Komitmen

Ruth dan Esther memberi teladan komitmen. Dua-duanya membuka jalan bagi lahirnya Sang Mesias! Kalau Kitab Ruth diawali dengan kelaparan dan diakhiri dengan lahirnya seorang anak ke dunia, maka Kitab Esther diawali dengan pesta dan diakhiri dengan kematian 75 ribu orang. Yang jelas, kedua kitab tersebut menuliskan bagaimana tangan Allah bekerja di tengah-tengah umat-Nya.

Komitmen Ruth dan Esther patut kita teladani, dan di bawah ini bisa kita baca tekad mereka:

6 And Ruth said, Urge me not to leave you or to turn back from following you; for where you go I will go, and where you lodge I will lodge. ^bYour people shall be my people and your God my God.

17 Where you die I will die, and there will I be buried. The Lord do so to me, and more also, if anything but death parts me from you.

^b “Ruth is a prophecy, than which none could be more beautiful and engaging, of the entrance of the heathen world into the kingdom of God. She comes forth out of Moab, an idolatrous people full of wantonness and sin, and is herself so tender and pure. In a land where dissolute sensuality formed one of the elements of idol worship, a woman appears, as wife and daughter, chaste as the rose of spring and unsurpassed in these relations by any other [human] character in Holy Writ. . . . Ruth’s confession of God and His people originated in the home of her married life. It sprang from the love with which she was permitted to embrace Israelites . . . . The conduct of one Israelitish woman [Naomi] in a foreign land was able to call forth a love and a confession of God like that of Ruth . . . . Ruth loves a woman, and is thereby led to the God Whom that woman confesses” (J.P. Lange, A Commentary).

The amplified Bible, containing the amplified Old Testament and the amplified New Testament. 1987 (Ru 1:16-17). La Habra, CA: The Lockman Foundation.

16 Go, gather together all the Jews that are present in Shushan, and fast for me; and neither eat nor drink for three days, night or day. I also and my maids will fast as you do. Then I will go to the king, though it is against the law; and if I perish, I perish.

The amplified Bible, containing the amplified Old Testament and the amplified New Testament. 1987 (Es 4:16). La Habra, CA: The Lockman Foundation.