Stroll through Scripture for June 21, 2026

Based on Ruth 4:1–22

This Sunday will close out the book of Ruth and her story. For as difficult as the start of the book was, there is a happy ending for Ruth. Ruth’s story is a story of much of humanity — a story filled with hardship and joy. A story of survival. A story of adaptation. A story of life.

In this final chapter, Ruth and Boaz marry and they have a son. It’s important to keep in mind the marriage practices of the time and culture. This is not a Levirate marriage from Deuteronomy 25:5–10). That law dictated that a surviving brother who lived with the deceased was obliged to marry his widowed sister-in-law if there were no children. Boaz is not a brother of Elimelech, who married Naomi, nor the brother of Naomi’s two sons who married Ruth and Orpah.

Instead, this is referred to as a kinsman-redeemer marriage, which is described in Leviticus 25:25. This involves the buying back of family land that had been sold out of poverty. In this case, Boaz marries Ruth in order to preserve the family lineage, ensuring that her deceased husband’s inheritance and name would not be lost.

I think one of the key take aways from this passage is far too often, humans read Scripture through the lens of their own experiences. When a person talks about biblical marriage, they are often making assumptions about what that means based on their own experiences, rather than reading the complexity of marriage in Scripture.

In just a cursory reading of Scripture you will find a variety of “approved” forms of marriage including: monogamy, polygamy, concubinage, Levirate marriage, kinsman-redeemer, marriage by covenant, a rapist marrying his victim, a male and female slave, and captive marriage (meaning a female slave of a woman who marries a man then owns the female slave).

All of this makes a conversation about marriage complicated to say the least. It raises more questions than it answers, or at least it should. When we simplified complex issues down to statements of certainty, we aren’t actually helping ourselves out. Humanity has a long history of intentionally ignoring difficult parts of Scripture or passages that don’t match our own preferences and declaring that our preferences are correct. But that’s not a faithful way of reading Scripture.

Originally published at https://pastormatthewbest.com on June 17, 2026.