Ruth 1:16-17
But Ruth said, “Entreat me not to leave you or to return from following you; for where you go I will go, and where you lodge I will lodge; your people shall be my people, and your God my God; where you die I will die, and there will I be buried. May the LORD do so to me and more also if even death parts me from you.”
Ruth, it should be noted, was a Moabitess, not a Jew. But out of love, she chose to stay with her widowed mother-in-law, Naomi, through thick and thin and to worship her God rather than the gods of Moab. The reason this story is included in Scripture is, in part, to combat the racist inclinations (found in any culture) which see Our People as superior to Them. Here is a foreigner who honors God completely–and whom God rewarded. How? Ruth became an ancestor of David, the king of Israel and himself ancestor of the Ultimate King, Jesus of Nazareth. You never know what a good deed might lead to!
