Where you go I will go.
Ruth's vow to her grieving mother-in-law. One of the most loyal sentences in the Bible.
The episode in a glance.
- 01Ruth was a foreigner with no obligation to stay.
- 02'Your people will be my people, and your God my God.'
- 03Love proves itself by staying when it would be easier to leave.
- 04Ruth's loyalty placed her in the family line of Jesus.
Read along.
Naomi has lost her husband and both sons. She's a foreigner in Moab, ready to go home to Israel alone. She tells her two daughters-in-law to go back to their families.
One does. The other — Ruth — doesn't. She says: 'Where you go I will go, and where you lodge I will lodge. Your people shall be my people, and your God my God.'
Ruth had every reason to leave. She was young, free, foreign. Naomi had nothing to offer her. Loyalty cost her everything that was practical.
But love proves itself by staying when leaving would be easier. That's what makes Ruth's vow one of the great sentences in the Bible.
And it doesn't end there. Ruth marries a man named Boaz. Their great-grandson is King David. Their distant descendant is Jesus. A foreigner's loyalty became part of the family tree of the Savior.