Hesed: The Covenant Love of Ruth and the Prayer of Hannah
Come Follow Me 2026 — Week 22 — Jun 1–7 — Ruth; 1 Samuel 1–7
The Book of Ruth: A Covenant Love Story
The book of Ruth is set “in the days when the judges ruled” (Ruth 1:1). It is placed deliberately against the backdrop of the chaos, violence, and covenant failure of Judges. That positioning is theological. While the great public story of Israel is a cycle of apostasy and oppression, in the margins of that story two ordinary women are living something entirely different: a covenant loyalty so deep and consistent that it becomes one of scripture's most luminous models of what God himself is like.
The key Hebrew word in Ruth is hesed. It appears three times in the book (1:8; 2:20; 3:10) and is the single word that unlocks everything. Hesed is most often translated “lovingkindness” or “steadfast love” — but it is more precisely covenant fidelity in action. It is the love that goes beyond obligation, that performs kindness not because the contract requires it but because the relationship demands it. It is the love of God himself: “The LORD thy God is a merciful God; he will not forsake thee, neither destroy thee, nor forget the covenant of thy fathers” (Deuteronomy 4:31).
Ruth's story begins with loss. Naomi's husband and both sons die in Moab, leaving three widows. Naomi releases her daughters-in-law to return to their own peoples and gods. Orpah kisses Naomi and leaves — reasonably, wisely, in her own interest. But Ruth clings to Naomi.
“Whither Thou Goest I Will Go”
Ruth 1:16–17
“Intreat me not to leave thee, or to return from following after thee: for whither thou goest, I will go; and where thou lodgest, I will lodge: thy people shall be my people, and thy God shall be my God: Where thou diest, will I die, and there will I be buried: the LORD do so to me, and more also, if ought but death part thee and me.”
These words are often read at weddings, and their depth of covenant commitment makes that appropriate. But the original context is not romantic love — it is the covenant loyalty of a daughter-in-law to a destitute mother-in-law, with nothing to gain and everything to lose. Ruth is a Moabite woman leaving her homeland, her culture, her gods, and her social network to accompany a bitter, childless widow to a foreign country where she has no status or protection.
Ruth's declaration is a covenant oath. “Thy people shall be my people, and thy God shall be my God” — this is the language of covenant commitment, of choosing a new identity over the old one. Ruth is doing what Moses invited all Israel to do: choosing life. She is doing it without the advantage of birth into the covenant people, without the ancestral memory of Exodus and Sinai, without any reason except the love she has for Naomi and the God Naomi has served. Hesed toward Naomi is inseparable from faith in Naomi's God.
Naomi receives Ruth's declaration with silence — “So she left speaking unto her” (Ruth 1:18). She does not argue further. The commitment is absolute and she knows it. The two women walk to Bethlehem together.
Boaz: The Kinsman-Redeemer as Type of Christ
Into the story of two destitute women comes Boaz, a man of wealth and character who is also a close kinsman of Naomi's deceased husband. In the Levitical law, the go'el (kinsman-redeemer) had specific obligations: he could purchase back family land that had been sold, redeem a family member from slavery, and in the case of a dead man with no children, marry the widow and raise up children in the name of the dead (Deuteronomy 25:5–10). The redemption was not just economic; it was genealogical. It preserved the family line and inheritance.
Boaz is precisely this for Ruth and Naomi. When Ruth comes to glean in his fields — exercising the legal right of the poor under Levitical law (Leviticus 19:9–10) — Boaz extends extraordinary kindness to her: protection, extra grain deliberately left for her, water, food, the company of his workers. He has heard of her hesed toward Naomi and responds with his own. “The LORD recompense thy work, and a full reward be given thee of the LORD God of Israel, under whose wings thou art come to trust” (Ruth 2:12). The image of wings — kanaph in Hebrew — is the same word Ruth uses when she asks Boaz to “spread therefore thy skirt” over her in chapter 3:9, invoking the kinsman-redeemer role. She is placing herself under the shelter of his protection.
The closest kinsman declines his redemption right (Ruth 4:6). Boaz steps forward. He purchases Naomi's land and takes Ruth as his wife. Their son Obed becomes the grandfather of David — and through David, an ancestor of Jesus Christ. The Moabite woman who pledged covenant loyalty to a destitute Israelite widow enters the genealogy of the Redeemer.
Boaz as Type of Christ the Redeemer
- Close kinsman — Christ took on flesh to become our kin (Hebrews 2:14–17)
- Ability to redeem — Christ alone has power to purchase our redemption
- Willing to redeem — Christ redeems when the first kinsman (the law) cannot fulfill
- Pays the full price — Boaz purchases everything; Christ gives everything
- Includes the outsider — A Gentile enters the covenant through the redeemer
Hannah: Prayer, Vow, and the Gift Returned
First Samuel opens with Hannah, a woman “in bitterness of soul” because she is barren. Her husband Elkanah loves her but cannot understand her grief. The priest Eli sees her praying silently at the tabernacle — her lips moving, no sound coming out — and assumes she is drunk. She is not drunk; she is agonizing before God with a prayer so deep it has gone past words.
1 Samuel 1:11
“O LORD of hosts, if thou wilt indeed look on the affliction of thine handmaid, and remember me, and not forget thine handmaid, but wilt give unto thine handmaid a man child, then I will give him unto the LORD all the days of his life, and there shall no razor come upon his head.”
Hannah's vow is one of the most striking in scripture: if God gives her a son, she will give the son back to God. She is asking for the one thing she lacks most in the world, and she is promising that when she receives it, she will not keep it. She is giving God her deepest desire as the very condition of asking him to fulfill it. This is covenant prayer at its most radical: surrendered before the answer comes.
God remembers Hannah. She conceives and bears Samuel. When he is weaned, she brings him to the tabernacle at Shiloh and presents him to Eli. “Therefore also I have lent him to the LORD; as long as he liveth he shall be lent to the LORD” (1 Samuel 1:28). The Hebrew wordplay here is on Samuel's name: the word translated “lent” is related to “asked” or “requested.” Samuel — “heard of God” — is the walking testimony that God hears the prayers of the bitter-souled.
Hannah then sings. Her song in 1 Samuel 2:1–10 is one of the most powerful hymns in all of scripture, and it is the direct model for Mary's Magnificat in Luke 1:46–55. The themes are identical: God exalts the lowly and humbles the proud, he fills the hungry and sends the full away empty, he raises the poor from the dust and sets them among princes. The God of Hannah and the God of Mary is the God who operates through reversals — who chooses the barren woman, the childless widow, the Moabite foreigner, the youngest son, to accomplish his greatest works.
Samuel: The Covenant Child and the Voice of God
Samuel grows up in the tabernacle under Eli's supervision. In a time when “the word of the LORD was precious [rare] in those days; there was no open vision” (1 Samuel 3:1), God speaks to Samuel. Three times a voice calls him in the night; three times he runs to Eli, thinking the old priest called him. Eli finally understands and instructs Samuel: “Go, lie down: and it shall be, if he call thee, that thou shalt say, Speak, LORD; for thy servant heareth” (1 Samuel 3:9).
The call of Samuel is the paradigm of prophetic calling. God initiates; the prophet must learn to recognize God's voice (it does not come pre-labeled). An experienced mentor helps the young prophet orient correctly. And the response — “Speak, LORD; for thy servant heareth” — is the posture of all covenant prayer and all prophetic reception: availability and attention. The Shema is “Hear, O Israel”; Samuel's response is “Speak, LORD, for thy servant heareth.” Covenant life moves between these two calls: God's call to hear, and the servant's invitation to speak.
Samuel becomes the last and greatest of the judges, the first of the classical prophets, and the king-maker of Israel. The Ark of the Covenant is captured by the Philistines in 1 Samuel 4 and returned in chapter 6–7, at which point Samuel calls Israel to covenant renewal at Mizpeh: “Return unto the LORD with all your hearts, and put away the strange gods and Ashtaroth from among you, and prepare your hearts unto the LORD, and serve him only: and he will deliver you out of the hand of the Philistines” (1 Samuel 7:3). The formula is unchanged from Deuteronomy 30: return wholly, put away the competing loyalties, and God will act.
Doctrinal Threads
The theology running through Ruth and 1 Samuel 1–7 centers on God's characteristic preference for the unexpected instrument. Ruth is a Moabite. Hannah is barren. Samuel is a child. None of these would be the obvious choice for advancing the covenant story of Israel. But this is the consistent pattern of the God of the Bible: he works through the unlikely, the overlooked, the insufficient — not despite their weakness, but sometimes because of it, so that the glory is unmistakably his.
The doctrine of hesed — covenant lovingkindness — is the thread that connects Ruth's loyalty to Naomi, Boaz's kindness to Ruth, Hannah's prayer of surrender, and Samuel's lifelong service. It is love that exceeds obligation, that continues when it would be reasonable to stop, that manifests in concrete action rather than sentiment. It is the love that defines God's relationship with Israel throughout the Old Testament: not because Israel deserved it, but because that is what God is like. Ruth is the best human embodiment of hesed in the Hebrew scriptures — and that is why the book about her stands among the greatest in the canon.