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[This is from our MUST READ/MUST OWN book titled: Pentateuch and Haftarahs, ed. Dr. J.H.Hertz; highlights and reformatting added.]
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Ruth
Jack M. Sasson
The literary analysis of Ruth differs significantly
- for those who treat it as a folktale with an earlier, oral form
- and for those who examine the fine elaboration of its literate narrative art, although one approach rarely excludes the other.
An earlier generation of scholars, given to charting the metamorphosis of tales from single folkloric prototypes,
- saw Ruth as a recasting of certain incidents in the saga of the goddess Isis, as a Hebraized version of the Eleusinian mysteries, with Naomi and Ruth taking the roles of Demeter and Persephone, respectively,
- or as a historicized version of the epic of the Canaanite goddess Anat.
All these hypotheses theorized amply about why the Hebrew story would adapt foreign myths;
- the general tendency was to see in Ruth an effort to create a mythological or epic backdrop for the ancestry of David.
A more recent approach has drawn on the folklorist work of the Russian formalist Vladimir Propp
- in order to show that Ruth follows a pattern common to folktales and as such cannot be a reliable source for information of a legal and historical nature,
- since folktales ordinarily eschew all such information in favor of easily accessible testimony for exemplary behavior.
In any event, even among the artful narratives of Scripture,
- Ruth stands out in the power of its concentration,
- in the limpidity of its vocabulary,
- in the versatility of its language,
- in the balanced proportion of its scenes,
- and, above all, in the vividness and integrity of its main characters.
The narrator of Ruth may well have had an orally circulating tale with which to work, but we have only his written version to inspect for signs of its original form.
- The fact that the tale divides naturally into four major episodes, each of which ends with summarizing and previewing lines, may suggest a technique by which to hold the attention of a listening rather than a reading audience.
- The plot is advanced mostly through dialogue, which accounts for fifty-five of its eighty-five verses, a technique that makes every scene intimate.
- This, the highest ratio of dialogue to narrative in any of the biblical books, is certainly rich in dramatic potential, and the audience is obliged to infer the story’s meaning from minute clues in the words exchanged by the characters.
- On several occasions the language in Ruth also reflects an interaction between the storyteller and his audience. For example, the famous aside in 4:7 (“Now in Israel’s past days, in order to validate any legal act”) gains in impact when heard in a tone that differs from that of the flanking narratives.
Ruth is replete with examples of oral wordplay and of thematic key words meant to stimulate an audience’s memory. With the exception of Genesis, another book full of folktales with versions which may have circulated by word of mouth, this type of paronomasia is nowhere else as densely deployed in Hebrew narratives. On the other hand, Ruth also requires patient visual study to unlock a few examples of gematria (a cryptograph with hidden numeric values); and this condition shows that the narrator adapted whatever came to his disposal for a learned readership.
More impressive as testimony for the narrator’s skill in handling his tale, however, are the various devices he uses to structure his material. Perceptive recent writings (some more convincing than others) have uncovered carefully developed and ordered series of patterns, often guided by a reliance on sets of binary oppositions:
- famine/plenty,
- escape/return,
- barrenness/fruitfulness,
- isolation/community,
- reward/punishment,
- tradition/innovation,
- male/female,
- life/death.
The narrator often distributes these themes far apart and realizes the thematic opposition only after a span of time and activity. On the other hand, he achieves intensity in each of his scenes by placing in a central position the verses which provide crucial information or development.
Much of the story’s charm derives from its language.
- Although there are a number of words and idioms unique to Ruth,
- none of them is obscure enough to impede the flow of the narrative.
- The harmonious alliteration and repetition of key words in many clauses generate a reassuring sense of patterned thematic development.
- The absence of martial terminology,
- the underplaying of theological diction,
- the frequency of gently couched greetings and blessings (ten times),
- the constant recall in the dialogue of vocabulary that accentuates noble sentiments and compassionate motives—
all these have allowed Ruth to work its magic on countless generations.
Each of Ruth’s four scenes, equivalent to the four chapters in our Bible, is provided with a coda meant to summarize past activities even as it prefigures future ones.
- The first of these contains an initial unit (1:1-6) which serves as prologue to the story,
- and the last has a ballast unit (4:14-17) which provides a satisfying epilogue.
- The last coda anticipates a future beyond the story’s immediate frame and includes a genealogy (4:18-22) trimmed unmistakably to place the story’s main male character, Boaz, in the favored seventh slot, thereby conveying a moral that was of particular interest to the historically minded Hebrew: common people achieve uncommon ends when they act unselfishly toward each other.
The narrator sets the scene in the prologue with remarkable economy. Time is at once specific and diffuse (“When the Judges used to judge”), conveying more than the actual words imply, since during that period—as any Hebrew would know—people were constantly losing God’s grace before earning it again.
This initial clause wrenches Ruth from the world of folk or fairy tales (where gods and magic reside comfortably), setting it within Israel’s chronicle of its troubled relationship with God.
For the story’s immediate purpose, however, geography acquires controlling power:
- the narrative is specific when it mentions Bethlehem, within Israel’s orbit,
- and becomes diffuse when it speaks of the other world, Moab, where Judeans ought to have no business.
Sandwiched between these temporal and spatial elements is an impersonal force, ra’av, “famine,” which in Israel could only have been God’s instrument for judgment and cannot, therefore, be thwarted by human acts. Moab, where the god Chemosh reigns, may not be experiencing famine when a Judean family seeks shelter there; but its fields will eventually kill a father and his sons and render their wives sterile.
At first this family is introduced anonymously: “a certain man from Judah,” his wife, and his two sons trek eastward; and only when they reach Moab do they acquire personal names. Given their abandonment of God and his land, the parents’ names must certainly be ironic
- (Elimelech, “My God Is King”;
- Naomi, “Winsome” or “My Lovely One”),
while those of the sons could be foreboding—even sinister, given their crackly rhyme:
Machlon and Chilion (“Weakening and Pining” or “Blot Out and Perish”).
Symbolic names of this sort are not typical of Hebrew narrative and may once more betray an edifying purpose in Ruth.
The remaining portion of introduction has four short verses that nicely emulate the relentlessness of fate.
- Naomi loses her husband,
- and without the guidance of a father,
- the boys marry two Moabite women whom the narrator deceptively presents in conventional Hebrew style.As is common in Hebrew narrative technique, Ruth, a major character, gets second mention. Her name, edifyingly but falsely understood to mean “Friendship,” is related to a Semitic root meaning “to be soaked, irrigated,” or the like.
- Orpah is introduces first: “Nape (of the neck),” according to some who read the name prefiguratively; “Scented” or “Cloudy,” according to some philologists.
- As is to be expected, the marriages have no issue, for there could be no future for the sons of Israel in Moab,
- and the narrator reverts to Naomi, the only Judean to survive this calamity.
- The gloom, inaugurated so impersonally with the word “famine,” gives way to hope as Naomi hears of the restoration of God’s bounties to her homeland.
- The language here (1:6) is rich with assonance and alliteration (latet lahem lahem), ending with the word for food, lehem, which unsubtly directs Naomi, as well as the reader, back to Bethlehem, “Storehouse for food.”
The story of Ruth really begins here. Because it is a deceptively simple tale whose themes, loyalty and love, are manifest, Ruth is accessible to all on first reading. However, its intricately worked out plot relies on an awareness of legal and social mechanisms obtaining among the Hebrews, and the best way to clarify these is simply to follow the narrative.
Her future limited by the days remaining to an old woman, her survival severely compromised by the absence of male helpers, her past totally obliterated as long as she remains in Moab, Naomi resolves to go back home. As a widow, ‘almanah (a term which in biblical Hebrew is applied only when women are bereaved of husbands, sons, and fathers-in-law), Naomi must depend on Ephrathites for minimal help; but she has to be in Bethlehem to receive it. She could not wish for her daughters-in-law to accompany her, for in Bethlehem each of them would be a nokhriyah, a “foreign woman,” too distant from her own kin to receive care and sustenance. Luckily for us who cherish noble sentiments and beautiful rhetoric, Naomi cannot easily persuade them to face this reality.
She pursues on three levels her arguments against taking Moabite women back to Bethlehem.
She first (1:8-9) wishes them godspeed and good marriages—a powerful indication that levirate marriage (discussed below) is not at stake in this story. When Orpah and Ruth “break into loud weeping” and insist on accompanying her, Naomi turns mordant and self-pitying: she is too old to bear the sons who could revive their marriages; bereft though they may be, her daughters-in-law cannot match the sheer misery God has inflicted on her.
Wisely, Orpah understand the predicament and, after much weeping, goes home. That later legends made her an ancestress of Goliath shows, however, how reasonable decisions can nevertheless be remembered as betrayals. Ruth, on the other hand, “clings” (the verb dabaq, repeated with slightly differing meanings four times in two chapters) to Naomi, thereby holding center stage for the next three major scenes.
Ruth’s supplication to accompany Naomi is not registered in poetic language; but it does reach a lyrical perfection rarely matched in other Hebrew narratives. She cannot be persuaded to desert Naomi, and will go with her anywhere; she will share her shelter, whatever its quality (so; rather than, as commonly translated, “where you lodge, I will lodge”); her fate will be with Naomi’s people and with God, and she will never return home, for she expects to be buried by Naomi’s grave. Ruth invokes a powerful oath, placing herself in her mother-in-law’s bondage: “May the Lord strike me anytime with afflictions, if anything but death parts us” (v. 17). Because of the oath, Naomi has no choice but to accept Ruth’s decision.
Bethlehem hums (the city is here personified, and the verb is onomatopoeic) at their arrival, but we cannot be sure to what effect. The inhabitants’ reported speech—“Could this be Naomi?”—is brief, but it conveys bewilderment, sadness, puzzlement, excitement, shock, delight, or any combination of these and a dozen more emotions. Naomi’s response, though obscure in its Hebrew construction, nevertheless shows that the bitterness she previously displayed has not faded. “Call me Mara [‘Bitter One’],” she says, and allows them no time to ask why before she delivers her second tirade against God’s injustice. Bethlehem’s women do not attempt to soothe her rage: when two impoverished women enter a town with no men to lead them, the tragedy of the situation needs no elaboration.
The first scene ends here. In his summary of these events, the narrator adds that “they reached Bethlehem at the beginning of the barley harvest” (v. 22) and thus assures us that famine is not a deprivation that Naomi will experience again. This notice also allows us to gauge the time spanning the remaining scenes as no more than about ninety days, when the winnowing seasons for barley and wheat come to an end.
Chapter 2 opens by introducing a rich landowner, Boaz, who is kin to Naomi’s husband. His name may include “strength” (‘oz) as part of its meaning; but it is more relevant to recall that Boaz was the name of one pillar in Solomon’s temple, and hence may have had a dynastic implication. Boaz, then, is related to Elimelech and can be a potential redeemer of his deceased kinsman’s land; but his kinship is not so immediate as to give him first opportunity to do so.
At any rate, it is Ruth who suggests a way of linking her fate to him: “Should I go to the field and glean among the ears of grains, in the hope of pleasing him?” (v. 2); for Ruth urgently needs to find a way to change her situation, from being a nokhriyah to becoming a shifhah, a “maidservant.” Lowly as this last status may be within a clan, it nevertheless affords its holder protection from hunger and from violence.
Ruth actually wants permission to gather the grain from among the sheaves, a privilege (we learn from v. 15) reserved for members of the clan, which only a landowner can grant. Boaz notices the woman as she stands waiting for his reply. An overseer identifies Ruth and even attempts a weak jest. “Notice,” he tells Boaz, “she had little time to stay at home” (v. 7). Boaz asks no questions from this unprivileged soul but readily offers advice: stay in my field, stick to my girls; even drink a little water if you care to. However, he does not respond to her original request. Ruth is not ready to give up. With a gesture of exaggerated servility—usually only kings and gods receive such prostrations—Ruth gently cloaks her expectations: “Why is it that I pleased you enough to notice me? I am but a foreigner [nokhriyah]” (v.10). Boaz responds with another speech but is now more personal: you are wonderfully loyal and brave; God will surely reward you for seeking his protection.
Ruth, who has yet to receive permission, tries again, this time with morechutzpah: “I must have pleased you, my lord, since you have comforted me and have spoken tenderly to your maidservant [shifhah]. Yet I am not even considered one of your maidservants” (v. 13). Finally grasping Ruth’s intent, Boaz waits until lunchtime to make up his mind. Then, in full view of his workers (an act which may well have a legal implication), he seats her among them, personally fills her bowl with grain and mash, and gives her the permission he has not granted previously. In short, Ruth has come to be a member of Boaz’s clan and need no longer be a burden to her mother-in-law.
As she returns home, loaded with twenty kilograms of grain through Boaz’s generosity, Naomi praises her deed and blesses Boaz, invoking a delicious pun as she lauds his goodness: “Boaz [bo’az] … who has not withheld [‘azab] his kindness” (v. 20). When Naomi reveals that Boaz is also in a position to redeem the land left her by her husband, the stage is set for the next encounter between Ruth and Boaz, for the story of Ruth cannot end when hunger is replaced by satiety; there is yet the matter of perpetuating the memory of men who left no sons behind.
It is Naomi who provokes the next meeting. She wants Ruth to enter Boaz’s home, perhaps not as a wife but certainly as a concubine. Were this to happen, the bonds of kinship that kept the two women together would surely be broken. Yet this could not be acceptable to Ruth, whose oath demanded otherwise.
The rest of the story tells how Ruth resourcefully resolves her dilemma.
Harvest time has just come to an end, and owners of fields are customarily celebrating God’s bounty on the threshing floor, under the warm and cloudless sky of a Judean spring. Boaz has drunk enough to feel free from daily care. Ruth, handsomely dressed and fetchingly scented, waits until midnight before approaching the sleeping Boaz. Naomi’s instructions at this point are hard for us to establish: Is Ruth merely to remove the covers at his feet? Or is Naomi asking her to risk a bolder move?
Whatever the charge, we learn that Boaz momentarily panics at finding a woman so close to him, and the scene is obviously meant to be humorous. Ruth quickly opens with a twofold proposal. “I am Ruth your handmaid,” she says (3:9), using the term ‘amah, which ordinarily denotes a woman who can be taken by a freeman as either concubine or wife. Her next statement, “spread your robe over your handmaid,” may well be teasing Boaz, who earlier praised her for seeking shelter under God’s wings but who ignored her request. The statement’s implication, however, could not be plainer, for it is an appeal to be brought into Boaz’s immediate household (see Deut. 23:1 and Ezek. 16).
When, finally, Ruth entreats Boaz to become Naomi’s redeemer, his turn comes to rebuke her gently. Her last request, he tells her, is better than the preceding one, for she urged him in behalf of Naomi only after she had made a plea for her own future. Whatever their sequence, these two requests betray Ruth’s strategy for a happy ending to all concerned: by entering the household of the man who redeems Naomi, Ruth can retain kinship to her, though in a different fashion.
Boaz assures her on all counts. She need no longer look for other men to protect her. Indeed, because of her marriage to Machlon, her reputation as an ‘eshet hayil—a woman married to a man of standing—is well known to the whole town. Therefore, there is nothing to prevent her from entering his household as an ‘ishah, a primary wife. The matter of becoming Naomi’s redeemer is more complex, since another man has prior rights to redeem her land. Nevertheless, he will do all that is in his power to fulfill the obligation himself. To all this, Boaz invokes a powerful oath and asks Ruth to stay the night.
Ruth has triumphed; but she needs to persuade Naomi that Boaz will be a suitable redeemer, and it is only in the last verses of the third chapter that this occurs. Naomi herself has no cause to meet Boaz, let alone to prefer him to another redeemer. Ruth therefore uses the enormous bounties (another twenty kilograms or so of grain) that Boaz gave her at dawn to frame her last persuasive act. “He gave me six measures of barley, telling me not to return empty-handed to my mother-in-law,” she reports to Naomi (v.17). Boaz, of course, has said nothing of the sort; but what better way to sway her mother-in-law than to recall at such an auspicious moment a term (reyqam, empty-handed”) that Naomi used in her deepest despair (“but the Lord had brought me back empty,” 1:21)?
For the last episode, the narrator switches from a series of intimate encounters to a crowd scene. Again, chance occurrences are made to seem natural. Just as Boaz reaches the city gate, where business transactions take place, the potential redeemer steps into the limelight. In a tale in which names enhance characters and prefigure their development, the potential redeemer is anonymous, for his future, unlike Boaz’s, will ultimately be anonymous: an interesting fate for someone who will shortly fret about his estate. He is asked to purchase the land available to Naomi and thus become her redeemer. Otherwise, Boaz will do so. The man readily accepts, for Elimelech’s land will become his after the death of a widow without issue. Boaz then plays his trump card.
He tells the assembly that on the very same day that the redeemer acquires Naomi’s land, he, Boaz, will acquire Ruth, widow of Machlon, “in order to perpetuate the memory of the deceased upon his estate” (4:5). I have italicized this clause because it explains how Boaz persuades the redeemer to give up his land. Boaz used the verb qanah to declare what must be done with Ruth. When the Masorites vocalized this verb centuries after the tale was written, they made it read “You must acquire,” qanita,whereas the verb’s consonants are qnyty, “I have acquired.”
For this reason, generations of readers have thought that laws regarding levirate marriages were at stake: Ruth had to marry this anonymous redeemer unless he gave up his rights to Boaz. But this could not be the case, since levirate marriages were in fact no marriages at all, and a widow who found herself in this situation automatically entered her brother-in-law’s household, at least until she bore a son for her dead husband. In fact, as Boaz himself previously acknowledged (3:10), Ruth was free to select her own protector.
Before a lawfully constituted assembly, Boaz appeals to an old custom, fully and legalistically formulated in 4:10, which encouraged a man to beget a child on a widow so that “the memory of the deceased may not be obliterated from among his kinfolk.” The union’s first child would therefore be Machlon’s, and when he grew up, the land redeemed from Naomi would revert to that child. This is why, when the redeemer hears of Boaz’s resolve, he gives up his claim to redemption. In all these details, then, the nice distinctions of social and legal institutions become an integral part of the storyteller’s subtle art.
The story of Ruth could end here. The narrator, however, uses a few more verses to refresh his audience’s memory of past customs of validation and attestation (4:7), to record Boaz’ legal declarations (4:9-10), and to savor the beautiful blessing—actually a royal blessing—with its rich promises for the couple’s future (4:11-12). The coda is deftly used to tie up loose ends and to recapitulate themes. After Boaz makes Ruth his wife (‘ishah), God allows her to conceive, but the boy that she bears is really Naomi’s. Women in chorus praise God for preventing the end of Elimelech’s line and thus overturning a fate that seemed so sinister in the prologue. They laud Boaz as an ideal redeemer, the child Obed as a perfect comforter and a solicitous sustainer, and Ruth as Naomi’s beloved.
A curious notice follows, alerting the audience to unfoldings exceptional in Scripture: “female neighbors”—and not the parents—invent a name for Obed; Naomi adopts him and becomes his keeper. In the ancient Near East, these acts symbolize the legitimacy of royal power. It is, however, enough simply to pursue the text a few more verses (18-22) to discover that—-
the child born to Ruth eventually fathers Jesse,
who in turn fathers King David.