11 Then all the people who were at the gate, along with the elders, said, “We are witnesses. May the Lord make the woman who is coming into your house like Rachel and Leah, who together built up the house of Israel. May you produce children in Ephrathah and bestow a name in Bethlehem;
12 and, through the children that the Lord will give you by this young woman, may your house be like the house of Perez, whom Tamar bore to Judah.”
Prayer Focus: The witnesses not only serve to validate the transaction, but they also provide a blessing. It is a blessing that prays for the fruitfulness of the marriage between Boaz and Ruth but does so in an unusual way. It remembers the mothers of the family with three women. Rachel and Leah were wives of Jacob and as sisters, they maintained a constant rivalry for his attention and affection. A generation later, Tamar tricked Judah into fathering a child when he refused to follow the tradition of levirate marriage – the same tradition which Boaz has followed with Ruth. We certainly live complex and complicated lives. Pray that your blessings come with stories, for in the struggle we often find that the true blessings emerge.
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