Ruth

Interpretation: A Bible Commentary for Teaching and Preaching

Katharine Doob Sakenfeld

• Publisher: Westminster John Knox Press
• Year: 2011
• ISBN:
  9781611649321
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Biblical Commentary

The narrative of the book of Ruth is a drama of ordinary human life, but the drama unfolds against a background of the providence and purposes of God. Katharine Doob Sakenfeld has written a commentary that makes very clear why the book of Ruth has such great importance as literature and as Scripture.

Interpretation: A Bible Commentary for Teaching and Preaching is a distinctive resource for those who interpret the Bible in the church. Planned and written specifically for teaching and preaching needs, this critically acclaimed biblical commentary is a major contribution to scholarship and ministry.

PART ONE

From Judah to Moab and Return

RUTH 1

Ruth 1:1–5

Prologue

The story of Ruth opens with a condensed introduction of basic information, the kind that modern readers might easily pass over in their rush to get to the main action. Yet each component of the introduction is critical to an appreciation of the story that is to unfold.

“In the days when the judges ruled” provides specificity to the once-upon-a-time character of the tale to be told. In English Bibles, the story of Ruth is placed in its appropriate chronological context, immediately after the book of Judges. Although in the Hebrew Bible the story is gathered together with other festival scrolls (see Introduction), readers in the Jewish tradition have certainly also recognized the significance of its chronological setting. The book of Judges presents this era as one of repeated bloody battles between Israel and its Canaanite, Philistine, and other enemies, as well as of warfare among various Israelite tribes. It is also a time of repeated disobedience to God’s covenant stipulations, a time marked by a struggle to learn how to be faithful to God in the new setting of the promised land. The book of Judges concludes with a concern for the survival of the Benjaminite tribe, of whom only men are left alive; women are secured for these surviving men by intertribal warfare and by kidnapping. Then the narrator concludes the book as a whole: “In those days there was no king in Israel; all the people did what was right in their own eyes” (Judges 21:25). The implication is that the absence of centralized, hereditary leadership contributed to the wrongdoing of the people.

The entire story in the book of Ruth serves as counterpoint to this picture of the era of the Judges. It moves from the tribal level to the familial; it moves from warfare to constructive and peaceful individual action; it provides examples of faithful obedience, doing justice, loving mercy, and walking attentively with God (Micah 6:8). Upright action by both Israelite and foreigner is displayed by contrast to the wrongdoing of the people in Judges. And this upright action sets in motion the emergence of the royal leadership whose absence is lamented by the concluding line of Judges. This counterpoint is heightened by the location “Bethlehem in Judah,” since two of the stories of violence toward the end of Judges open with characters setting out from Bethlehem in Judah (Judges 17; 19).

Having set the time frame with its cultural and theological ramifications, the author now presents the circumstance that sets the entire story in motion: famine in the land. Famine and migration because of famine are well known in the Old Testament tradition. Abraham goes to Egypt because of famine (Gen. 12:10), Isaac goes to Gerar (Gen. 26:1); Joseph’s managerial prudence in conserving grain for use during a regional famine leads eventually to the migration of his father and brothers from Canaan to Egypt (Genesis 43). Famine is the implication of some of the traditional covenant curses—drought (Deut. 28:23–24) and insect plague (Deut. 28:38–42). In a subsistence agrarian economy where the quantity of food production is barely adequate on an annual basis, even in a good year, where long-term storage and long-range transport of food are not practical realities, the prospect of famine was and still is terrifying. Contemporary news reports from around the globe serve as reminder that famine is not just a bygone terror; every year peoples migrate in search of food or starve and become victims of disease because they are unable to migrate or find other sources of food.

Thus readers should not be surprised that one Israelite man decides to migrate before it is too late. He is apparently an ordinary citizen; the narrator provides only his name, Elimelech, and the names of his wife and two sons. Yet the name of his hometown strikes a chord, both of dissonance and of anticipation, once the whole story is known. In Hebrew, “Bethlehem” means literally “house of bread” or “house of food,” so there is an immediate irony in the name of the man’s town, an irony that highlights the severity of the famine: even in “House of Bread” there was apparently no food, no prospect for food. At the same time, the reader familiar with the story of David, to be told in I–II Samuel, recognizes that Bethlehem of Judah is David’s town (I Samuel 16) and will think ahead to the genealogy of David that concludes the story of Ruth. As Judges ends with the notation that there was no king in Israel, so Ruth ends with the name of David, who will institute God’s divinely chosen dynasty ruling over Judah.

From Bethlehem, “house of bread/food” where there is no food, the man of Bethlehem migrates to Moab, across the Jordan River to the east of Bethlehem. Why the family goes to Moab rather than somewhere else is not explained. The climate of Moab varies from area to area, as does the climate in the land presumed to be occupied by Israel in the time of the Judges. The author refers regularly to the “country” of Moab (1:1, 2, 6, 22; 2:6; 4:3); possibly this phrase represents a specific sub-region of Moabite territory, but what area is involved can no longer be determined. It is possible that some region of Moab might not have been affected as severely by a given drought as the region around Bethlehem. Yet since the text claims that the famine encompassed “the land,” a much broader area than Bethlehem, a significant difference in circumstances in Moab is more difficult to explain.

Although the ancient hearers of the story may or may not have regarded Moab as a sensible place for a famine-stricken family to search for food, the wider biblical context makes clear that Moab would have been regarded as an undesirable destination on other grounds. Although there are some positive references to Moab, the larger picture is generally negative. Tradition remembered that Israelite men became sexually involved with Moabite women and that apostasy resulted from that involvement (Num. 25:1–2). The king of Moab hired the diviner Balaam to curse Israel and destroy them (Numbers 22–24); only God’s intervention caused Balaam to bless Israel rather than curse them. Moab was among the oppressors of Israel in the era of the Judges (Judges 3:12ff). Deuteronomy 23:3 forbids the presence of Moabites in the Israelite religious assembly; in the time of Nehemiah this law became the basis for separating from Israel “all those of foreign descent” (Neh. 13:1). Although neither the date of composition of Ruth nor the dates of these other traditions can be determined with certainty, the evidence points to Israel’s long-standing negative view of Moab and its people, and this perspective forms the backdrop for all that transpires in the story of Ruth: the deaths of the men of the family, the magnitude of Ruth’s decision to accompany Naomi, the negative attitude of the field workers toward Ruth, the refusal of the nearer redeemer to marry Ruth, the contrasting favorable attitude of Boaz toward Ruth, and the portrait of a Moabite woman as one who acts faithfully and loyally.

Some scholars have argued that both the possibility of food and a positive view of Moab would be required in order for the story to have plausibility for the ancient hearer. But that is not necessarily the case. The author may equally or even more probably have wanted hearers to be taken aback and thus drawn in by the very oddity of Elimelech’s choice of destination. A reader or hearer is even more quickly drawn in when the story’s character makes an improbable decision or takes improbable action in the very first line. The likelihood that the narrative presumes Moab to be an implausible destination is underscored by the continuing series of improbable turns of event as the story proceeds.

Having established this theologically evocative setting in time and place, the author introduces the names of the characters and something of their origin. Although many names of biblical characters have meanings, the meanings of the names in this story are not clear. It has been noted that the names of the two sons Mahlon and Chilion rhyme, a feature sometimes found in folk-tales. The name Naomi may refer to sweetness or pleasantness (by contrast to her request in 1:20 to be called Mara, which means “bitter”). The phrase “Bethlehem in Judah” appears for the second time, as specification of the origin of this Ephrathite family. The term Ephrathite has varying uses in the Old Testament, sometimes identifying persons from the area of Ephraim well to the north of Judah. Here it does not have that meaning, but identifies the geographical and/or sub-tribe unit to which Elimelech’s family belongs. Its mention serves to heighten the connection of the story with King David, who is described in I Samuel 17:12 as the son of “an Ephrathite of Bethlehem in Judah,” the only other occurrence of this phrase apart from Ruth 1:2. In prophetic tradition, Micah 5:2 (Heb. v. 1) anticipates a new and upright ruler from the Davidic line; from Bethlehem of Ephrathah “shall come forth . . . one who is to rule in Israel.”

Elimelech dies in Moab, and subtly the narrator brings Naomi to the fore as “she was left with her two sons.” The sons marry Moabite women Orpah and Ruth. The sequence of names Orpah and Ruth, with Mahlon mentioned before Chilion in vv. 2 and 5, might suggest that Ruth was married to Chilion; but 4:10 specifies that Ruth was the wife of Mahlon. After ten years, the two sons die as well; again Naomi is the focus of the narrator, although she is not named by name: “the woman” was left bereft of the men of her family. The Hebrew does not make clear whether the ten years’ time refers to the entire period beginning with the family’s arrival in Moab, or whether the marriages had lasted ten years before the two sons died. In either case, but especially if one assumes ten years of marriage, Ruth is implicitly portrayed as a barren woman in this stage-setting introduction. The narrator’s comment toward the end of the story that “the LORD made her conceive” (4:13) suggests that Ruth should be viewed in the line of Sarah, Rachel, Manoah’s wife (Judges 13), and Hannah, each of whom bore a child of significance for Israel’s story after God removed her barrenness.

The narrator offers no explanation, natural or theological, for the death of Elimelech and his sons. Theorizing from the negative biblical view of the Moabites described above, some traditions of interpretation explain Elimelech’s death as divine punishment for taking his family to Moabite territory. In the same way, it is suggested that his sons died because they married Moabite wives. While this is certainly a possible interpretation, the narrator’s lack of attention to any reason suggests that the answer to the question is not central to the meaning of the story. The deaths of the three men serve to draw our attention to Naomi, whose life up to this point in her culture would have revolved around her husband and sons. What is to become of this Hebrew widow with no male support in a foreign land? As the story unfolds, the question of the foreign land receives an immediate but surprising resolution— Naomi will elect to return home, but accompanied by a Moabite woman. The matter of male support is not resolved until the conclusion of the story.

Ruth 1:6–18

Departure for Bethlehem

The extended presentation of the departure scene is structured by a series of speeches. Two long statements by Naomi are separated by a single sentence spoken by her two daughters-in-law. Then a brief third exhortation by Naomi leads to Ruth’s extended reply in verses 16–17, perhaps the best-known lines in the entire book. The unit may thus be divided into three sections: verses 6–10, Naomi’s first speech and Ruth and Orpah’s initial response; verses 11–14, Naomi’s second speech and Ruth and Orpah’s second response; verses 15–18: Naomi’s final speech and Ruth’s response.

First Speech and Response Cycle (1:6–10)

The opening words announce Naomi’s departure from Moab; the verb “return” indicates that her destination is Judah, even before this is stated in the following sentence. At first glance, her decision seems to be a consequence of her condition as a woman without husband or sons, since her departure follows immediately upon that description of her. But the statement of her departure in verse 6 sets her action in a larger context. Although we are not told how it happened, word had reached her that “the LORD had considered his people and given them food.” The famine in Judah had ended, and it ended not by chance but by God’s providential hand. Here is the first mention of the deity in the narrative, and one of only two wherein the narrator describes God as taking direct action to intervene in human circumstances pertinent to this story. The other concerns Ruth’s conception (4:13) and creates a narrative bracket as the two problems (famine and barrenness) raised by the story’s prologue are addressed by divine intervention at the very beginning and very end of the main narrative.

Although ancient farmers were no doubt well-versed in lore relating to productivity, the typical reasons for crop failure (insect plague or lack of rain) and resultant famine would be beyond their control. Thus the provision of food marking the cessation of famine would be readily thought to require action by God. It has been claimed that Israel’s religion was historically oriented, by contrast to the nature and fertility focus of Canaanite and other ancient Near Eastern religious thought and practice. More recently, however, scholars have questioned this sharp dichotomy. Israel’s neighbors did believe that their gods participated in the ordering of political life and historical events, and Israel for its part believed that its God controlled the coming of rains, seedtime and harvest. The key difference is that Israel believed that Yahweh alone controlled such events—any other heavenly beings were subordinate and obedient only to Yahweh’s commanding power.

The simple statement in Ruth that God gave the people food belongs in the larger biblical framework with poetic images from the psalms depicting God as provider of sustenance for all creation (e.g., Psalm 104), with portraits like that given in Jeremiah of the return from exile as a time of rejoicing over grain, wine, oil, and productive flocks ( Jer. 31:12–14), and even with an eschatological picture of plenty such as that of Ezekiel 47 with its ever-bearing fruit trees and fish-filled, fresh-water, no longer “Dead” Sea. And yet the story of Ruth shows us that human action is required before God’s gift of food can become realized for particular individuals. Divine provision of potential sustenance is a necessary beginning point, but only a beginning.

As verse 2c seems to resume verse 1 in the opening paragraph of the story, repeating some information already given, so verse 7 resumes verse 6, now indicating that the destination is indeed the land of Judah. We are not told why the daughters-in-law are accompanying Naomi, or how far the three have proceeded on their journey before she addresses them. The customs of Israel concerning family structure in a situation of female in-laws bereft of male family members are not known, nor are the customs of Moab. This lack of knowledge is compounded here by the presence of two ethnic groups in the family, as well as the migration between the two homelands. Thus it is not possible for modern interpreters to know what behavior within this part of the story should be regarded as usual and what as unusual or extraordinary. Perhaps the total configuration of circumstances was so unusual even in ancient Israel that the early hearers of the story did not themselves have a clear picture of what should be regarded as usual and what as exceptional, although Boaz certainly speaks as though he is impressed with Ruth’s decision (2:11–12). Thus interpreters of this interchange between Naomi and her daughters-in-law make different, indeed opposite, proposals concerning the tone, motivation, and intent of the actors and their words. Trible and many others see altruism at work here, while Fewell and Gunn read the characters as basically self-interested if not self-serving.

At some point on the journey Naomi apparently concludes that Orpah and Ruth are not just “seeing her off,” accompanying her for a part of the journey. Indeed, the wording of verse 7 suggests that all three initially intended to make the entire journey, so perhaps Naomi has second thoughts about the intention of her companions, rather than a fresh realization that they plan to continue with her. However it happens that their journey together reaches this juncture, Naomi speaks words to initiate separation. Her words have three parts: an instruction, a general blessing, and a prayer with specific content.

Instruction (v. 8a): Naomi instructs Ruth and Orpah to go back home, each to her “mother’s house.” The expression is uncommon in the Hebrew Bible; reference to the “father’s house” is much more typical. Indeed, some ancient Greek and Syriac manuscripts have the word for “father” instead of “mother” at this point. Theories about why Naomi uses the uncommon phrase range from the possibility that it is a more delicate and feminine expression, thus suitable for women’s speech ( Joüon, p. 36), to the recent suggestion of Meyers (pp. 109–14) that the expression appears because the context refers to arrangements for future husbands for the two widowed daughters, as is made explicit in verse 9. Meyers points to the use of “mother’s house” in the story of Rebekah (Gen. 24:28) where marriage arrangements are in view, and she raises the possibility that mothers played a far more significant role in the decisions about the selection of husbands than the male-focused biblical tradition would lead one to guess. While our knowledge of the ancient culture is insufficient to be certain about such a proposal, the literary effect of the expression is striking. In proposing to sever the relationship with her daughters-in-law, Naomi chooses an expression that draws attention to women’s interconnections (Trible, p. 169).

Blessing (v. 8b): Following upon the instruction to return to their mothers’ houses, Naomi invokes a farewell blessing upon her two daughters-in-law. She prays that God will “deal kindly” with her daughters-in-law as they have dealt with her. This blessing incorporates the first of a series of uses of the Hebrew term ḥesed, variously translated as kindness, lovingkindness, faithfulness, or loyalty, a term that is of central thematic importance for the book as a whole. In the Hebrew Bible ḥesed refers to an action by one person on behalf of another under circumstances that meet three main criteria. First, the action is essential to the survival or basic well-being of the recipient; it is not a matter of taking care of some casual or frivolous whim or desire. Furthermore, the needed action is one that only the person doing the act of ḥesed is in a position to provide; while it is not impossible that there could be some other provider, none is apparent on the immediate horizon of the situation. Finally, an act of ḥesed takes place or is requested within the context of an existing, established, and positive relationship between the persons involved. It is not done “out of the blue”; it is not done in order to establish a relationship not yet existing; the term is not used to refer to actions in human settings where forgiveness is needed to reestablish a positive relationship between the parties. Thus, contrary to older commentaries and translations, the English term “grace” is not well-suited as an English equivalent for the range of meaning of this Hebrew term (Sakenfeld, The Meaning of Ḥesed).

Ruth ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half-title Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Series Preface
• Author’s Preface
• Contents
• Introduction
• Part One
• Part Two
• Part Three
• Part Four
• Bibliography