Ruth the Moabite: Ancestress of the Royal Line
In a famine during the era of the Judges, a Moabite woman chooses her mother-in-law's people, gleans in Boaz's field — and becomes the great-grandmother of King David.
The Book of Ruth opens: "In the days when the judges judged, there was a famine in the land." A prominent man of Bethlehem, Elimelech, instead of supporting his neighbours, left for Moab with his wife Naomi and two sons. He died there; the sons married Moabite women, Orpah and Ruth, and within ten years they died too. Naomi decided to go home.
She urged both daughters-in-law to stay. Orpah kissed her and left. Ruth "clung" to her and said the words recited ever since at conversion: "Where you go I will go; your people are my people, and your God is my God."
They reached Bethlehem destitute at the barley harvest. Ruth gleaned behind the reapers — the Torah's portion for the poor — and "happened" onto the field of Boaz, a kinsman of Elimelech and the leading man of his generation. He ordered that she not be harassed and that extra be left for her. Then comes the night on the threshing floor, where Ruth asks him to act as redeeming kinsman, and the morning court at the city gate, where the nearer relative declines and Boaz redeems the field and marries Ruth.
They had Obed; Obed had Jesse; Jesse had David. Israel's royal house grew not from conquest but from a poor widow's loyalty and an old man's decency.