Summary: Bible - Book of Ruth

The GIST

Ruth, one of the shortest books of the Bible, tells in four brief chapters how a young widow from Moab refuses to abandon her bereaved mother-in-law, follows her to Bethlehem, gleans in the fields to keep them both alive, and ends up married to a generous landowner named Boaz. Their son, Obed, becomes the grandfather of King David. The book never names its author. Tradition ascribes it to the prophet Samuel, while a substantial number of scholars date it to the Persian period, roughly 550 to 330 BCE.

It matters because it is a story about ordinary faithfulness with extraordinary consequences. There are no battles, no miracles, no kings on stage. There is a famine, three funerals, a harvest, a night on a threshing floor and a legal meeting at a city gate. Out of those plain materials the book builds a moving account of how kindness between people can refill a life that has been emptied, and it places a foreign woman at the root of Israel's royal house.

What It Says

Chapter 1: Death and emptiness

The story opens "in the days when the judges ruled," with a famine in the land. A man of Bethlehem named Elimelech takes his wife Naomi and their two sons, Mahlon and Chilion, to live in the country of Moab. Then the losses begin. Elimelech dies. The sons marry Moabite women, Orpah and Ruth, and the family stays about ten years. Then both sons die as well, and the text sums up Naomi's situation in one bleak line: "the woman was left of her two sons and her husband."

Naomi hears that the LORD has given his people bread again, and she sets out for Judah with her two daughters-in-law. On the road she stops and tells them to go home, each to her mother's house, with a blessing: "the LORD deal kindly with you, as ye have dealt with the dead, and with me." They weep and insist on coming. Naomi presses the point with hard logic. She is too old to marry again, and even if she bore sons that very night, would the young women wait for them to grow up? Her grief is plain: "the hand of the LORD is gone out against me."

Orpah kisses her mother-in-law and goes back. Ruth, the text says, "clave unto her." Naomi tries once more, and Ruth answers with the most famous words in the book: "for whither thou goest, I will go; and where thou lodgest, I will lodge: thy people shall be my people, and thy God my God." She adds that only death will separate them. Seeing that Ruth is "stedfastly minded," Naomi stops arguing.

When the two arrive, all Bethlehem is stirred, and people ask, "Is this Naomi?" Her reply turns on her own name: "Call me not Naomi, call me Mara: for the Almighty hath dealt very bitterly with me." Then comes the sentence that states the book's problem: "I went out full, and the LORD hath brought me home again empty." The chapter closes with a quiet note of hope. They have come to Bethlehem "in the beginning of barley harvest."

Chapter 2: The harvest field

The second chapter introduces Boaz, a relative of Elimelech and "a mighty man of wealth." Ruth asks Naomi's leave to go and glean, gathering the ears of grain left behind the reapers. The narrator notes, almost with a smile, that "her hap was to light on" a part of the field belonging to Boaz.

Boaz arrives from Bethlehem and greets his workers with "The LORD be with you." He notices the newcomer and asks whose young woman she is. The servant in charge explains that she is the Moabite who came back with Naomi, and that she has been working since morning. Boaz then speaks to Ruth directly. She is to stay in his field, keep close to his maidens, and drink from the water the young men have drawn. He has ordered the men not to touch her.

Ruth bows to the ground and asks why a stranger should be shown such favor. Boaz's answer shows that her reputation has gone ahead of her. He has been told all she has done for her mother-in-law since her husband died, and how she left her father, her mother and her native land for a people she did not know. He blesses her: "a full reward be given thee of the LORD God of Israel, under whose wings thou art come to trust."

His kindness is practical as well. At mealtime he invites her to eat bread with the reapers and hands her parched corn until she has had enough and has some left over. He privately tells his young men to let her glean among the sheaves and even to drop handfuls on purpose for her. By evening she has beaten out about an ephah of barley. She carries it home, along with the food she saved from her meal, and gives it to Naomi.

Naomi is astonished and asks where she worked. When she hears the name Boaz, her bitterness gives way to blessing: "Blessed be he of the LORD, who hath not left off his kindness to the living and to the dead." She tells Ruth that the man is one of their near kinsmen. Ruth keeps gleaning beside Boaz's maidens to the end of the barley harvest and the wheat harvest, and lives with her mother-in-law.

Chapter 3: The threshing floor

Now Naomi takes the lead. She wants "rest" for Ruth, a secure home, and she knows that Boaz will be winnowing barley that night at the threshing floor. Her instructions are precise. Ruth is to wash, anoint herself, put on her clothes and go down, but not make herself known until Boaz has finished eating and drinking. When he lies down, she is to note the place, uncover his feet and lie down there. Ruth replies, "All that thou sayest unto me I will do."

It goes as planned. Boaz, his heart merry, lies down at the end of the heap of grain, and Ruth comes softly. At midnight he wakes with a start to find a woman at his feet and asks who she is. Her answer is a proposal: "I am Ruth thine handmaid: spread therefore thy skirt over thine handmaid; for thou art a near kinsman."

Boaz responds with a blessing and praises her for not going after young men, whether poor or rich. He promises to do what she asks, because, as he says, "all the city of my people doth know that thou art a virtuous woman." But there is a complication, which he states honestly: "there is a kinsman nearer than I." If that man will do the kinsman's part, well and good. If not, Boaz swears that he will.

Ruth lies at his feet until morning and leaves before people can recognize one another. Boaz does not send her away with nothing. He measures six measures of barley into her veil, saying, "Go not empty unto thy mother in law." The word empty echoes Naomi's lament from the first chapter. Naomi, hearing the report, tells Ruth to sit still, because the man will not rest until he has settled the matter that very day.

Chapter 4: The gate, the wedding and the child

Boaz goes up to the city gate and sits down. The nearer kinsman comes by, and Boaz calls him over. The man is never named. Boaz gathers ten elders of the city as witnesses and lays out the case: Naomi is selling a parcel of land that belonged to Elimelech, and the nearer kinsman has the first right to redeem it. The man answers, "I will redeem it."

Then Boaz adds the condition. Whoever buys the field must also take Ruth the Moabitess, the widow, "to raise up the name of the dead upon his inheritance." The kinsman backs out, saying he cannot do it "lest I mar mine own inheritance," and hands his right to Boaz. The narrator pauses to explain an old custom for confirming such transactions: "a man plucked off his shoe, and gave it to his neighbour." The kinsman draws off his shoe.

Boaz declares before the elders and all the people that he has bought everything that belonged to Elimelech, Chilion and Mahlon, and that he has taken Ruth, Mahlon's widow, as his wife, so that the dead man's name will not be cut off. The people answer, "We are witnesses," and bless the bride, wishing that she be like Rachel and Leah, who built the house of Israel.

Boaz and Ruth marry, and she bears a son. The women of the town turn to Naomi and bless the LORD, who has not left her without a kinsman. The child, they say, will be "a restorer of thy life, and a nourisher of thine old age," and they praise Ruth as a daughter-in-law who loves her and is better to her than seven sons. Naomi takes the baby, lays him in her bosom and becomes his nurse. The neighbors name him Obed and say, "There is a son born to Naomi." The woman who came home empty is full again.

The last verses widen the frame. Obed "is the father of Jesse, the father of David." A closing genealogy runs from Pharez, the son Tamar bore to Judah, down through Boaz and Obed to David.

Why It Matters

In the Hebrew Bible, Ruth belongs to the Writings (Ketuvim) and is one of the Five Megillot. It is traditionally chanted in synagogues during the festival of Shavuot. In Judaism Ruth is regarded as the model convert, and rabbinic sources derive several laws of conversion from her declaration to Naomi. In most Christian canons the book is counted among the historical books and placed between Judges and 1 Samuel, and the Gospel of Matthew names Ruth and Boaz among the ancestors of Jesus.

Scholars read it in several ways. Some consider it possibly a work of historical fiction, while others hold that it is historical narrative told in the form of a short story. Some point to the meanings of the names as a hint of a crafted tale: Elimelech, "My God is King"; Naomi, "Pleasing"; Mahlon, "Sickness"; Chilion, "Wasting"; Mara, "Bitter." The closing genealogy is believed by scholars to be a later addition, though a carefully made one that ties the book into Israel's larger history.

The background of Boaz's role has drawn much attention. Custom required a close relative, the goel or kinsman-redeemer, to continue a dead man's line and to buy family land back so that it stayed in the family. Because Boaz was not Elimelech's brother, scholars call the arrangement here "Levirate-like," and they note that the book shows how hard it is to treat laws in books such as Deuteronomy as proof of actual practice. The usual interpretation also sees sexual allusion in the threshing-floor scene.

Then there is Moab. Elsewhere in biblical literature Moab is associated with hostility to Israel, and Deuteronomy excludes Moabites from the congregation. Yet this book makes a Moabite the ancestor of David. The Mishnah resolves the tension by saying that only male Moabites are banned. Many scholars read the book against the fifth century BCE, the time of Ezra and Nehemiah, when marriages to foreign women had become controversial, and see in it an argument that foreigners can be faithful members of the community. More recent readers have found in it a story about the dignity of labor, about strong and resourceful women, and about outcast peoples.

Who Should Read It

Read Ruth if you want a complete biblical story you can finish in one sitting, with characters who act with courage and decency in hard times. It will speak to anyone who has known loss, anyone who has been the outsider in a new place, and anyone curious about how the Bible handles questions of belonging and family. It also rewards readers interested in the roots of the David story and in how Jewish and Christian traditions have treasured this small, luminous book.