Ambrose of Milan

In his own words on Ruth

• Ruth 1:1-4

  Therefore, if we acknowledge that Thamar is described in the genealogies on account of a mystery in the Lord's generations, we must also certainly not consider Ruth to be overlooked for the same reason: about whom the holy Apostle seems to have had an understanding, when he foresaw through the Spirit that the calling of the Gentiles was to be celebrated by the Gospel, saying that the Law is not made for the just, but for the unjust (1 Timothy 1:9). For how did Ruth, being a foreigner, marry a Jew? And by what reasoning did the evangelist think that the mention of a union should be made in the birth of Christ, which was forbidden by the series of laws? Therefore, did the Savior not originate from a legitimate generation (Deut. XXIII, 3)? It seems to be contrary unless we adhere to the apostolic belief, for the law was not established for the righteous, but for the unrighteous. And since she is a foreigner and a Moabite (especially since the law of Moses prohibited these marriages, and the Moabites were excluded from the Church; for it is written: Moabites shall not enter the Church of the Lord even to the third and fourth generation, and forever), how then did she enter into the Church if not because she was holy and blameless in her conduct, above the law? For if the Law was given to the impious and sinners, certainly Ruth, who surpassed the definition of the Law, and entered into the Church, and became an Israelite, and deserved to be counted among the greater ones of the Lord's family, because of the choice of her mind and not her body, is a great example for us, because in her the figure of our entrance into the Church of the Lord, who are gathered from the nations, preceded. Let us therefore imitate her; so that because she deserved this prerogative of being admitted into her society by her manners, as history teaches: we also, because of the choice of our manners, may be counted among the Church of the Lord, with the support of our merits. For when the Israelites were afflicted by famine in the earlier days of the Judges, a man named Elimelech from the city of Bethlehem in Judah, where Christ was born, went to live in the land of Moab with his wife and two sons. His sons took Moabite wives, one named Orpah and the other named Ruth, and they lived there for about ten years before they died. But after her husband and sons died, the woman, left alone and without her own family, heard that God had visited Israel and she decided to return home. She urged her daughters-in-law to go back to their families as well. One concession: but Ruth stayed with her mother-in-law. When her mother-in-law said to her, 'Look, your sister-in-law has gone back to her people and her gods; go back with her,' Ruth replied, 'Do not press me to leave you and to turn back from following you. Where you go, I will go; where you lodge, I will lodge. Your people shall be my people, and your God my God. Where you die, I will die—there will I be buried.' (Ruth 1:15, 17). And so the two arrived at Bethlehem. Therefore, when Boaz, the great-grandfather of David, learned of these customs, as well as the respect towards the mother-in-law, the devotion towards the deceased, and the religiousness towards God, according to the law of Moses, in order to raise up the offspring of the deceased, he chose her as his wife.

  Commentary on Luke

• Ruth 1:16

  Ruth, who surpassed the definition of the Law, and entered into the Church, and became an Israelite, and deserved to be counted among the greater ones of the Lord's family, because of the choice of her mind and not her body, is a great example for us, because in her the figure of our entrance into the Church of the Lord, who are gathered from the nations, preceded. Let us therefore imitate her; so that because she deserved this prerogative of being admitted into her society by her manners, as history teaches: we also, because of the choice of our manners, may be counted among the Church of the Lord, with the support of our merits... Therefore, Saint Matthew rightly mentioned in the Gospel that the Lord Himself, the author of the gathering of the gentiles, took on the generation of foreigners according to the flesh, so that even then there would be an indication that this generation would produce a caller of the gentiles, whom we all, gathered from foreigners, would follow, leaving behind our ancestral ways and saying to the one who would call us to the worship of God, for example, to Paul or to any bishop: Your people shall be my people, and your God my God (Ruth 1:16). Therefore, Ruth, like Leah and Rachel, forgetting her own people and her father's house, breaking the bond of the Law, entered into the Church.

  Commentary on Luke

• Ruth 2:2

  Does the widow Naomi seem to you of small account, who supported her widowhood on the gleanings from another's harvest, and who, when heavy with age, was supported by her daughter-in-law? It is a great benefit both for the support and for the advantage of widows that they so train their daughters-in-law as to have in them a support in full old age, and, as it were, payment for their teaching and reward for their training. For to her who has well taught and well instructed her daughter-in-law a Ruth will never be wanting who will prefer the widowed life of her mother-in-law to her father's house, and if her husband also be dead, will not leave her, will support her in need, comfort her in sorrow and not leave her if sent away; for good instruction will never know need. So that Naomi, deprived of her husband and her two sons, having lost the offspring of her fruitfulness, did not lose the reward of her pious care, for she found both a comfort in sorrow and a support in poverty.

  Concerning Widows 6.33

• Ruth 4:7-10

  For, by the law, when a man died, the marriage bond with his wife was passed on to his brother or other male next of kin, in order that the seed of the brother or next of kin might renew the life of the house. And so it was that Ruth, though she was foreign-born, had possessed a husband of the Jewish people who had left a kinsman of near relation. Although she was seen and loved by Boaz while gleaning and maintaining herself and her mother-in-law with what she gleaned, she could not become the wife of Boaz until she had first loosed the shoe from him whose wife she ought, by the law, to have become.The story is a simple one, but deep are its hidden meanings, for that which was done was the outward signs of something more. If indeed we should stretch the sense so as to fit the letter exactly, we should almost find the words an occasion of a certain shame and horror, that we should regard them as intending and conveying the thought of common bodily intercourse. Rather it was the foreshadowing of one who was to arise from the Jewish people—whence Christ was, after the flesh—who should, with the seed of heavenly teaching, revive the seed of his dead kinsman, that is to say, the people, and to whom the precepts of the law, in their spiritual significance, assigned the sandal of marriage, for the espousals of the church.

  Exposition of the Christian Faith 3.69-70