The Moabitess in the Woodpile— P27B 2009

Purity and Spin in Holy Scripture.

We have an amazing capacity to render the sharpest scripture into soft pastel imagery – lest the God of Abraham frighten the children, or their parents.

Think about an extinction level event that wiped out billions. There it is! See, there is not a Sunday School in the Universal Church that does not have Noah and the Ark rendered in mural, jig-saw or set of plush animals all 2 by 2. Anteaters to Zebra - with the occasional extra-canonical unicorn added as an homage to Shel Silverstein. http://thebards.net/music/lyrics/The_Unicorn_Song.shtml  

But you have never seen nor have I, any pastel bible story rendition of the origins of the Moabites.

      Gen 19:

²⁴ Then the LORD rained on Sodom and Gomorrah sulfur and fire from the LORD out of heaven; ²⁵ and he overthrew those cities, and all the Plain, and all the inhabitants of the cities, and what grew on the ground. ²⁶ But Lot's wife, behind him, looked back, and she became a pillar of salt…
     ³⁰ Now Lot … lived in a cave with his two daughters. ³¹ And the firstborn said to the younger, "Our father is old, and there is not a man on earth to come in to us after the manner of all the world. ³² Come, let us make our father drink wine, and we will lie with him, so that we may preserve offspring through our father." ³³ So they made their father drink wine that night; and the firstborn went in, and lay with her father; he did not know when she lay down or when she rose. ³⁴ On the next day, the firstborn said to the younger, "Look, I lay last night with my father; let us make him drink wine tonight also; then you go in and lie with him, so that we may preserve offspring through our father." ³⁵ So they made their father drink wine that night also; and the younger rose, and lay with him; and he did not know when she lay down or when she rose. ³⁶ Thus both the daughters of Lot became pregnant by their father. ³⁷ The firstborn bore a son, and named him Moab; he is the ancestor of the Moabites to this day. ³⁸ The younger also bore a son and named him Ben-ammi; he is the ancestor of the Ammonites to this day.

This is a polemic, the Moabites and Ammonites are constant enemies of Israel. Not just enemies but corrupt competitors for the land and the resources. There is no current relationship that Americans could see as an analogy to the blood feud enmity that existed between these cousins.

No one would claim with pride descent from this incestuous line. No family tree in Judah would be improved by a branch of this stock. Yet today we read:

Ruth 4:13

So Boaz took Ruth and she became his wife. When they came together, the LORD made her conceive, and she bore a son. … They named him Obed; he became the father of Jesse, the father of David.

David.

That David.

King David.

The great-grand-mother of The King is of the most despised blood-line imaginable.

Well, you can’t pick your relatives.

Now politicians in our day have a reputation for cleaning-up their back story. But here is a story that need not have been told at all. There are no great battles or momentous events in Ruth. It is a story about simple people trying to live their broken lives faithfully in a broken world.

The message of Ruth is one of God’s central themes “I Redeem.”

The sin of Lot’s daughter and the Moabite enemy is redeemed to become the root-stock of the King.

But perhaps the more miraculous message of Ruth is the fact that it exists at all. It was never purged or suppressed or edited conveniently away. For that is God’s theme too. “All that is mine will come to me, and none of mine will I cast away”.

There is no impurity that God cannot conquer. Of Ruth came David, and of David came Christ. So when you see the “other” remember, it is of such – no matter how despised – that God brings His Kingdom.