Heroes: Devotions From Time of Grace MinistrySample

SACRIFICE: BOAZ

You've already met this extraordinary man's extraordinary mother, Rahab the (ex) harlot. Boaz was a wheat farmer in the Judean breadbasket (that's what Beth-lechem means in Hebrew). A young widowed Moabite named Ruth was gleaning in his fields, helping to support her widowed mother-in-law, Naomi.

"Then Boaz announced to the elders and all the people, ‘Today you are witnesses that I have bought from Naomi all the property of Elimelech [and his sons], Kilion and Mahlon. I have also acquired Ruth the Moabitess, Mahlon's widow, as my wife, in order to maintain the name of the dead with his property." (Ruth 4:9-10)

He was a bachelor wheat farmer. But acquiring the deceased Elimelech's property (and marrying the widow of the heir Mahlon) brought considerable financial risk in that legal system. That property, and perhaps all of his, could now be considered to belong to Mahlon's clan, not Boaz's. It was also a risk marrying a Moabite – they were worshipers of the vicious god Chemosh. Boaz did it anyway. It was the right thing to do.

Boaz thus fulfilled the ancient sacrificial duty of the kinsman-redeemer. God blessed him and Ruth with a child, Obed, whom they were proud to lay on Naomi's lap. Their great-grandson turned out to be King David.