Goethe has characterized the book of Ruth as the loveliest little
idyll that tradition has transmitted to us. Whatever be its didactic
purpose--and some would prefer to think that it had little or none-it
is, at any rate, a wonderful prose poem, sweet, artless, and persuasive,
touched with the quaintness of an older world and fresh with the scent
of the harvest fields. The love--stronger than country--of Ruth for
Naomi, the gracious figure of Boaz as he moves about the fields with a
word of blessing for the reapers, the innocent scheming of Naomi to
secure him as a husband for Ruth--these and a score of similar touches
establish the book for ever in the heart of all who love nobility and
romance.
The inimitable grace and tenderness of the story are dissipated in a
summary, but the main facts are these. A man of Bethlehem, with his
wife Naomi and two sons, is driven by stress of famine to Moab,
where the sons marry women of the land. In course of time, father
and sons die, and Naomi resolves to return home. Ruth, one of her
daughters-in-law, accompanies her, in spite of Naomi's earnest
entreaty that she should remain in her own land. In Bethlehem, Ruth
receives peculiar kindness from Boaz, a wealthy landowner, who
happens to be a kinsman of Naomi; and Naomi, with a woman's happy
instinct, devises a plan for bringing Boaz to declare himself a
champion and lover of Ruth. The plan is successful. A kinsman nearer
than Boaz refuses to claim his rights by marrying her, and the way
is left open for Boaz. He accordingly marries Ruth, who thus becomes
the ancestress of the great King David.
Why was this story told? The question of its object is to some
extent bound up with the question of date; and for several reasons,
this appears to be late. (1) In the Greek, Latin and modern Bibles,
Ruth is placed after Judges; in the Hebrew Bible it is placed
towards the end, among the _Writings_, i.e. the last division,
in which, speaking generally, only late books appear. Had the book
been pre-exilic, it is natural to suppose that it would have been
placed after Judges in the second division. Some indeed maintain
that this is its original position; but it is easier to account for
its transference from the third division to the second, as a foil to
the war-like episodes of the judges, than for its transference from
the second to the third. (2) The argument from language is perhaps
not absolutely decisive, but, on the whole, it is scarcely
compatible with an early date. Some words are pure Aramaic, and some
of the Hebrew usages do not appear in early literature, e.g.,
"fall," in the sense of "fall out, issue, happen," iii. 18. (3) The
opening words--"In the days when the judges judged," i. 1--suggest
not only that those days are past, but that they are regarded as a
definite period falling within an historical scheme. The book must
be, at any rate, as late as David--for it describes Ruth as his
ancestress, iv. l7--and probably much later, as the implication is
that it is a great thing to be the ancestress of David. The
reverence of a later age for the great king shines through the
simple genealogical notice with which the story concludes.[1] (4)
Further, the old custom of throwing away the shoe as a symbol of the
abandonment of one's claim to property, a custom familiar in the
seventh century B.C. (Deut. xxv. 9f.) is in iv. 7 regarded as
obsolete, belonging to the "former time." The cumulative effect of
these indications is strongly to suggest a post-exilic date. Not
perhaps, however, a very late one: a book as late as the Maccabean
period would hardly have reflected so kindly a feeling towards the
foreigner (cf. Esther).
[Footnote 1: Probably iv. 18-22 is a later addition, but that does
not affect the general argument (cf. _v_.17).]
The story probably rests upon a basis of fact. David's conduct in
putting his parents under the protection of the king of Moab (I Sam.
xxii. 3, 4) would find its simplest explanation, if he had been
connected in some way with Moab, as the book of Ruth represents him
to have been; whereas a later age would hardly have dared to invent
a Moabite ancestress for him, had there been no tradition to that
effect.
The object of the book has been supposed by some to be to commend
the so-called levirate marriage. This is improbable: not so much
because the marriage was not strictly levirate, since neither Boaz
nor the kinsman was the brother-in-law of Ruth--it would be fair
enough to regard this as a legitimate extension of the principle of
levirate marriage, whose object was to perpetuate the dead man's
name--but rather because this is a comparatively subordinate element
in the story.
The true explanation is no doubt to be sought in the fact that Ruth
the Moabitess is counted worthy to be an ancestress of David; and,
if the book be post-exilic, its religious significance is at once
apparent. It was in all probability the dignified answer of a man of
prophetic instincts to the rigorous measures of Ezra, which demanded
the divorce of all foreign women (Ezra ix. x, cf. Neh. xiii. 23ff.);
for it can hardly be doubted that there is a delicate polemic in the
repeated designation of Ruth as _the Moabitess_, i. 22, ii. 2,
6, 21, iv. 5, 10--she even calls herself the "stranger," ii. 10. It
would be pleasant to think that the writer had himself married one
of these foreign women. In any case, he champions their cause not
only with generosity but with insight; for he knows that some of
them have faith enough to adopt Israel's God as their God, i. 16,
and that even a Moabitess may be an Israelite indeed. Ezra's severe
legislation was inspired by the worthy desire to preserve Israel's
religion from the peril of contagion: the author of Ruth gently
teaches that the foreign woman is not an inevitable peril, she may
be loyal to Israel and faithful to Israel's God. The writer dares to
represent the Moabitess as eating with the Jews, ii. l4--winning by
her ability, resource and affection, the regard of all, and counted
by God worthy to be the mother of Israel's greatest king. The
generous type of religion represented by the book of Ruth is a much
needed and very attractive complement to the stern legalism of Ezra.