The Unseen River of Grace: The Generations of Perez Text: Ruth 4:18-22
Introduction: The Gravity of Begats
We come now to the end of the book of Ruth, and the modern reader, particularly the modern evangelical reader, is tempted to treat these last few verses as a kind of appendix. It is a genealogy, a list of "begats," and our eyes tend to glaze over. We have had a beautiful story of romance, loyalty, and redemption, and now it seems to conclude with a dry list of names from the phone book of Bethlehem. But to think this way is to fundamentally misunderstand what the Holy Spirit is doing here. This is not an appendix; it is the entire point. This is not the credits rolling at the end of the movie; this is the final scene where the grand theme is unveiled.
The entire book of Ruth has been a story of God's providence working in the dark, through famine, death, and desperation. It has been a story of covenant faithfulness, of hesed love, shown by a Moabite widow to her Israelite mother-in-law, and then by a worthy man to that same Moabite widow. It is a story of a kinsman redeemer stepping in to raise up a name for the dead. And now, at the very end, the curtain is pulled back, and we see that this small, local story of personal piety and redemption was, all along, a central tributary flowing into the main river of God's redemptive history for the entire world.
These genealogies are the skeletal structure of the biblical narrative. They are God's way of showing us that His promises are not abstract spiritual platitudes. They are historical. They are earthy. They are tied to real people, in real places, with real families. God's covenantal grace flows through the lines of generations. This is the doctrine of covenant succession. God promised Abraham that He would be a God to him and to his seed after him. That promise was not a lottery ticket for each individual; it was a deed of inheritance for a family, for a people. This genealogy is the title search, proving the legitimacy of the heir who is to come.
So when we come to a list like this, we should not see a dry riverbed. We should see the mighty river of God's faithfulness, carving its way through the landscape of human history, sometimes going underground for generations, only to burst forth again in surprising and glorious ways. This list connects the scandalous grace shown to Perez and Tamar, through the quiet faithfulness of Boaz and Ruth, all the way to the throne of Israel's greatest king. And as the New Testament will make clear, it doesn't stop there. This river flows all the way to a manger in Bethlehem and to a cross on Calvary.
The Text
Now these are the generations of Perez: Perez became the father of Hezron,
and Hezron became the father of Ram, and Ram became the father of Amminadab,
and Amminadab became the father of Nahshon, and Nahshon became the father of Salmah,
and Salmon became the father of Boaz, and Boaz became the father of Obed,
and Obed became the father of Jesse, and Jesse became the father of David.
(Ruth 4:18-22 LSB)
A Lineage of Grace (v. 18)
The genealogy begins not with Abraham, or Jacob, but with a name that ought to make us sit up straight.
"Now these are the generations of Perez: Perez became the father of Hezron," (Ruth 4:18)
Why Perez? To understand this, you must go back to the sordid tale in Genesis 38. Perez was the son of Judah, the patriarch of the royal tribe. But his mother was Tamar, Judah's daughter-in-law, who posed as a prostitute to trick Judah into fulfilling his levirate duty to her. It is a story of deceit, failure, and profound sexual brokenness. And yet, this is where God starts the royal line. The word Perez means "breach" or "bursting forth." He was the one who broke through, unexpectedly, to become the heir.
The Holy Spirit is making a foundational point from the very first name. The line of the Messiah is not a line of pristine moral thoroughbreds. It is a line of scandalous grace. God does not choose the qualified; He qualifies the chosen. He writes straight with crooked lines. From its very inception, the royal line of Judah is marked by the intrusion of God's sovereign grace into the mess of human sin and failure. This is not something to be embarrassed about and hidden in the footnotes. The Bible puts it right on the billboard. This is how our God works. He brings life out of death, order out of chaos, and a royal line out of a roadside liaison. If you ever feel that your family's past disqualifies you from God's grace, you need to meditate on the fact that the King of kings came from Perez.
The Quiet Generations (v. 19-21a)
The next several names in the list are, to us, largely obscure. They are the quiet links in the chain.
"and Hezron became the father of Ram, and Ram became the father of Amminadab, and Amminadab became the father of Nahshon, and Nahshon became the father of Salmah, and Salmon became the father of Boaz..." (Ruth 4:19-21a)
Hezron, Ram, Amminadab. These men lived and died during the long centuries of Israel's slavery in Egypt. They were not prophets or princes. They were, in all likelihood, slaves making bricks under the Egyptian sun. They were the generations when the promise seemed to have gone dormant. God had promised Abraham a land, a seed, and a blessing for the nations, and here were his descendants, enslaved and anonymous. Their lives were likely filled with hardship and obscurity. They were simply called to be faithful in their generation, to marry, to have children, and to pass on the stories of the covenant to those children, even when there was no visible evidence that God was at work.
This is a profound encouragement for us. Most of Christian history is made up of quiet generations. Most of us will not be great reformers or world-famous evangelists. Our task is simply to be a faithful link in the chain. To raise our children in the nurture and admonition of the Lord, to teach them the faith, and to trust that God is working His sovereign plan even when it is not apparent to us. These men were not famous, but they were essential. Without them, there is no David, and no Christ.
Then we come to Nahshon. He is a significant figure. He was the prince of the tribe of Judah during the Exodus, and he was the first man to walk into the Red Sea before the waters parted (Numbers 1:7, 7:12). He was a man of great faith and leadership. His son was Salmon, and here the New Testament adds a crucial detail that the book of Ruth leaves out. Matthew tells us that Salmon's wife, the mother of Boaz, was Rahab of Jericho (Matthew 1:5). Another scandal. Another outsider. Another woman with a sexually sordid past, a Canaanite prostitute, who was saved by faith and grafted into the line of the Messiah. The blood of a Canaanite harlot flows in the veins of King David. The river of God's grace is wider than we think.
The Fruit of Faithfulness (v. 21b-22)
The genealogy now arrives at the central figures of our story and carries it to its glorious conclusion.
"...and Salmon became the father of Boaz, and Boaz became the father of Obed, and Obed became the father of Jesse, and Jesse became the father of David." (Ruth 4:21b-22)
Salmon and Rahab give birth to Boaz, our kinsman redeemer. Boaz, a man of worth and integrity, a man who lives out the law of God with grace and kindness. And who does he marry? Ruth the Moabitess. A woman from a nation that was the product of an incestuous union between Lot and his daughter (Genesis 19). A people who were explicitly excluded from the assembly of the Lord for ten generations (Deuteronomy 23:3). And yet, here she is, the great-grandmother of King David.
Do you see the pattern? Perez, the son of an illicit union. Rahab, the Canaanite prostitute. Ruth, the forbidden Moabitess. God is deliberately, provocatively, and gloriously weaving the outcasts, the foreigners, and the sinners into the central story of redemption. This is not an accident. This is the gospel in miniature. This is a declaration that the covenant is not based on bloodline purity or moral performance, but on sovereign, electing grace.
Boaz and Ruth have a son, Obed. His name means "servant." And this Obed becomes the father of Jesse. And Jesse, the Bethlehemite, becomes the father of David. The story that began in famine and death, in the land of Moab, ends here with the naming of Israel's great king, the man after God's own heart. The long, quiet years are over. The promise has burst forth into the light. The faithfulness of the obscure generations has borne fruit in the establishment of the throne that God promised would endure forever.
Conclusion: The River and the King
This genealogy is far more than a historical footnote. It is a sermon in itself. It teaches us several crucial truths that we must grasp.
First, it teaches us about the nature of God's sovereign providence. He is the great weaver of history. He takes the tangled threads of human sin, failure, faithfulness, and folly, and He weaves them into a beautiful tapestry that accomplishes His perfect will. The story of Ruth looked like a tragedy, but it was a comedy, because God was directing the play from behind the scenes.
Second, it teaches us about the nature of grace. God's grace is not for the neat and tidy. It is for the messy. It is for the outcasts. The line of the king is a line of redeemed sinners, a fact that should give immense comfort to all of us. The ground is level at the foot of the cross, and the ground was level at the foundation of David's throne.
Third, it teaches us the importance of generational faithfulness. We are links in a chain. We have received a legacy, and we are to pass it on. We are to live our lives, raise our families, and build our churches with an eye to the generations to come. We are planting trees whose shade we may never sit in. We are part of a story that is much bigger than ourselves.
Finally, this genealogy points relentlessly forward. It culminates in David, but David himself is a signpost pointing to his greater Son. The covenant God made with David, that his throne would last forever, finds its ultimate fulfillment in Jesus Christ. Matthew's gospel opens with a genealogy that picks up right where this one leaves off: "The book of the genealogy of Jesus Christ, the son of David..." (Matthew 1:1). Jesus is the true and better Boaz, our ultimate Kinsman Redeemer, who was not ashamed to call us brothers. He is the one who marries His bride, the church, made up of outcasts and foreigners from every tribe and tongue. He is the one who raises up a name for us who were dead in our sins. And He is the true King, the son of David, who sits on the throne forever.
The book of Ruth, therefore, ends where it must. It ends by directing our gaze to the coming king. It shows us that the small stories of our lives, our sorrows and our joys, our acts of kindness and our moments of faith, are all swept up into the grand, epic story of the King and His Kingdom. And that is a story that does not end with a list of names, but with a shout of victory.