According to Jewish tradition, Ruth was of the royal race of Moab, a nation descended from Lot, and settled on the borders of the salt sea in the confines of Judah. She married Mahlon, the son of Elimelech, who lived in Moab in consequence of a famine which prevailed in Judea. After his death, relying on the promises made to the tribe of Judah, to which her husband belonged, she became a proselyte; and thus the Holy Spirit, by recording the adoption of a Gentile woman into that family from which the Messiah was to descend, might intend to intimate the comprehensive design of the Christian dispensation. "It must be remarked also, that in the estimation of the Jews it was disgraceful to David to have derived his birth from a Moabitess; and Shimei, in his revilings against him, is supposed by the Jews to have tauntingly reflected on his descent from Ruth. This book, therefore, contains an intrinsic proof of its own verity, inasmuch as it records a circumstance so little flattering to the sovereign of Israel [19]; and it is scarcely necessary to appeal to its admission into the canon of Scripture for a testimony of its authentic character; or to mention that the evangelists, in describing our Saviour's descent, follow its genealogical accounts." [20] [Sidenote: Years before Christ, about 1818] This book commences with a statement of the calamitous situation of Israel in consequence of a famine, one of those messengers of divine displeasure sometimes commissioned to scourge a guilty land, and chastise them into obedience. Elimelech, a resident in Bethlehem-Judah, was compelled, probably with many others, to quit his beloved home, and seek a temporary subsistence in the country of Moab, which, although favoured at this time with the blessings of temporal prosperity and abundance, was destitute of those religious means, without which, in the view of a good man, Eden would lose its charms, and life its value. He took with him his wife Naomi and his two sons Mahlon and Chilion; and, under the guidance of that Providence which once tamed the lions and restrained the fires of Chaldea, found an asylum in the bosom of Israel's enemies.