An Ancestor of the Lord

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Naomi Entreating Ruth and Orpha

The Biblical story of Ruth may be reviewed in two Parts:

Part One

Members of Semitic tribes often found it necessary to move to avoid starvation; for example Abraham moved to Egypt for that reason.  Ethnicity became quite involved, as it’s doing here today.  This story is about two moves of Ruth’s mother-in law, Naomi, who, with her husband and two boys left Bethlehem; they went to Moab.

Ruth was a Moabite, from a country that had often been at war with Judah, but had a better level of food than Judah,  Ten years later the famine was over and Naomi decided to return to Bethlehem.  She had been living with her two daughters-in-law, but suggested to them that they might prefer to stay in their native land, Moab. One of them agreed with that idea, but Ruth thought she should stay with Naomi in Bethlehem.

Part Two

In Bethlehem Naomi and Ruth gleaned grain from Naomi’s cousin, Boaz. Boaz fell in love with the Moabite, Ruth. He married her, and they had a son named Obed, the father of Jesse, the father of David.

Ruth thus became a direct ancestor to David, and much later, of Jesus.

Among the maternal line of Jesus there appear:

1. God

2. Adam

3 28 other generations

4. Boaz

5. Obed

6, Jesse

7, David

8. Nathan

.................

Mary and Joseph

Jesus

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In the Descriptive Catalog (Erdman 549):

         NUMBER XV.  
              Ruth.--A Drawing.

 THIS Design is taken from that most pathetic passage in the
Book of Ruth, where Naomi having taken leave of her daughters
in law, with intent to return to her own country; Ruth cannot
leave  her, but says, "Whither ….. thou goest I will go; and
where thou lodgest I will lodge, thy people shall be my people,
and thy God my God: where thou diest I will die, and there will
I be buried; God do so to me and more also, if ought but death
part thee and me."

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PLATE 62 of Jeruslem (Erdman 212-13)

[Jesus said:]

Repose on me till the morning of the Grave. I am thy life.

Jerusalem replied. I am an outcast: Albion is dead!
I am left to the trampling foot & the spurning heel!
A Harlot I am calld. I am sold from street to street!
I am defaced with blows & with the dirt of the Prison!           

And wilt thou become my Husband O my Lord & Saviour?
Shall Vala bring thee forth! shall the Chaste be ashamed also?
I see the Maternal Line, I behold the Seed of the Woman!
Cainah, & Ada & Zillah & Naamah Wife of Noah.
Shuahs daughter & Tamar & Rahab the Canaanites: 
Ruth the Moabite & Bathsheba of the daughters of Heth
Naamah the Ammonite, Zibeah the Philistine, & Mary
These are the Daughters of Vala, Mother of the Body of death
But I thy Magdalen behold thy Spiritual Risen Body
Shall Albion arise? I know he shall arise at the Last Day!
I know that in my flesh I shall see God: but Emanations
Are weak. they know not whence they are, nor whither tend.

Jesus replied. I am the Resurrection & the Life.
I Die & pass the limits of possibility, as it appears
To individual perception.

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