The final purpose of the Book of Mormon, according to its Title Page, is “to the convincing of the Jew and Gentile that Jesus is the Christ, the Eternal God, manifesting himself unto all nations.” The central message of the book is that God loves all of His children and has prepared a way for all of them to find eternal happiness.
That’s also the message of the Old Testament, but it’s not stated as clearly. Many passages focus on God’s relationship with one group of people — the descendants of Israel — to the exclusion of all others.
Under that reading, the book of Ruth is an exception, a happy accident. A Moabite woman marries an Israelite man, and after his death relocates to Israel, adopting both his nation and his faith. Throughout her book, she is called “Ruth the Moabitess,” as though the author doesn’t want us to forget that she is an outsider (Ruth 1:22; 2:2, 21; 4:5, 10). Even after she remarries and bears a son, the women of Bethlehem say, “There is a son born to Naomi,” which suggests that they still identified more strongly with Ruth’s mother-in-law than with Ruth herself (Ruth 4:17).
The kingdom of Moab lay just across the Dead Sea from Bethlehem. Its people, who lived on plateaus high above the sea, descended from Abraham’s nephew Lot (Genesis 19:36-37). They had a fraught relationship with Israel. The Moabite king refused to allow Israel to pass through his land, so Israel had to go around (Judges 11:17-18; Deuteronomy 2:9). Later, seeing their military might, he tried unsuccessfully to convince the prophet Balaam to curse them (Numbers 22:1-6). Shortly after, as Israel camped nearby, many Israelite men were persuaded by Moabite women to worship idols, resulting in God punishing the Israelites in the camp (Numbers 25:1-5). As Moses gave his final words of counsel to Israel in the plains of Moab (Deuteronomy 1:5; 34:1, 8), he specifically instructed them to exclude Moabites from their congregations (Deuteronomy 23:3), a restriction which Nehemiah would later use to exclude people of Moabite descent from communal worship (Nehemiah 13:1-3).
During the chaotic reign of the judges over the Israelites, Naomi and her husband relocated with their two sons from Bethlehem to Moab to escape a famine. Her husband died, and her sons both married Moabite women and then both died, leaving Naomi and her daughters-in-law widowed. When Naomi decided to return to Bethlehem, Ruth passionately expressed her determination to go with her. “Thy people shall be my people,” she said, “and thy God my God” (Ruth 1:16). How could she say such a thing, when the Lord had expressly stated that a “Moabite shall not enter into the congregation of the Lord” (Deuteronomy 23:3)? The Book of Mormon provides an answer.
In an apparent elaboration on another Deuteronomy passage, Nephi explains that God’s covenant is available to all who choose to receive it. On the plains of Moab, Moses had warned the children of Israel against self-righteousness: “Speak not thou in thine heart, after that the Lord thy God hath cast them out from before thee, saying, For my righteousness the Lord hath brought me in to possess this land” (Deuteronomy 9:4). Using similar language, Nephi pushes the argument further. Don’t congratulate yourself, because the script can flip. You can lose your covenant identity and they can gain it:
I, Nephi, would not suffer that ye should suppose that ye are more righteous than the Gentiles shall be. For behold, except ye shall keep the commandments of God ye shall all likewise perish; and because of the words which have been spoken ye need not suppose that the Gentiles are utterly destroyed.
2 Nephi 30:1-2
For behold, I say unto you that as many of the Gentiles as will repent are the covenant people of the Lord; and as many of the Jews as will not repent shall be cast off; for the Lord covenanteth with none save it be with them that repent and believe in his Son, who is the Holy One of Israel.
Six hundred years later, when the resurrected Jesus Christ visits some of Nephi’s descendants, He teaches this same principle. “If the Gentiles will repent and return unto me, … behold they shall be numbered among my people, O house of Israel” (3 Nephi 16:13). And then Mormon reemphasizes that teaching as he closes out his account of the Savior’s ministry, calling on his Gentile readers to repent, “that ye may be numbered with my people who are of the house of Israel” (3 Nephi 30:2).
So Ruth is not an anomaly. She is not the exception to the rule. She exemplifies this foundational principle: God loves all of His children and invites them all into His covenant. None is excluded. All are welcome. Seen in light of that principle, the Deuteronomy Moabite prohibition reads more like a recognition of a rift, an acknowledgment that Israel had been harmed by Moab, and less like a permanent exclusion of a believing Moabite like Ruth. If God truly manifests Himself to “all nations,” then of course He will manifest Himself to a sincere Moabite woman who declares with determination, “thy people shall be my people, and thy God my God.”
Today I will remember the inclusiveness of God’s covenant. I will strive to welcome, support, and include people like Ruth who have come from different backgrounds from my own, but who like me have chosen to follow Jesus Christ.
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