Ruth (Book of)
Ruth (Book of)
RUTH (Book of)
1. Contents.The book is really the narrative of a family story, told in a charmingly idyllic way. The fact of most far-reaching interest which it contains is that the Moabitess Ruth, i.e. one who is non-Israelite, is represented as the ancestress of the house of David; this is very important, as testifying to a spirit which is very different from ordinary Jewish exclusiveness, and as far as the OT is concerned can be paralleled only by the Book of Jonah. A point of subsidiary but yet considerable interest in the book is its archology; the notices concerning the laws of the marriage of next-of-kin (Rth 2:20, Rth 4:1 ff.), and of the method of transferring property (Rth 4:7-8), and of the custom of the formal ratification of a compact (Rth 4:11-12), are all evidently echoes of usages which belonged to a time long anterior to the date at which the book was written, though in part still in vogue.
2. Date.The language of the book has an Aramaicizing tendency; it implicitly acknowledges itself to have been written long after the time of the events it professes to describe (Rth 1:1, Rth 4:7); in the Hebrew Canon it is placed among the Hagiographa; these considerations lead to the conclusion that the book must be of late date. That it is post-exilic cannot admit of doubt; but to assign to it a date more definite than this would be precarious. This much, at least, may be said: the third portion of the Hebrew Canon was completed, at the earliest, after the close of the 3rd cent. b.c. Now it is not likely that a book which purported to contain a fuller genealogy of David than that of 1Samuel would have been long in existence without being admitted into the Canon.
W. O. E. Oesterley.