Ruth and Naomi

By Ann Woodbury Moore

Thy people shall be my people, and thy God my God (Ruth 1:16).

1. Naomi’s family left Bethlehem because there wasn’t enough food to eat. They went to a place called Moab. Her two sons grew up and married women from there. One was named Orpah; the other was named Ruth.

2. Naomi’s husband and both her sons died. She decided to go back to Bethlehem to be with her friends and relatives. Ruth and Orpah said that they would go with her.

3. Naomi reminded them that their relatives were here. She told them that life would be hard for them in Bethlehem. Orpah decided to stay in Moab, but Ruth told Naomi that she loved her mother-in-law, that she believed in Heavenly Father, and that she wanted to help Naomi and stay with her.

4. Ruth and Naomi walked to Bethlehem. They were poor. Ruth worked hard. She went to the fields every day to gather grain left by the reapers. With this grain, Naomi made bread for them to eat.

5. Boaz owned the fields where Ruth worked. He saw how strong and kind she was and how cheerfully she helped Naomi. He asked Ruth to marry him. Ruth said yes.

6. Ruth and Boaz had a son. They named him Obed. Many years later, Obed’s grandson, David, became the king of Israel. And twenty-eight generations* after that, Jesus Christ was born.

• You can think of a generation as the children of a mother and father. When a mother and father’s children have children, the new children are called grandchildren, or the second generation, and their children are called great-grandchildren, or the third generation. So Jesus Christ was a many-generations-later grandchild of Ruth.

Painting of the Savior by Del Parson, other art courtesy of Visual Resource Library