Old Testament · History · book 8 of 66 · 2 min read
The book of Ruth
Four chapters about a foreign widow and a field, placed immediately after the darkest book in the Bible, showing what ordinary loyalty looks like in the same period.
“Where you go, I will go; and where you stay, I will stay.”
At a glance
- Chapters
- 4
- Author
- Anonymous
- Written
- Uncertain; proposals range from the tenth to the fifth century BC
- Written for
- Readers of Judges, given a counter-example
- Themes
- loyalty, gleaning, redemption, belonging
What it is about
Ruth is set in the time of the judges and reads nothing like Judges. There are no battles, no miracles and no national events; there is a famine, two deaths, a return journey, a harvest and a marriage.
The whole book turns on a Moabite woman's decision to stay with her mother-in-law when every reason of self-interest says leave. Everything after that is the working out of that loyalty through the ordinary machinery of ancient law — gleaning rights, the redemption of family land, a legal scene at a town gate.
The last four verses reveal why the book is in the canon: this foreign woman is David's great-grandmother, and Matthew's genealogy names her.
Where to start
Chapter 1, and read the whole thing. It is four chapters and takes about fifteen minutes, which makes it the best entry point into the Old Testament there is.
The chapters worth knowing
- Ruth 1 — The speech everybody quotes, said by a widow to her mother-in-law on a road.
- Ruth 2 — Gleaning in Boaz's field, which is ancient welfare law working as intended.
- Ruth 4 — The legal scene at the gate, and the genealogy that explains why the book is here.
What people get wrong about it
That it is a love story. The famous speech is said by a widow to her mother-in-law, not to a husband, and the book's subject is covenant loyalty between two women with no legal claim on each other.
Questions
Why is the book of Ruth important?
It shows ordinary faithfulness during the period Judges describes as chaos, and it establishes that David — and therefore Jesus in Matthew's genealogy — descends from a Moabite woman.
How long does it take to read Ruth?
About fifteen minutes. Four chapters, one continuous story, and the easiest complete book in the Old Testament to read in a sitting.