Traditionally, the book of Ruth is studied during Shavu’ot in most Jewish congregations. We have studied the surface story of Ruth in the past, but this study will dig deeper. Ruth had no right to an inheritance from God. She disregarded her birth family and follows her mother-in-law, Naomi, and Naomi’s God for the rest of her life.
The importance of linking the last Adam to the “first Adam” is emphasized through the two genealogies of Yeshua (Luke 3:23–38). Some skeptics try to use the “telescoping” nature of Matthew’s genealogy for Yeshua, which skips generations to emphasize three groups of 14 generations, as the basis for saying that the genealogies of the first people in Genesis 5 and 11 also are telescoped, thus allowing for many, many more generations and vast amounts of time in history. However, unlike the genealogies in Genesis, these do not have specific ages when one generation “begat,” or “fathered,” the next, with Luke linking each name with just the Greek equivalent for “of.” And the three groups of generations in Matthew seem to represent four periods in God’s working in history to correct the sin of the first Adam with the obedience, sacrifice and deliverance of the last Adam.
The long list of names of ancestors of Yeshua can be tedious to read, but it is an important statement about what God was doing by sending the Messiah.