A broken tulip

Stories live inside stories like Russian dolls that open to reveal a smaller doll hidden inside. The wonder of stories is that the small, hidden story can swell in the telling to be big enough to hold the larger story.

And so the story we’ve been telling of Ruth and Naomi, if we gather it up, can be tucked into this one. You think you’ve heard it, but listen until the end:

At the time of the early barley harvest, two spies slipped into the mighty city of Jericho.

They were sent by Joshua, son of Nun, leader of Israel, the nation of Yahweh. They came to spy out the land, and especially Jericho. Israel was about to begin the conquest of Canaan.

The king of Jericho heard that Joshua’s spies were in his city. Frightened, the spies ran to the home of Rahab, the prostitute. Rahab took them and hid them under the heaps of flax on her roof, and lied to the soldiers who came searching for them. She told the two spies that the whole land was trembling in fear of Israel, because of what Yahweh had already done for them. She asked that they show chesed love to her family, just as she had done in sparing the lives of the spies. Then, she let them down out of her window on the wall, and fastened a scarlet rope out her window – the agreed sign between the spies and her. She was to gather her entire family into her house and wait. If the house was unmarked when Israel came to attack, everyone would die.

So as the spies hurried back to Joshua, the scarlet rope hung out of Rahab’s window. Israel crossed the raging Jordan river on dry land when God stopped the flow of water, just as he had done for the previous generation of Israel at the Red Sea. The nation crossed the river and worshipped. They circumcised all the male children, and they celebrated Passover. Passover was a re-enactment and celebration of God delivering their nation out of Egypt with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm. On the night of the worst plague, the tenth plague, each family that marked their doorposts with blood was spared the loss of their firstborn child to the angel of death.

As they remembered God’s salvation, Rahab’s family waited in a home marked by a scarlet rope of faith.

Joshua received the marching orders of God – Jericho would be his victory. Israel would look on as God did all the work, just as they had done in Egypt. So the children of Israel walked around the walls of Jericho for seven days, and on the seventh day, at the sound of their shouts and the trumpets, the walls fell down. The city was slaughtered and looted. No one escaped except Rahab and her family.

Rahab the prostitute married Salmon, a man in the kingly Hezronite line, descending from Perez, who was the son of Judah by Tamar. (Have you remembered Judah and Tamar?)

Rahab and Salmon witnessed the conquest of Canaan; the disobedience and obedience of Israel and the resulting actions of God; the covenant re-instated at the end of Joshua’s life.

Caleb, the brother of Salmon’s great-grandfather Ram, courageously asked for and took the mountainous land, but not everyone had his faith, and much of Israel settled for the easy option of living alongside the Canaanites, contrary to God’s orders.

After the death of Joshua, Rahab and Salmon also saw the death of Eleazar, Aaron’s son, and Salmon’s first cousin through his father Nahshon’s sister, Elisheba.

Rahab and Salmon had a son and they named him Boaz. Meanwhile, the hearts of Israel turned away from Adonai after the death of Joshua. God sent other nations to rule over them, to crush them, and to call them back to their senses. When Israel cried out to God, he would send judges – or saviours – to relieve his children from oppression. This became a cycle that went from horribly bad to worse.

Now at the time of Passover (the time of year when Rahab had first entered the family) two tired and empty women arrived in Bethlehem out of the lands of Moab. Ruth and Naomi arrived at the beginning of the barley harvest, as the people began to count the fifty days until the next holy day of Shavuot.

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Shavuot – the Feast of Weeks – comes exactly seven weeks after Passover. It’s a celebratory, in-gathering festival that celebrates the giving of the Torah on Mt. Sinai and the late summer harvest. It is one of three festivals that gathered all Jewish males to Jerusalem on a pilgrimage festival. It is, according to tradition, the feast at which the Book of Ruth is read out loud. So we have to ask why Ruth’s story is embedded into this particular feast.

You can do the work for this one, but I will give you a clue: the Greek word for Shavuot is Pentecost. Go ahead, sit and wonder why Ruth’s story is married to the giving of Torah, and the outpouring of the Spirit.

Photo by Antoine Merour