The Story of Ruth
At first sight Ruth is a delightfully simple tale of domestic life. It moves from sorrow to joy, from emptiness to fullness, largely through the initiative and resourcefulness of two women. However, throughout it is a story of faithfulness, human and divine. Each of the blessings invoked is fulfilled ultimately through human agency.
The plot focuses on the dilemmas faced by two women, Naomi and her daughter-in-law Ruth, for whom the book is named. Left destitute and isolated by the deaths of their husbands and sons, the turning point in their fortunes occurs when Ruth takes advantage of a Israelite legal tradition that allowed foreigners, the poor, and widows to gather grain during the harvest.
In the fields of rural Israel, which demanded the labor of men and women alike, the socially mandated boundaries separating the worlds of men and women lost their rigidity. In that context Ruth encounters Boaz, a distant relation from her husband's family. With Naomi providing crucial behind-the-scenes advice to her daughtr-in-law, Boaz soon marries Ruth. The themes of life and fertility evoked so richly by the harvest scenes carry over to the final chapter of the book when Naomi embraces the newborn son of Ruth and Boaz. The book ends with a genealogy which records that Ruth of Moab is the great-grandmother of King David himself. Ruth is one of four women (three of them non-Israelite) in the geneaolgy of Jesus, together with Tamar, Rahab, and Mary.
At first sight Ruth is a delightfully simple tale of domestic life. It moves from sorrow to joy, from emptiness to fullness, largely through the initiative and resourcefulness of two women. However, throughout it is a story of faithfulness, human and divine. Each of the blessings invoked is fulfilled ultimately through human agency.
The plot focuses on the dilemmas faced by two women, Naomi and her daughter-in-law Ruth, for whom the book is named. Left destitute and isolated by the deaths of their husbands and sons, the turning point in their fortunes occurs when Ruth takes advantage of a Israelite legal tradition that allowed foreigners, the poor, and widows to gather grain during the harvest.
In the fields of rural Israel, which demanded the labor of men and women alike, the socially mandated boundaries separating the worlds of men and women lost their rigidity. In that context Ruth encounters Boaz, a distant relation from her husband's family. With Naomi providing crucial behind-the-scenes advice to her daughtr-in-law, Boaz soon marries Ruth. The themes of life and fertility evoked so richly by the harvest scenes carry over to the final chapter of the book when Naomi embraces the newborn son of Ruth and Boaz. The book ends with a genealogy which records that Ruth of Moab is the great-grandmother of King David himself. Ruth is one of four women (three of them non-Israelite) in the geneaolgy of Jesus, together with Tamar, Rahab, and Mary.
