The Book of Ruth

The German poet Goethe called the book of Ruth "the most beautiful little whole of the Hebrew Bible".

It is about the size of a short story and is actually a short story. The background is a violent age not long after the arrival of Israelites in the promised land from Egypt. There was no king or ruler yet. Though community leaders known as Judges brought unity for brief periods, the society worked mostly on the law and logic of muscle power. At that time, there was a famine in Israel compelling a Bethlehemite called Elimelech to migrate to neighboring Moab with wife Naomi and two sons. There the sons married Moabite girls. However, soon after, both father and the two sons died leaving the family with three widows. Naomi decided to return to Israel and advised her daughters-in-law to go to their parental homes. The elder girl Orpah left after kissing Naomi. The younger one, Ruth could not be persuaded. "I will go wherever you go. Your people are my people. Your God is my God. Where you are buried, I too will be buried", was her response to Naomi's advice. Who can argue with a love so adamant?

After their arrival in In Israel in the barley harvesting season, following a unique narrative sequence, Ruth marries Boaz in whose field she was sent by Naomi to glean ears of grain left by the harvesters. Their union came through the initiative and even maneuvering of Naomi whose only concern was the welfare of her faithful daughter-in-law. The story ends with the birth of the son of Boaz and Ruth, Obed, who was to become the grandfather of Israel's greatest King, David and, as per the genealogy given in the Gospel of Mathew, ancestor even of Jesus of Nazareth.

No summary can do justice to the story of Ruth. Its incomparable beauty can be enjoyed only by reading the text. It shows you the stream of human relationship flowing warm and full of life. Its life is all-enduring love and unwavering faithfulness. Ruth and Naomi are heroic people who sustained the flame of humanity in the midst of demonic violence. It is because of people like them our species has so far survived.

A mother-in-law sending a widowed daughter-in-law to creep in the bed of a rich relative may outrage our ideals of morality and propriety. But it is pointless to apply our standards of morality to people who lived three millenniums ago. Besides, morals are mostly products of the respective ages. Enduring values are love and faithfulness.

This book challenges our gender and racial stereotypes. The story of two women finding strength and sustenance in love is a challenge to our ideas of women as the weaker sex. It also trashes all ideologies of superiority of chosen races. Ruth was not an Israelite. As a Moabite, she belonged to a nation hated, lampooned and vilified by Israelites who traced the origins of this rival race to Incest. But the power of her adamant love qualified the Moabite Ruth to be counted a daughter of Abraham and a citizen of the Republic of God.