Ruth

Four chapters, three main characters and one of the most beautiful stories in the Bible. Ruth is set in the time of the judges, but it is the opposite of that book's chaos: here there is faithfulness, hospitality and care. Naomi loses her husband and sons in Moab and decides to return to Bethlehem; her foreign daughter-in-law Ruth insists on going with her, with the line that became a wedding vow: "where you go, I will go". In Bethlehem, Ruth gleans in Boaz's field, and he acts as a "redeemer" — a legal figure of family protection. The book ends with a genealogy that changes everything: from this family comes Obed, David's grandfather. A foreigner enters the king's line — and, in the New Testament, Jesus'.