This article is part of the continuing series, Inheritance and Influence: Women of the Promise.

In the divine mechanics of biblical redemption, grace is rarely a passive inheritance; it is a living thread of covenant loyalty — ”hesed” — woven through the lives of marginalized women who risked everything to claim a place in the promise of God.

When the ancient Near East recorded royal and patriarchal genealogies, it did so to validate status, prove legal purity, and protect social boundaries. Lineages were defensive structures built to keep the outsider out. Yet, when the Gospel of Matthew opens the New Testament with the genealogical record of Jesus Christ, it intentionally disrupts this convention. Embedded within the framework of patriarchs and kings are four women, two of whom stand out as radical anomalies: Rahab, a Canaanite from condemned Jericho, and Ruth, a widow from the cursed soil of Moab.

“And Salmon begat Booz of Rachab; and Booz begat Obed of Ruth; and Obed begat Jesse…” — Matthew 1:5

Far from being historical footnotes or mere administrative inclusions, Rahab and Ruth serve as a deliberate theological thesis. They reveal that the Messiah’s lineage is not defined by ethnic isolationism, moral privilege, or human merit, but by sovereign grace and active, risk-taking faith. By tracing how these two foreign women entered, sustained, and transformed the messianic line, we discover that the “DNA” of Christ’s ancestry was engineered from its very origins to extend mercy to the ends of the earth.

Before examining the lives of Rahab and Ruth, we must take time to define and understand the specific character of love that drives their lives. The Hebrew word “hesed” is often translated in the King James Bible as lovingkindness or mercy. However, this word resists a simple translation. It is not an abstract sentiment or fleeting emotion; it is covenantal commitment expressed through costly, reliable action. From a divine perspective, it is God’s enduring faithfulness to his people despite their unfaithfulness. As human duty, it is active, sacrificial loyalty shown by one person to another, particularly when the recipient has no legal or social power to demand it. In the narrative of redemption, hesed is the stubborn, active mercy that steps across cultural, ethnic, and legal boundaries to rescue and restore. Ultimately, hesed is the core of the life and message of Rahab and Ruth.

Let us now turn our attention to Rahab, a woman who lived on the physical and social margins of Jericho, a city under divine judgment. As Israel prepared to cross the Jordan into Canaan, Joshua dispatched two secret spies to scout the fortified city of Jericho. Their clandestine search for intelligence led them directly to the house of Rahab, a harlot living within the city’s outer wall. When Rahab makes the dangerous decision to conceal the spies, she explicitly invokes the concept of hesed, asking for covenant mercy in exchange for the mercy she extended.

“Now therefore, I pray you, swear unto me by the LORD, since I have shewed you kindness [hesed], that ye will also shew kindness [hesed] unto my father’s house…” – Joshua 2:12

When the spies escape through the window of Rahab’s house, they instruct her to tie a scarlet thread or cord in the window and down the side of the wall. Just as Israel was saved at the Passover by the blood on the doorposts, Rahab’s household was preserved by a covenant sign hanging from her window. Rahab moves from being an enemy of God’s people to a recipient of divine hesed. 

Many years later, during the dark era of the Judges, Ruth enters Israel’s story. As a Moabite, she was an outsider subject to the harsh exclusion laws of Deuteronomy 23:3. Yet after enduring profound loss alongside her widowed mother-in-law, Naomi, Ruth refuses to abandon her. Even when Naomi blesses her with a prayer of covenant mercy—”The LORD deal kindly [hesed] with you, as ye have dealt with the dead, and with me” (Ruth 1:8)—Ruth responds with one of Scripture’s most radical vows (Ruth 1:16–17). Binding herself to a destitute widow with no promise of security, status, or offspring, Ruth embodies pure hesed.

This selfless devotion sets the stage for her arrival in Bethlehem, where her act of hesed meets its divine answer in Boaz—a man whose own family heritage prepared him to recognize and reciprocate that very grace. Upon arriving in Bethlehem, Ruth’s vulnerable loyalty catches the attention of Boaz, a prosperous landowner and kinsman to Naomi’s late husband. Rather than treating her as a foreign seasonal worker or taking advantage of her status as a needy widow, Boaz extends immediate protection, generosity, and provision in his fields. When Ruth later approaches him at the threshing floor to invoke the legal right of redemption, Boaz commends her character, noting that her willingness to marry him to preserve Naomi’s family line is an even greater act of hesed than her initial pledge (Ruth 3:10).

Acting as her go’el (kinsman-redeemer), Boaz assumes the personal and financial risk of acquiring Elimelech’s land and taking Ruth as his wife. In doing so, Boaz reciprocates Ruth’s sacrificial loyalty with covenant hesed of his own, legally buying back her family’s future and securing a place for a Moabite foreigner in Israel’s royal inheritance.

Neither Rahab nor Ruth were passive beneficiaries of grace. Both women actively demonstrated faith in a God they knew little about. They trusted in God’s people who were the enemies of their friends and neighbors. They both actively lived out hesed through courageous, risk-taking faith. God placed Rahab and Ruth, due to their faithfulness, in the royal line of David and Jesus. These women demonstrate that hesed transcended national boundaries and human limitations long before the inauguration of the New Covenant. God’s redemptive plan included all of the elect without contemplation of human barriers.