Ruth
Ruth is a short, near-perfect piece of biblical storytelling, and it does something quietly bold.
Read this if you…
- want a brief, exquisite OT love-and-loyalty story you can finish in 20 minutes
- like that a Moabite outsider becomes great-grandmother of King David (and ancestor of Jesus)
- care about the 'whither thou goest, I will go' speech (one of the great loyalty lines in literature)
Skip this if you…
- don't want to read explicitly religious/Christian texts
Why It Matters
Ruth is a short, near-perfect piece of biblical storytelling, and it does something quietly bold. By putting a foreign woman in the line that leads to David and Jesus, it pushes back against ethnic exclusivism and treats loyalty across cultural lines as something to honor.
Depicted in Art
Ruth kneels before Boaz in a sweeping golden wheatfield as harvesters work behind them; the landscape dwarfs the human encounter.
Nicolas Poussin, 1664
Ruth bows low before a richly dressed Boaz at the edge of a sunlit field; reapers and sheaves recede toward a hilltop town.
Gustave Doré, 1866
Boaz leans toward a kneeling Ruth at the field's edge, offering grain from his own hand in a quiet, intimate moment.
Barent Fabritius
A standing Boaz stretches a protective arm over a seated Ruth in a stylized fieldside grouping painted in proto-Impressionist color.
Frédéric Bazille, 1870
Tiny figures of Ruth and Boaz meet in the foreground of a vast Romantic landscape of mountains, fields and Italianate trees.
Joseph Anton Koch, 1825
Ruth in a blue cloak stands among bound sheaves as Boaz approaches her across a Bethlehem wheatfield, harvesters scattered behind.
Julius Schnorr von Carolsfeld, 1828
Boaz questions Ruth at the edge of his field with harvesters bending to the grain behind them and an open sky above.
Gerbrand van den Eeckhout, 1651
Recommended Editions
King James Version
Cambridge University Press · 1611
The most influential and commonly quoted translation in English. The prose rhythm everyone else is responding to, even modern translations.
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Deep Dive
What It's About
This summary gives away plot details.
Notable Quotes
“Intreat me not to leave thee, or to return from following after thee: 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:”
“Where thou diest, will I die, and there will I be buried: the LORD do so to me, and more also, if ought but death part thee and me.”