Bible Synapse
If no Moabite may enter the congregation of the Lord, how could Ruth the Moabite be accepted?
Hard question · The law of Moses · raised by 1 of the lists sceptics circulate
See the passages joined in the interactive mapThe passages
No Ammonite or Moabite is to enter the congregation of the Lord, even to the tenth generation, because they refused Israel bread and water and hired Balaam to curse them.
An Ammonite or Moabite shall not enter into the congregation of the Lord; even to their tenth generation shall they not enter into the congregation of the Lord for ever: Because they met you not with bread and with water in the way, when ye came forth out of Egypt; and because they hired against thee Balaam the son of Beor of Pethor of Mesopotamia, to curse thee. Nevertheless the Lord thy God would not hearken unto Balaam; but the Lord thy God turned the curse into a blessing unto thee, because the Lord thy God loved thee. Thou shalt not seek their peace nor their prosperity all thy days for ever.
When this law is read in Nehemiah’s day, the people separate from Israel “all the mixed multitude”.
On that day they read in the book of Moses in the audience of the people; and therein was found written, that the Ammonite and the Moabite should not come into the congregation of God for ever; Because they met not the children of Israel with bread and with water, but hired Balaam against them, that he should curse them: howbeit our God turned the curse into a blessing. Now it came to pass, when they had heard the law, that they separated from Israel all the mixed multitude.
Ruth tells Naomi: “thy people shall be my people, and thy God my God”.
And Ruth said, Intreat me not to leave thee, or to return from following after thee: for whither thou goest, I will go; and where thou lodgest, I will lodge: thy people shall be my people, and thy God my God:
Boaz takes Ruth as his wife, and she bears a son.
So Boaz took Ruth, and she was his wife: and when he went in unto her, the Lord gave her conception, and she bare a son.
Ruth is named in Matthew’s genealogy of Jesus: Boaz “begat Obed of Ruth”.
And Salmon begat Booz of Rachab; and Booz begat Obed of Ruth; and Obed begat Jesse;
The objection
Deuteronomy says, “An Ammonite or Moabite shall not enter into the congregation of the Lord; even to their tenth generation”, and Nehemiah enforced the law. Yet Ruth, a Moabite woman, married Boaz of Bethlehem and became the great-grandmother of King David. How could she be accepted among God’s people?
The answer
The law and the book of Ruth deal with different things. Deuteronomy 23:3-6 bars the Moabites as a people from Israel’s assembly, because of what Moab had done to Israel on the way from Egypt. It does not forbid an Israelite to marry a Moabite woman. Marriage with the nations of Canaan was forbidden (Deuteronomy 7:1-3), but Moab was not one of them, and Keil and Delitzsch note that marriage with Moabite women was not forbidden in the law. Jewish teachers read Deuteronomy 23 in the same way: the Mishnah rules that the ban applied to Moabite men, while Moabite women who joined Israel were permitted at once (Yevamot 8:3). Gill reports the same Jewish reading: women of these nations might marry Israelites, ‘provided they were proselytesses, as Ruth was’.
More important, Ruth did not come as a Moabite holding on to Moab’s gods. She left them: “thy people shall be my people, and thy God my God” (Ruth 1:16). Boaz blessed her as one who had come to trust under the wings of the Lord God of Israel (2:12), and the elders of Bethlehem gave their blessing to the marriage (4:11). This is the turning that Isaiah later says God will welcome, “the sons of the stranger, that join themselves to the Lord” (Isaiah 56:6). The law shut out Moab, the nation that had hired Balaam; it did not shut out a Moabite who left Moab’s gods for the Lord.
The marriages Nehemiah condemned were of another kind. The children of those marriages could not even speak the language of Judah, and Nehemiah warned that such foreign wives had drawn even Solomon into sin (Nehemiah 13:23-27; 1 Kings 11:1-4). Ruth did the opposite, and became an ancestor of David and of Jesus (Ruth 4:17-22; Matthew 1:5).
Other answers Christians give
Assembly, not residence or marriage
Some take ‘enter into the congregation’ to mean taking part in Israel’s assembly with full rights, such as a voice in its councils, rather than living in Israel or marrying an Israelite. On this view Ruth’s marriage did not touch the law at all.
Grace beyond the rule
Others see Ruth, like Rahab, as an outsider received by grace beyond the letter of the law, so that the story itself shows the mercy that the prophets later announced for the nations.
Still open
The book of Ruth does not mention the law of Deuteronomy 23, so it does not say how Ruth’s marriage was squared with it. Christians differ on whether that law was ever meant to apply to women, and on how it bears on David, Ruth’s great-grandson, who was far short of the tenth generation (Ruth 4:17-22). Later Scripture applies the warning of Deuteronomy 7:3-4 to any foreign wife who kept her own gods, Moabite wives included (1 Kings 11:1-2; Nehemiah 13:23).
From the classic commentators
Marriage with daughters of the Moabites was not forbidden in the law, like marriages with Canaanitish women (Deuteronomy 7:3); it was only the reception of Moabites into the congregation of the Lord that was forbidden (Deuteronomy 23:4).C. F. Keil and F. Delitzsch, Commentary on the Old Testament: Ruth 1, at Bible Hub