What the book is
Ruth is one of the most beautifully told stories in the Bible. In the days of the judges, a famine drives Naomi and her family from Bethlehem to Moab. Her husband and both her sons die there, and she sets out for home with nothing. One of her daughters-in-law, Ruth the Moabite, refuses to leave her:
But Ruth said, “Stop pressing me to leave you and turn away from following you. Wherever you travel, I will travel with you; wherever you stop for the night, I will stop as well. Your people are now my people, and your God is now my God.
In Bethlehem Ruth gleans in the fields of Boaz, a relative of Naomi’s husband, who treats her with kindness. At Naomi’s urging she goes to him at night on the threshing floor and asks him to act as the family’s redeemer. Boaz marries her, and their son Obed becomes the grandfather of David.
Who wrote it, and when
The book does not name its author. Jewish tradition credited it to Samuel. It is set “in the days when the judges ruled” (1:1), but it explains old customs as if to readers who no longer knew them (4:7), and it ends with David’s family line, so it was written down later, at the earliest in the time of the kings. Some scholars date it to the time after the exile, when marriages to foreign women were questioned (Ezra 9–10), and read it as a gentle answer: David’s own great-grandmother was a Moabite. The draft takes no side; these questions do not change how a sentence is translated.
How the book is laid out
- Loss in Moab and the return (1): Naomi’s grief, and Ruth’s vow.
- In the field of Boaz (2): gleaning, and the first kindness.
- At the threshing floor (3): Ruth’s request, and Boaz’s promise.
- At the town gate (4): the nearer redeemer gives up his right, Boaz marries Ruth, and the birth of Obed, ending with the line from Perez to David.
How Open Word Bible translates Ruth
Faithful love. The book’s key word is the Hebrew ḥesed, the faithful love of someone bound to others and determined not to let them go. Naomi prays that the LORD will show it to her daughters-in-law (1:8), and Boaz praises Ruth for it (3:10). The draft says “faithful love” each time, and the article on it starts from Ruth. See Hesed.
The redeemer. A redeemer was the close relative bound to buy back family land and care for the family line (Leviticus 25:25). The draft says “family redeemer”, and decisions explain the duty and how Boaz goes beyond it.
Spread your wing (3:9). Ruth asks Boaz, “Spread the wing of your cloak over your servant.” The same word means a wing and the corner of a garment: Boaz had blessed her as one who came to shelter under the LORD’s wings (2:12), and now she asks him to be that shelter by taking her as his wife. The footnote explains the custom.
Whose kindness? (2:20). When Naomi hears it was Boaz’s field, she speaks of one who has not stopped showing faithful love to the living and the dead. The Hebrew can mean the LORD or Boaz; the draft reads it as the LORD, marks the decision uncertain, and footnotes the reading that it is Boaz.
Written and read. In several places the Hebrew text as written differs from the form the scribes marked to be read aloud, as in 3:3–4 and 4:5. The draft follows the reading aloud, and each place has a footnote.
The family line at the end (4:18–22) is taken up in Matthew’s genealogy of Jesus, which names Ruth (Matthew 1:5).