What's Ruth about?

Ruth was written about five hundred years before Jesus, after the people had been released from Babylon and had returned Jerusalem. They had been in exile in Babylon for seventy years and so many families had begun the process of integrating into Babylonian society and religion. While books such as Ezra and Nehemiah, written around the same time, strongly condemn marriage to non-Jews out of fear of assimilation, this book recounts how an imaginary non-Jewish widow, Ruth, was assimilated into Jewish life and became the ancestress of the great King David. The book is arguing for inclusion of other cultures and faiths. This is a remarkable stance in light of the implacable condemnation of such relationships by most leader at the time.

The story unfolds as follows. A faithful Jewish couple living in the forbidden culture of Midian, have a son who married a non-Jew called Ruth. However he dies, leaving no children, as does his father and brother. This leaves his mother without male support (a disaster for women in the ancient world) so his mother returns to her family in Israel. Her foreting daughter-in law, Ruth, insists on returning with her mother-in-law to her strange country and faith.

A variety of ancient laws required that a relative of Ruth’s deceased husband take her into their family and she makes a successful match with a relative of her deceased husband. To ensure all is done legally, the story explains how a closer relative, who would have had priority in this arrangement, legally gave up his rights to marry Ruth. Remarkably, Ruth’s great-grandson by her new husband becomes King David, the first successful king in Jerusalem.

The story is claiming that non-Jewish cultures are acceptable to God and may even be the channel by which God brings someone of immense importance into the world.

How Ruth is helpful to us

The book of Ruth proposes a radical re-understanding of how God may work through foreign faiths and cultures, an attitude that is badly needed in our time. The story itself is delightful with various twists and turns as God, from behind the scenes, manages to bring King David into history. The story-telling is sophisticated, including realistic emotions in the characters. Early Christians pointed out that since Jesus was understood to have been a distant descendant of King David, this means that Jesus was ultimately descended from a non-Jew. That would have been encouraging as the followers of Jesus grew in non-Jewish parts of the Roman empire.