Woman living before Israel's Monarchy
Ruth
A Moabite woman who married a son of Elimelech and Naomi, and was widowed in Moab (Ruth 1:4–5). She refused to leave her mother-in-law: “where you go, I will go; and where you stay, I will stay. Your people will be my people, and your God my God” (Ruth 1:16). In Bethlehem she gathered grain behind the reapers in the field of Boaz, a relative of her father-in-law, who treated her kindly (Ruth 2). He redeemed the family land and married her, and she bore Obed, the grandfather of David (Ruth 4:9–17). Matthew counts her, a foreigner, among the ancestors of Jesus (Matthew 1:5).
Family
- Husbands
- Mahlon, Boaz
- Children
- Obed