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Ruth: The Story of God’s Unending Redemption
By:
Steve Bishop
Date:
Friday, September 24th, 2010 Ruth: The Story of God’s Unending Redemption
Robert A. Wauzzinski (Dordt College Press, 2010)
When Calvin Seerveld or Byron Borger recommend a book it is worth reading. When
they both recommend the same book, as they do with this one by Wauzzinski, it is a
must-buy. It was with high expectations then that I started to read this book. I wasn’t
disappointed. Wauzzinski provides a rich redemptive-historical reading of the book of
Ruth. His love of the Scriptures seeps through the pages. We are taken on a journey
with Ruth and Naomi from grief and despair through to joy and redemption: “the
book of Ruth will show us that God addresses us in our misery and affords us new
possibilities as yet unknown” (p. 11).
The first four chapters deal with the four chapters of Ruth. Each chapter has a
summary and helpful discussion questions. The penultimate chapter – the longest –
examines ‘Preaching and teaching from Ruth’. This chapter is worth the price of the
book alone. He offers helpful and insightful advice before exposing the poverty of a
personalistic and a higher critical approach to the book. He then shows how reading
the book through the spectacles of redemptive history helps to understand more fully
the revelation of God in and through Ruth.
His approach reveals the ‘many-faceted diamond’ of Ruth. He shows how a
redemptive-historical approach shows the totality of redemption, a redemption that
touches all of life: “Economics and stewardship, public laws and justice for the
widow, sexuality and faithfulness, worship and faith, agriculture and bounty, family
life and love, travel and mobility, history and development – these are the examples
of many different areas of life and their principles that form the fabric of Ruth” (p. 99)
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