Regarding Ruth's golden profession in verses 16 and 17, Matthew Henry makes wonderful applications. "This is a pattern of a resolute convert to God and religion…When we take God for our God we must take his people for our people in all conditions; though they be a poor despised people, yet, if they be his, they must be ours. Having cast in our lot among them, we must be willing to take our lot with them and to fare as they fare. We must submit to the same yoke and draw in it faithfully, take up the same cross and carry it cheerfully, go where God will have us to go, though it should be into banishment, and lodge where he will have us to lodge, though it be in a prison, die where he will have us die, and lay our bones in the graves of the upright, who enter into peace and rest in their beds, though they be but the graves of the common people. We must resolve to continue and persevere, and herein our adherence to Christ must be closer than that of Ruth to Naomi…. We must resolve that death itself shall not separate us from our duty to Christ, and then we may be sure that death itself shall not separate us from our happiness in Christ. We must bind our souls with a bond never to break these pious resolutions, and swear unto the Lord that we will cleave to him." |
