Ruth (sister of Jesus)

• unswervingly loyal to Jesus; chief family comfort

124:4.3From this time on he be­came more suc­cess­ful in get­ting along with his broth­ers and sis­ters. He was in­creas­ingly tact­ful, al­ways com­pas­sion­ate and con­sid­er­ate of their wel­fare and hap­pi­ness, and en­joyed good re­la­tions with them up to the be­gin­ning of his pub­lic min­istry. To be more ex­plicit: He got along with James, Miriam, and the two younger (as yet un­born) chil­dren, Amos and Ruth, most ex­cel­lently. He al­ways got along with Martha fairly well. What trou­ble he had at home largely arose out of fric­tion with Joseph and Jude, par­tic­u­larly the lat­ter.

• born April 17, A.D. 9

126:3.2On Wednes­day evening, April 17, A.D. 9, Ruth, the baby of the fam­ily, was born, and to the best of his abil­ity Je­sus en­deav­ored to take the place of his fa­ther in com­fort­ing and min­is­ter­ing to his mother dur­ing this try­ing and pe­cu­liarly sad or­deal. For al­most a score of years (un­til he be­gan his pub­lic min­istry) no fa­ther could have loved and nur­tured his daugh­ter any more af­fec­tion­ately and faith­fully than Je­sus cared for lit­tle Ruth. And he was an equally good fa­ther to all the other mem­bers of his fam­ily.

• thoughtless of speech but sincere of heart; beautiful

127:4.8Miriam was a well-bal­anced and level-headed daugh­ter with a keen ap­pre­ci­a­tion of things no­ble and spir­i­tual. Martha was slow in thought and ac­tion but a very de­pend­able and ef­fi­cient child. Baby Ruth was the sun­shine of the home; though thought­less of speech, she was most sin­cere of heart. She just about wor­shiped her big brother and fa­ther. But they did not spoil her. She was a beau­ti­ful child but not quite so comely as Miriam, who was the belle of the fam­ily, if not of the city.

• Jesus had long talks with

134:1.3Dur­ing his stay of a few weeks at Naz­a­reth, Je­sus vis­ited with his fam­ily and friends, spent some time at the re­pair shop with his brother Joseph, but de­voted most of his at­ten­tion to Mary and Ruth. Ruth was then nearly fif­teen years old, and this was Je­sus’ first op­por­tu­nity to have long talks with her since she had be­come a young woman.

• moved to Capernaum

134:1.6About the time Je­sus was prepar­ing to leave Naz­a­reth, the con­duc­tor of a large car­a­van which was pass­ing through the city was taken vi­o­lently ill, and Je­sus, be­ing a lin­guist, vol­un­teered to take his place. Since this trip would ne­ces­si­tate his ab­sence for a year, and inas­much as all his broth­ers were mar­ried and his mother was liv­ing at home with Ruth, Je­sus called a fam­ily con­fer­ence at which he pro­posed that his mother and Ruth go to Ca­per­naum to live in the home which he had so re­cently given to James. Ac­cord­ingly, a few days af­ter Je­sus left with the car­a­van, Mary and Ruth moved to Ca­per­naum, where they lived for the rest of Mary’s life in the home that Je­sus had pro­vided. Joseph and his fam­ily moved into the old Naz­a­reth home.

• unswervingly loyal to Jesus; chief family comfort

138:0.1Af­ter preach­ing the ser­mon on “The King­dom,” Je­sus called the six apos­tles to­gether that af­ter­noon and be­gan to dis­close his plans for vis­it­ing the cities around and about the Sea of Gal­i­lee. His broth­ers James and Jude were very much hurt be­cause they were not called to this con­fer­ence. Up to this time they had re­garded them­selves as be­long­ing to Je­sus’ in­ner cir­cle of as­so­ciates. But Je­sus planned to have no close rel­a­tives as mem­bers of this corps of apos­tolic di­rec­tors of the king­dom. This fail­ure to in­clude James and Jude among the cho­sen few, to­gether with his ap­par­ent aloof­ness from his mother ever since the ex­pe­ri­ence at Cana, was the start­ing point of an ever-widen­ing gulf be­tween Je­sus and his fam­ily. This sit­u­a­tion con­tin­ued through­out his pub­lic min­istry—they very nearly re­jected him—and these dif­fer­ences were not fully re­moved un­til af­ter his death and res­ur­rec­tion. His mother con­stantly wa­vered be­tween at­ti­tudes of fluc­tu­at­ing faith and hope, and in­creas­ing emo­tions of dis­ap­point­ment, hu­mil­i­a­tion, and de­spair. Only Ruth, the young­est, re­mained unswerv­ingly loyal to her fa­ther-brother.

• unswervingly loyal to Jesus; chief family comfort

145:0.3Late on Fri­day evening Je­sus’ baby sis­ter, Ruth, se­cretly paid him a visit. They spent al­most an hour to­gether in a boat an­chored a short dis­tance from the shore. No hu­man be­ing, save John Zeb­e­dee, ever knew of this visit, and he was ad­mon­ished to tell no man. Ruth was the only mem­ber of Je­sus’ fam­ily who con­sis­tently and un­wa­ver­ingly be­lieved in the di­vin­ity of his earth mis­sion from the times of her ear­li­est spir­i­tual con­scious­ness right on down through his event­ful min­istry, death, res­ur­rec­tion, and as­cen­sion; and she fi­nally passed on to the worlds be­yond never hav­ing doubted the super­nat­u­ral char­ac­ter of her fa­ther-brother’s mis­sion in the flesh. Baby Ruth was the chief com­fort of Je­sus, as re­gards his earth fam­ily, through­out the try­ing or­deal of his trial, re­jec­tion, and cru­ci­fix­ion.

• Ruth (sister of Jesus)

154:5.1May 22 was an event­ful day in the life of Je­sus. On this Sun­day morn­ing, be­fore day­break, one of David’s mes­sen­gers ar­rived in great haste from Tiberias, bring­ing the word that Herod had au­tho­rized, or was about to au­tho­rize, the ar­rest of Je­sus by the of­fi­cers of the San­hedrin. The re­ceipt of the news of this im­pend­ing dan­ger caused David Zeb­e­dee to arouse his mes­sen­gers and send them out to all the lo­cal groups of dis­ci­ples, sum­mon­ing them for an emer­gency coun­cil at seven o’clock that morn­ing. When the sis­ter-in-law of Jude (Je­sus’ brother) heard this alarm­ing re­port, she has­tened word to all of Je­sus’ fam­ily who dwelt near by, sum­mon­ing them forth­with to as­sem­ble at Zeb­e­dee’s house. And in re­sponse to this hasty call, pres­ently there were as­sem­bled Mary, James, Joseph, Jude, and Ruth.

• unswervingly loyal to Jesus; chief family comfort

154:6.1It was about eight o’clock on this Sun­day morn­ing when five mem­bers of Je­sus’ earth fam­ily ar­rived on the scene in re­sponse to the ur­gent sum­mons of Jude’s sis­ter-in-law. Of all his fam­ily in the flesh, only one, Ruth, be­lieved whole­heart­edly and con­tin­u­ously in the di­vin­ity of his mis­sion on earth. Jude and James, and even Joseph, still re­tained much of their faith in Je­sus, but they had per­mit­ted pride to in­ter­fere with their bet­ter judg­ment and real spir­i­tual in­cli­na­tions. Mary was like­wise torn be­tween love and fear, be­tween mother love and fam­ily pride. Though she was ha­rassed by doubts, she could never quite for­get the visit of Ga­briel ere Je­sus was born. The Phar­isees had been la­bor­ing to per­suade Mary that Je­sus was be­side him­self, de­mented. They urged her to go with her sons and seek to dis­suade him from fur­ther ef­forts at pub­lic teach­ing. They as­sured Mary that soon Je­sus’ health would break, and that only dis­honor and dis­grace could come upon the en­tire fam­ily as a re­sult of al­low­ing him to go on. And so, when the word came from Jude’s sis­ter-in-law, all five of them started at once for Zeb­e­dee’s house, hav­ing been to­gether at Mary’s home, where they had met with the Phar­isees the evening be­fore. They had talked with the Je­ru­sa­lem lead­ers long into the night, and all were more or less con­vinced that Je­sus was act­ing strangely, that he had acted strangely for some time. While Ruth could not ex­plain all of his con­duct, she in­sisted that he had al­ways treated his fam­ily fairly and re­fused to agree to the pro­gram of try­ing to dis­suade him from fur­ther work.

• unswervingly loyal to Jesus; chief family comfort

154:6.3They had ex­pected to meet Je­sus, take him aside, and urge him to go home with them. They had thought to as­sure him that they would for­get his ne­glect of them—they would for­give and for­get—if he would only give up the fool­ish­ness of try­ing to preach a new re­li­gion which could bring only trou­ble to him­self and dis­honor upon his fam­ily. To all of this Ruth would say only: “I will tell my brother that I think he is a man of God, and that I hope he would be will­ing to die be­fore he would al­low these wicked Phar­isees to stop his preach­ing.” Joseph prom­ised to keep Ruth quiet while the oth­ers la­bored with Je­sus.

• endeavored to elude Pharisees

157:0.1Be­fore Je­sus took the twelve for a short so­journ in the vicin­ity of Cae­sarea-Phi­lippi, he ar­ranged through the mes­sen­gers of David to go over to Ca­per­naum on Sun­day, Au­gust 7, for the pur­pose of meet­ing his fam­ily. By pre­ar­range­ment this visit was to oc­cur at the Zeb­e­dee boat­shop. David Zeb­e­dee had ar­ranged with Jude, Je­sus’ brother, for the pres­ence of the en­tire Naz­a­reth fam­ily—Mary and all of Je­sus’ broth­ers and sis­ters—and Je­sus went with An­drew and Pe­ter to keep this ap­point­ment. It was cer­tainly the in­ten­tion of Mary and the chil­dren to keep this en­gage­ment, but it so hap­pened that a group of the Phar­isees, know­ing that Je­sus was on the op­po­site side of the lake in Philip’s do­mains, de­cided to call upon Mary to learn what they could of his where­abouts. The ar­rival of these Je­ru­sa­lem emis­saries greatly per­turbed Mary, and not­ing the ten­sion and ner­vous­ness of the en­tire fam­ily, they con­cluded that Je­sus must have been ex­pected to pay them a visit. Ac­cord­ingly they in­stalled them­selves in Mary’s home and, af­ter sum­mon­ing re­in­force­ments, waited pa­tiently for Je­sus’ ar­rival. And this, of course, ef­fec­tively pre­vented any of the fam­ily from at­tempt­ing to keep their ap­point­ment with Je­sus. Sev­eral times dur­ing the day both Jude and Ruth en­deav­ored to elude the vig­i­lance of the Phar­isees in their ef­forts to send word to Je­sus, but it was of no avail.

• at Jesus’ crucifixion

186:0.3When Mary the mother of Je­sus started out with John to go to her son, his sis­ter Ruth re­fused to re­main be­hind with the rest of the fam­ily. Since she was de­ter­mined to ac­com­pany her mother, her brother Jude went with her. The rest of the Mas­ter’s fam­ily re­mained in Beth­any un­der the di­rec­tion of James, and al­most ev­ery hour the mes­sen­gers of David Zeb­e­dee brought them re­ports con­cern­ing the prog­ress of that ter­ri­ble busi­ness of putting to death their el­dest brother, Je­sus of Naz­a­reth.

• at Jesus’ crucifixion

187:2.7The Apos­tle John, with Mary the mother of Je­sus, Ruth, and Jude, ar­rived on the scene just af­ter Je­sus had been hoisted to his po­si­tion on the cross, and just as the cap­tain was nail­ing the ti­tle above the Mas­ter’s head. John was the only one of the eleven apos­tles to wit­ness the cru­ci­fix­ion, and even he was not pres­ent all of the time since he ran into Je­ru­sa­lem to bring back his mother and her friends soon af­ter he had brought Je­sus’ mother to the scene.

• at Jesus’ crucifixion

187:3.2Stand­ing near the cross at one time or an­other dur­ing the cru­ci­fix­ion were Mary, Ruth, Jude, John, Sa­lome (John’s mother), and a group of earnest women be­liev­ers in­clud­ing Mary the wife of Clopas and sis­ter of Je­sus’ mother, Mary Mag­da­lene, and Re­becca, one­time of Sep­pho­ris. These and other friends of Je­sus held their peace while they wit­nessed his great pa­tience and for­ti­tude and gazed upon his in­tense suf­fer­ings.

• at Jesus’ crucifixion

187:5.4The sand­storm grew in in­ten­sity and the heav­ens in­creas­ingly dark­ened. Still the sol­diers and the small group of be­liev­ers stood by. The sol­diers crouched near the cross, hud­dled to­gether to pro­tect them­selves from the cut­ting sand. The mother of John and oth­ers watched from a dis­tance where they were some­what shel­tered by an over­hang­ing rock. When the Mas­ter fi­nally breathed his last, there were pres­ent at the foot of his cross John Zeb­e­dee, his brother Jude, his sis­ter Ruth, Mary Mag­da­lene, and Re­becca, one­time of Sep­pho­ris.

• Ruth (sister of Jesus)

188:3.3Mary the mother of Je­sus, with Ruth and Jude, re­turned to Beth­any to join their fam­ily this Sat­ur­day evening just be­fore sun­set. David Zeb­e­dee re­mained at the home of Nicode­mus, where he had ar­ranged for his mes­sen­gers to as­sem­ble early Sun­day morn­ing. The women of Gal­i­lee, who pre­pared spices for the fur­ther em­balm­ing of Je­sus’ body, tar­ried at the home of Joseph of Ari­mathea.

• married David Zebedee; moved to Philadelphia

190:1.10In about one week from this time John Zeb­e­dee took Mary the mother of Je­sus to his home in Beth­saida. James, Je­sus’ el­dest brother, re­mained with his fam­ily in Je­ru­sa­lem. Ruth re­mained at Beth­any with Laz­a­rus’s sis­ters. The rest of Je­sus’ fam­ily re­turned to Gal­i­lee. David Zeb­e­dee left Beth­any with Martha and Mary, for Phil­a­del­phia, early in June, the day af­ter his mar­riage to Ruth, Je­sus’ young­est sis­ter.

• unswervingly loyal to Jesus; chief family comfort

190:2.2The third ap­pear­ance oc­curred about noon of this Sun­day at Beth­any. Shortly af­ter noon­tide, Je­sus’ old­est brother, James, was stand­ing in the gar­den of Laz­a­rus be­fore the empty tomb of the res­ur­rected brother of Martha and Mary, turn­ing over in his mind the news brought to them about one hour pre­vi­ously by the mes­sen­ger of David. James had al­ways in­clined to be­lieve in his el­dest brother’s mis­sion on earth, but he had long since lost con­tact with Je­sus’ work and had drifted into grave doubt­ing re­gard­ing the later claims of the apos­tles that Je­sus was the Mes­siah. The whole fam­ily was star­tled and well-nigh con­founded by the news brought by the mes­sen­ger. Even as James stood be­fore Laz­a­rus’s empty tomb, Mary Mag­da­lene ar­rived on the scene and was ex­cit­edly re­lat­ing to the fam­ily her ex­pe­ri­ences of the early morn­ing hours at the tomb of Joseph. Be­fore she had fin­ished, David Zeb­e­dee and his mother ar­rived. Ruth, of course, be­lieved the re­port, and so did Jude af­ter he had talked with David and Sa­lome.

• at Jesus’ 4th appearance

190:2.6And David did not long wait, for the fourth ap­pear­ance of Je­sus to mor­tal rec­og­ni­tion oc­curred shortly be­fore two o’clock in this very home of Martha and Mary, when he ap­peared vis­i­bly be­fore his earthly fam­ily and their friends, twenty in all. The Mas­ter ap­peared in the open back door, say­ing: “Peace be upon you. Greet­ings to those once near me in the flesh and fel­low­ship for my broth­ers and sis­ters in the king­dom of heaven. How could you doubt? Why have you lin­gered so long be­fore choos­ing to fol­low the light of truth with a whole heart? Come, there­fore, all of you into the fel­low­ship of the Spirit of Truth in the Fa­ther’s king­dom.” As they be­gan to re­cover from the first shock of their amaze­ment and to move to­ward him as if to em­brace him, he van­ished from their sight.