring itself. The Law steps aside for the One who can redeem in full. Where the nearer kinsman draws back to protect his own inheritance, Boaz redeems at cost to himself, taking both the forfeited land and the foreign widow, buying back the inheritance of the dead and raising up his name. This is the go’el doing all three offices of the kinsman-redeemer at once — and it is Christ, who redeemed not the easy half but the whole, not the land without the bride but the bride at the price of himself.
The book closes in fullness answering its emptiness. The women bless Yahweh, which hath not left thee this day without a redeemer — and the child Obed (servant, worshipper) is laid in Naomi’s bosom, named by the women a restorer of thy life and a nourisher of thine old age. Naomi who went out full and came home empty is filled again; Israel emptied among the nations is restored through the Gentile bride and the redeemer’s seed. And the last words open onto the whole purpose of the book: Obed… the father of Jesse, the father of David. The genealogy runs Pharez to David, and Matthew will carry it on to Christ — the Moabite stranger and the kinsman-redeemer standing in the line of the King. The book that began in the days when the judges ruled, when there was no king in Israel, ends by naming the King the whole dark book was waiting for.
Faith claims the redeemer to his own promised word — spread thy skirt, for thou art the kinsman. The nearer kinsman, the Law, cannot take the bride without marring himself and steps aside; the true Redeemer takes the whole at cost to himself, fills the empty, and raises up the line of the King.
Isaiah 45
The court of the nations reaches its verdict, and it turns on a name spoken before its bearer was born. Thus saith Yahweh to his anointed, to Cyrus — and the word is mashiach, messiah, the only Gentile in Scripture to wear it. Cyrus, the Persian who would not know Yahweh, is named and surnamed a century and a half before his birth, called to subdue nations, to have the two-leaved gates of brass broken before him, to send Judah home and lay the temple’s foundation. He is the anointed deliverer, Yahweh’s instrument to break the captivity of Babylon — and so a type, the unwitting messiah who frees the exiles, shadowing the true Anointed who breaks the gates of death and leads the captives home.
The reason Yahweh names him is hammered twice: for Jacob my servant’s sake, and Israel mine elect… that thou mayest know that I, Yahweh, which call thee by thy name, am the God of Israel. The whole point of foretelling the deliverer by name is to prove that only Yahweh declares the end from the beginning — the same argument the idols failed in chapters 41 and 44. And the refrain tolls through the chapter like a bell: I am Yahweh, and there is none else, there is no God beside me… I form the light, and create darkness: I make peace, and create evil: I Yahweh do all these things. The Maker of light and dark alike, of weal and woe, governs all; there is no rival principle of evil set against him, no second power. The wood-worshippers who pray unto a god that cannot save are set against the one just God and a Saviour; there is none beside me.
And out of this — the one Yahweh and none beside him — comes the widest gospel-call in the prophets: Look unto me, and be ye saved, all the ends of the earth: for I am God, and there is none else. The salvation is not for Israel only but for the ends of the earth — the same reach as Ruth the Moabitess gathered in, the same light to the Gentiles of the Servant. And then the oath that Paul will lay twice upon Christ: I have sworn by myself… that unto me every knee shall bow, every tongue shall swear. Paul takes this word of Yahweh and applies it to the Lord Jesus — that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow… and every tongue confess (Phil 2:10–11; Rom 14:11) — for the knee that bows to Yahweh bows to him in his Son. The chapter that opens with the Gentile messiah Cyrus ends with every knee in heaven and earth bowing to the one Savior, and in Yahweh shall all the seed of Israel be justified, and shall glory.
Yahweh names the deliverer before he is born, forms light and dark alike, and there is no God beside him — yet his call goes to the ends of the earth: look unto me, and be ye saved. Every knee shall bow to the one Savior, and to him in his Son.
Revelation 1–2
The Apocalypse opens as the Revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave unto him — the unveiling, given by the Father to the Son and through him to the servants. John on Patmos, in the Spirit on the Lord’s day, turns to the voice and sees the glorified Christ walking among seven golden lampstands, which are the seven ecclesias. Every feature of the figure is borrowed from the prophets and gathered into one: the garment to the foot and golden girdle are the high priest’s vestments (Exod 28); the hair white like wool, as white as snow and the throne-nearness are the Ancient of Days of Daniel 7; the eyes as a flame of fire and feet like burnished brass are the man clothed in linen of Daniel 10; the voice as the sound of many waters is the glory of Yahweh coming from the east in Ezekiel 43; the two-edged sword from the mouth is the Servant’s mouth like a sharp sword of Isaiah 49; the countenance as the sun shineth in his strength is the face of Yahweh’s glory. Priest, judge, and king at once, the titles of Yahweh worn by the Son, standing in the midst of his lampstand-people — and the lampstand is itself the menorah of the holy place, the one light of Israel now multiplied into the seven ecclesias he walks among to tend.
When John falls as dead, the word lifts him — as Daniel before him collapsed before the same glory and was raised by a touch and a fear not (Dan 10:8–12), the prophet passing through a figure of death and revival — and it is the word that ties this whole week of Isaiah together: Fear not; I am the first and the last: I am he that liveth, and was dead; and, behold, I am alive for evermore. The first and the last is the title Yahweh claimed for himself in Isaiah 44:6 — I am the first, and I am the last; and beside me there is no God — and the risen Christ now wears it, not as a second God but as the one in whom Yahweh is manifested, the Son who bears the Father’s name and the Father’s titles. He that liveth, and was dead is the redeemer who, like Boaz, redeemed through cost to himself — but the cost was death itself, and he holds now the keys of hades and of death, the authority over the grave and the state of the dead. The dead sleep; the keys are in the hand of the one who died and lives, and at his voice the graves will open. This is no soul gone to its reward but the conqueror of death holding the keys that will unlock the dust.
The lampstands are the ecclesias, and the letters to the first four — Ephesus, Smyrna, Pergamos, Thyatira — are Christ walking among the lamps to trim them. Ephesus has labour and patience and hates the deeds of the Nicolaitanes, but has left her first love, and is charged to remember, repent, and do the first works, or the lampstand is removed. Smyrna — the suffering, persecuted ecclesia — is given no rebuke, only the promise through tribulation: be thou faithful unto death, and I will give thee a crown of life. The crown is future, given at the end, held out to the faithful who endure — not a possession secured in advance but a reward at the appearing. Pergamos dwells where Satan’s seat is and holds fast Christ’s name, but tolerates the doctrine of Balaam and the Nicolaitanes; Thyatira has love and service and faith, growing works, but suffers the woman Jezebel who seduces to fornication and idol-meat. To each the refrain: to him that overcometh. And the rewards held out are all the lost things of Eden and the wilderness restored: the hidden manna is the bread of the wilderness laid up in the ark, the true bread now kept for the faithful; the white stone and new name is the verdict of acquittal and the new identity of the redeemed; the morning star is Christ himself (Rev 22:16), the bright dawn given to those who endure the night; and the tree of life in the paradise of God is the very tree barred at Eden’s gate by the cherubim and the flaming sword, now opened again to the overcomer. Paradise lost at the beginning is paradise regained at the end — and all these rewards are future, the inheritance not of the strong but of the one who endures to the end.
The first and the last, who was dead and is alive, holds the keys of the grave and walks among the lamps. Hear what the Spirit saith to the ecclesias: remember thy first love, be faithful unto death, overcome — for the crown and the tree of life are held out to him that endures, and given at his appearing.
Synthesis and Exhortation
The three readings are one story of redemption from three windows: the kinsman-redeemer at the gate, the anointed deliverer named before his birth, and the risen Lord holding the keys of death. Boaz redeems the Gentile bride and the forfeited inheritance at cost to himself, where the nearer kinsman — the Law — cannot. Cyrus the unwitting messiah breaks the gates of brass and frees the captives of Babylon, a type of the greater Anointed. And the glorified Christ, he that liveth and was dead, holds the keys of hades and the grave, the redeemer whose cost was his own death and whose redemption reaches into the dust. The go’el of Ruth, the messiah of Isaiah, and the first-and-last of the Apocalypse are one Redeemer in three figures.
The thread that ties them is the title and the reach. I am the first and the last — Yahweh’s own words in Isaiah 44, spoken again in Isaiah 45’s there is none else, and worn by the risen Christ in Revelation 1. The knee that Isaiah says shall bow to Yahweh is the knee that Paul says shall bow to Jesus: the same homage, for Yahweh is manifested in the Son. And the reach is to the ends of the earth — Ruth the Moabitess gathered into the line of David, the gospel-call of Isaiah 45 going to all the ends of the earth, the lampstands of Revelation standing in the Gentile cities of Asia. The barred-out stranger, the foreign messiah, the Gentile ecclesias: the redemption was never for one nation only, and from Moab to Patmos the same Redeemer gathers his bride.
And the call of all three is to claim the Redeemer and hold fast. Ruth claims Boaz to his promised word — spread thy skirt, for thou art the kinsman — and is not refused. Isaiah’s call is look unto me, and be ye saved, all the ends of the earth. And the Lord among the lampstands presses the ecclesias to remember, repent, endure, overcome. The redemption is sure and the Redeemer is faithful — but the crown is given to the one who is faithful unto death, and the tree of life to him that overcometh. The empty are filled, the captives freed, the dead hold the promise of the keys — so look unto him, claim him to his word, and be faithful to the end.
One Redeemer in three figures: the kinsman who takes the bride at his own cost, the anointed who breaks the gates of brass, the first-and-last who holds the keys of the grave. Look unto him and be saved; claim him to his word as Ruth claimed Boaz; and be faithful unto death, for the crown of life and the tree of life are held out to him that overcometh.