“In those days there was no king in Israel. Everyone did what was right in his own eyes.” Remember that refrain from the book of Judges? It was repeated four times! In those evil days, bad things happened. Bad things like a famine. Bad things like an Israelite family leaving the promised land for a foreign country. Bad things like a husband and two children dying. Things were so bad that one woman even changed her name to Bitter.

But God is working even in the bitter times. God used Bitter’s family to bring his blessing to a foreign woman—kind of like how he brought a blessing to Rahab, the Canaanite woman who protected the Israelite spies. And this was exactly like how he’d promised Abraham that he was going to bless all the people of the earth through him. Want to hear the story of Bitter and the foreign woman? Let’s have a listen.