The book of Ruth - Kinsman Redeemer?

If I was to ask you what the theme of the book of Ruth was my hunch is you'd answer kinsman redeemer, or redemption.  If I asked you who is the figure that points to Jesus, again my hunch would be that you would point to Boaz.  And Boaz is the kinsman redeemer, he is the one who buys Naomi's land and marries Ruth back.  And the redemption theme is big in Ruth and huge in the overall arc of the Bible's story.  So that has always been the way I've read Ruth.

But I just wonder whether in focusing on this theme we are in danger of excluding another.  Last week in studying the book of Ruth for our weekend away I was struck again and again by the love of Ruth.  Ruth who (ch1) will not leave her mother-in-law, who leaves her family and her home and chooses to become an alien and foreigner in Israel.  Ruth who because of love chooses death and discomfort rather than the ease of home.  Ruth who is slighted by Naomi, (1v20-21) who describes herself as empty, when Ruth who is standing right beside her has given up so much to bind herself in love to Naomi.  Ruth who (2v2)is the one who gets up and provides for the family day by day throughout the months of the barley and wheat harvest, expressing her faithful love day by day in practical and costly dying to self ways.  Ruth who will marry Boaz to redeem both the family land and line.  Ruth who gives her son to Naomi, who cares for him and whose is counted as her son (4v16-17).

Throughout the book Ruth continually chooses to love at cost to herself, chooses again and again to die to self to bring life to Naomi.  It is Ruth's love that drives the book, that leads her to leave home, to listen, to endure alienation, to labour to provide life to another.  Maybe Ruth points us to Jesus as much as Boaz does.