Don't Know Much About the Bible - Kenneth C. Davis [77]
BIBLICAL VOICES
“Whither thou goest, I will go; and where thou lodgest, I will lodge; thy people shall be my people, and thy God my God.” (Ruth 1:16 KJV)
PLOT SUMMARY: RUTH
During a famine in the time of the Judges, a woman named Naomi from the ancient town of Bethlehem takes refuge in the neighboring land of the Moabites, who occupied the land east of the Dead Sea. According to Israelite tradition, the Moabites were descended from one of Lot’s daughters. While there, Naomi’s sons both marry Moabite women. When her husband and two sons die, the bereaved Naomi decides to return to Bethlehem and she urges her two daughters-in-law to remain in Moab. One of them, Ruth, loyally insists on returning with Naomi, and they reach Bethlehem at the beginning of the barley harvest.
Back in Bethlehem, Naomi sees some marital possibilities for Ruth in Boaz, a distant relative, and she suggests Ruth go and lie next to Boaz and “uncover his feet,” a biblical euphemism for the male sex organ. Ruth takes Naomi’s advice, and when Boaz wakes up to discover Ruth cuddled up nearby, she tells him to spread his cloak over her, another euphemism suggesting more than just getting cozy under the blankets. Boaz is definitely interested, but under the law, another kinsman has the right of first refusal. When that man passes Ruth up, Boaz marries her. Despite the fact that Ruth is a foreigner, she becomes the great-grandmother of King David. Besides its importance to Jewish tradition, this line of descent is doubly significant because Jesus was also born from this lineage, a fact noted in the genealogy given at the beginning of Matthew in the New Testament.
As a literary character, Ruth has been viewed in two compelling lights. First of all, despite aggressively climbing into the sack with Boaz and seducing him, she is otherwise the model of a virtuous, loyal woman who does what is right. Although the Bible’s bad girls—Eve, Bathsheba, Delilah, Jezebel—have gotten most of the publicity, many of the “good girls” were far more significant in Israelite history. Ruth belongs to this group, who have taken a backseat to the more familiar male heroes. Ironically, women in ancient Israeli society were little more than slaves with few legal rights. But the roster of Hebrew heroines who took matters into their own hands is impressive: Deborah of Judges; Rachel, whose quick thinking when she sat on her father’s idols in Genesis saves her husband, Isaac; Miriam, who rescues the infant Moses and then helps lead the Exodus; Rahab, the prostitute who helped capture Jericho; and Tamar, who played the resourceful prostitute to win her just due from Judah (see Genesis) and was, like Ruth, an ancestor of King David, Israel’s greatest national hero—and by extension ancestors of Solomon and Jesus as well.
So far removed from the violence, sexual savagery, and warfare of Judges, the simple, folksy Ruth has been interpreted in various ways. Although it is set before the Exile, some scholars believe it was written after the Exile in Babylon and its message was aimed at the harsh decrees opposing Jewish intermarriage in the period after the Exile when Jewish men were urged to divorce their foreign wives (see Ezra). The emphasis on the fact that the virtuous Ruth is a foreigner, her acceptance by Boaz despite this fact, and her place in the genealogy of King David all seem to underscore the acceptability of foreign wives. But others see Ruth as a much simpler “virtue” tale that proves that God is open to those outside of Israel.
UNEASY LIES THE HEAD THAT WEARS A CROWN…PART 1
1 & 2 SAMUEL
So David prevailed over the Philistine with a sling and with a stone. (I Sam. 17:50 KJV)
* Who really killed Goliath?
* Was David a traitor?
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