Four Cursed Women

Rth 4:11  Then all the people who were at the gate and 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 act worthily in Ephrathah and be renowned in Bethlehem, Rth 4:12  and may your house be like the house of Perez, whom Tamar bore to Judah, because of the offspring that the LORD will give you by this young woman." Rth 4:13  So Boaz took Ruth, and she became his wife. And he went in to her, and the LORD gave her conception, and she bore a son.

The four women mentioned in Matthew 1 in the genealogy of Jesus are an interesting study.  (Bathsheba is referred to but not named outright)  Three, if not four, of them were Gentiles and therefore under a curse.  And three of them had very obvious sins that are mentioned as well.  Tamar seduced Judah, Rahab was a prostitute, Bathsheba committed adultery with David and Ruth, while evidently an upright woman was from Moab which placed her squarely under God’s curse, Deu 23:3  "No Ammonite or Moabite may enter the assembly of the LORD. Even to the tenth generation, none of them may enter the assembly of the LORD forever. 

But there is another commonality of all four that is even more interesting to me.  At least three had husbands who died but then they all came into contact with a man in the Messianic line that brought them into contact with the Messiah.  Whether they all were believers or not I am not sure but they are a wonderful type that we Gentiles, who were born under the curse of God due to the Fall, should be able to identify with.

We were born connected to a man who was under a curse which meant we were under a curse.  This man was Adam.  But when the Lord saved us we died to that life with its curse and were joined to a new man, the second Adam, Christ Jesus.  We now belong to a new family, the family of God and are received as sons of God.  Our destiny is joined with our current husband and not our old family.

Romans 7 says much the same thing only it has us originally married to the Law.  But the Law represents the holiness of God that is against us and condemns us as sinners; we are born under the curse of the Law, Gal 3:10  For all who rely on works of the law are under a curse; for it is written, "Cursed be everyone who does not abide by all things written in the Book of the Law, and do them."  Read the following in light of what I have said above:

Rom 7:1  Or do you not know, brothers—for I am speaking to those who know the law—that the law is binding on a person only as long as he lives? Rom 7:2  For a married woman is bound by law to her husband while he lives, but if her husband dies she is released from the law of marriage. Rom 7:3  Accordingly, she will be called an adulteress if she lives with another man while her husband is alive. But if her husband dies, she is free from that law, and if she marries another man she is not an adulteress. Rom 7:4  Likewise, my brothers, you also have died to the law through the body of Christ, so that you may belong to another, to him who has been raised from the dead, in order that we may bear fruit for God.

Just as these women’s new union eventually bore the fruit of the Messiah so we who have been joined to him by the Spirit bear fruit that honors the Lord.