God loves to teach us by throwing one thing alongside another. Parallelism is one of His central teaching devices, and He has many ways of putting things in parallel. When two things are lined up together, we compare and contrast them, and we see what they have in common and in what ways they are distinct. This is actually what the word parable means, and it was our Lord’s favorite way of leading us into truth. In the Old Testament, a typical form of Hebrew poetry was found in thought rhymes, where the same truth is stated in slightly different ways, or where opposites are set over against one another.
In our own folk poetry, this is why the structure of the blues standards is so effective—the same thing is said twice over, and then another statement is made that causes the first doubled sentiment to come into focus. Parallelism of various sorts is woven into the very fabric of the universe.
In the context of marriage, we can see how God teaches us about His image (Gen. 1:27)—He does this by giving us humanity in two parallel lines. First is the man, and then comes the woman. The woman sheds light on the man, and the man sheds light on the woman. Neither one makes any sense apart from the other.
One of the most common ways that God teaches us in parallels is found in repetition of the same themes over and over again in His Word, each one teaching us about the other. Consider the parallels between Adam and Eve on the one hand and Boaz and Ruth on the other.
Both Adam and Boaz were older than their brides—Adam by a few days, and Boaz by quite a few years. Both Adam and Boaz were men of the soil, laboring to bring fruitfulness out of the ground. Adam was given a charge to tend the garden, keeping it (Gen. 1:29; Gen. 2:15), and Boaz was also a farmer (Ruth 2:4). Both men had a task to perform in the world, and they were handicapped in that they did not have the help of a wife in accomplishing it. Both men found their wives as they woke up out of a deep sleep (Gen. 2:21-22; Ruth 3:8). And both men were great-grandfathers of the Christ.
But we do not just learn from the parallels. There are some contrasts as well. Adam was told to tend and keep the garden, which placed him in the role of a protector. At the very center of what needed protecting was his bride, and one of Adam’s greatest failures was his failure to protect his wife from the dragon. She had not been created when the prohibition had been placed on the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, and Adam had been. This meant that Adam sinned with his eyes wide open, rebelling quite defiantly. St. Paul tells us that the woman was deceived, and he also tells us elsewhere that it was through one man that sin entered the world. Adam let the serpent get to his wife, and through his failure to protect her, he was in no position to protect himself.
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Contrast this with the behavior of Boaz. When Ruth first begins working in his fields, he assumes the role of a protector. Boaz is a protector throughout that entire book. He tells the men working the harvest that they were not to touch her (Ruth 2:9). He protected her from want by giving her water (Ruth 2: 9) and food (Ruth 2:14). When she went to him at the threshing floor, he extended his cloak of protection over her—but he had been watching out for her from the first moment he saw her. Boaz is a new Adam, protecting his bride in ways that the first Adam had not. Boaz was such a protector that he leads with it. He did not protect Ruth because she was his wife; she became his wife because he had protected her.
There are other striking issues. Ruth was a Moabitess, which meant she was descended from the incestuous union between Lot and his daughter. Moab was born from that union, which came about when Lot had had too much to drink and did not know what he was doing. Here is a similar situation—Boaz went to sleep when he had had too much to drink, and yet his behavior is strikingly different from that of Lot. He protects Ruth in such a way as to separate her from the line of Moab forever, and places her in the line that would bring us the Messiah. Boaz protected Ruth by arranging for her to marry in accordance with the law of God.
Boaz was the second in line to marry Ruth, but the Lord nonetheless used the shrewdness of Boaz to bring Ruth and Boaz together. Boaz was descended from Tamar and Judah, from the line of Pharez—that twin who had been second in line but who nonetheless came in first. The elders of the city gave this blessing to Ruth, that her house would be as fruitful as the house of Pharez. Rahab, of Jericho fame, she who had placed the scarlet rope out the window of a doomed city, was actually the mother of Boaz, and Ruth’s second mother-in-law. She married into this fruitful house of Pharez, just as Ruth did. Tamar had great faith, as did Rahab, and now Ruth. God loves to bring near those who were far away, and faith is the only thing that equipped these women to see what God was up to.
Andrew, my charge to you is this: protect your wife. Be a man of sacrifice. Protect her from harm, protect her from want. Whatever the danger, whatever the threat, a Christian man’s duty is to be closer to that threat than his wife is. Always be in between the danger and your family. You must be a rock wall. Anticipate, look ahead, prepare, and do so in sacrificial love. Protect her through and by your labor, and protect her by your anticipation and planning. Think like Boaz, and protect her in all things. Ultimately, you must protect her by loving her in the same way that Jesus loved the Church and gave Himself up for her. Husbands who know their business pay all the bills in the coin of blood, sweat, and tears. And in and through all of it is great joy.
Ashlynn, my charge to you is to be a woman of faith, like Ruth, and one of the things that women of faith always do is that they think in terms of generations. It is easy for young people to think about the present moment only, but Ruth was young and she could see thousands of years ahead of her. Imitate her. Rahab and Tamar were women who knew that God works through generations, and they also knew that God had promised a messianic line—which they by faith had every intention of being a part of. Now the Messiah has already come, and this means that Christian women do not hope, as Jewish women used to, that they might somehow be the mother of the Messiah. But this does not erase faithful anticipation. Christian women are privileged to be the mothers of the bride of the Messiah, and that bride is being formed over countless generations. I had the great privilege of conducting the wedding ceremony for your parents, and now here you are, another generation of radiance. There are many generations to come, and may this house, now forming, be as fruitful as the house of Pharez.
In the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, amen.