Sunday School Lesson 20: All the City...Doth Know That Thou Art a Virtuous Woman

The book of Ruth is one of the irritating books in the Bible to me. I always hate it when people try to make scripture out of stories that don't necessarily discuss the will of God or the doctrine of Christ, both of which I find lacking in this book.  True, Ruth displays the Christlike attributes of love, charity, loyalty, faith, etc., and she has a great conversion story in a time of frequent defections, but in my mind, it lacks the meat to give it a full lesson when we used the same amount of time to cover the whole moses story from burning bush to plagues and liberation to passover to parting the Red Sea.  How is it that all that gets a grand total of 45 minutes and this story of a woman who says, "No, I don't want to go back to live with my mom and dad" gets the same?

The lesson manual says it is to give us a glimpse of what life was like for normal people during the reign of the Judges, but I'm not buying that.  The bible wasn't written as a history book, after all.  The book of Ruth was written well after the fact (the opening verse hints at it, but it is later made quite clear in chapter 4 when the author decides he needs to explain the custom involving the shoes when the kinsman failed to redeem Ruth).  When I began re-reading it this time through, I decided that I think it was written specifically to explain the genealogy of David. I think it's like the people who do genealogy now and don't want just names to take to the temple; they want stories that make them feel closer to their ancestors in a good way.

There are people who believe that the book was written shortly after David took the throne and people wanted to know more about his heritage. I'm with them.

There are other people who believe it was written much later, in response to Ezra's command to the Israelites to put away their foreign wives.  This group of people feel that the book was a rebuttal to the argument that "all non-jews lead you to idol worship."  Here was an example tied to the greatest of Israelite kings that demonstrated that there were times when a heathen could be a great addition.

Ruth 4:7 Ah, the custom of the shoe.  The reason for all this shoe business was the law given in Deuteronomy 25 that if a man died, his brother should go in unto his wife and have sex with her.  The child of this union was legally considered the son of the dead man, and inherited his property.  However, it sometimes happened that the brother didn't want to do his job--there was really not a lot in it for the man, since, if the woman didn't have any children, his brother's property would go to him once she was too old for child-bearing or got married to someone else anyway.  So they created the custom of the shoe, centered on public humiliation.  In Ruth, they make it out to be a fairly inconsequential thing, and perhaps by the time of Ruth, it really was.  It's clear that the custom was fading, because by the time of writing the book, it was so far out of practice that they had to explain what it was.  In the time of moses, however, it seems quite a bit more severe.

Here's Ruth:

And the kinsman said, I cannot redeem it...redeem thou my right to thyself; for I cannot redeem it. Now this was the manner in former time in Israel concerning redeeming and concerning changing, for to confirm all things: a man plucked off his shoe and gave it to his neighbor: and this was a testimony in Israel.

And here's the original in Deuteronomy 25: 5-10

And if the man like not to take his brother's wife, then let his brother's wife to up to the gate and unto the elders, and say, My husband's brother refuseth to raise up unto his brother a name in Israel, he will not perform the duty of my husband's brother. Then the elders of his city shall call him, and speak unto him: and if he stand to it, and say, I like not to take her; then shall his brother's wife come unto him in th presence of the elders and loose his shoe from off his foot, and spit in his face, and shall answer and say, so shall it be done unto that man that will not build up his brother's house. And his name shall be called in Israel, The house of him that hath his shoe loosed. 

So she gets to spit in his face, take off his shoe and he has to change his name to the guy who didn't love his brother. I wonder if the custom of sleeping with your dead brother's wife is still done within the Jewish community?  I've asked Betsy to ask our neighbors who are practicing Jews.

In the case of the nameless kinsman (definitely would have been named if he had been a go-to guy for Ruth.  Bummer for him.), the obligation was not quite as firm, since he was not the actual brother of either Naomi's husband or Ruth's, so maybe that's part of why they didn't spit in his face or change his name.

Despite my frustrations with the book, Ruth is one of a very small number of women mentioned, and an even smaller number who get discussed at any length in the Bible, and she was very faithful and righteous, and became an ancestor of Christ: props to her.