The Ruth family tree, from Elimelech and Naomi to David

The book opens “in the days when the judges ruled,” in a famine.¹ Elimelech of Bethlehem-judah took his wife Naomi and their sons Mahlon and Chilion to Moab.¹ Elimelech died there, and his sons “took them wives of the women of Moab,” Orpah and Ruth.¹ After about ten years both sons died, and Naomi “was left of her two sons and her husband.”¹

Ruth 1:4 does not say which son married which woman. Ruth 4:10 later calls her “Ruth the Moabitess, the wife of Mahlon,” so Orpah was the wife of Chilion.⁴ When Naomi set out for home, Orpah kissed her and went back to her people, but Ruth “clave unto her.”¹ Ruth’s answer is the best-known verse of the Ruth family tree, “thy people shall be my people, and thy God my God.”¹

In Bethlehem Ruth gleaned in the field of Boaz, “a mighty man of wealth, of the family of Elimelech.”² Naomi told her that he was “near of kin unto us, one of our next kinsmen.”² At the threshing floor Ruth asked him to spread his skirt over her, “for thou art a near kinsman,” and Boaz answered that “there is a kinsman nearer than I.”³

The matter was settled at the city gate before ten elders. The nearer kinsman would buy the field of Elimelech, but not when it came with Ruth, “to raise up the name of the dead upon his inheritance,” and he gave up his right.⁴ Boaz bought what had been Elimelech’s, Chilion’s and Mahlon’s, and took Ruth as his wife.⁴ The Bible never names the nearer kinsman, and the chart does not draw him.

The Ruth family tree is therefore drawn as two families, not one. Boaz belongs to the line of Perez, and Ruth reaches the family of Elimelech only by marriage.⁴ The book calls Boaz a kinsman of Elimelech without saying how, so the chart draws no line between them.²

Ruth bore Boaz a son, and the women said to Naomi, “Blessed be the Lord, which hath not left thee this day without a kinsman.”⁴ Naomi “took the child, and laid it in her bosom, and became nurse unto it,” and the neighbours named him Obed, saying “There is a son born to Naomi.”⁴

By blood Obed is the son of Boaz and Ruth, and the chart draws him so. In the language of the redemption he also raised up the name of Mahlon and of Elimelech, whose inheritance Boaz had bought.⁴ The chart draws that second, legal line as a double line from Mahlon, the husband of Ruth, and a foster line from Naomi, who nursed the child, which is why the book calls him Naomi’s son.

Matthew 1:5 adds a mother the Book of Ruth leaves out, “Salmon begat Booz of Rachab.”⁶ If Rachab is Rahab of Jericho, the Talmud tells a different story of her marriage, “Rahab converted and married Joshua.”⁸ The chart draws Rahab after Matthew and marks the source in her note.

The Talmud also fills in the kinship that Ruth 2:1 leaves open. Bava Batra 91a counts Elimelech, Salmon, the nearer kinsman and the father of Naomi as descendants of Nahshon, and identifies the judge Ibzan of Bethlehem with Boaz.⁷ These readings come from later tradition, so the chart follows the biblical text and leaves them in the article.

Christian readers meet this Ruth family tree again in the family tree of Jesus, where Matthew names Ruth among the mothers in the line of David.⁶ The Bible family tree sets the whole line from Adam.