AOTC 07B: Ruth

On the surface, the book of Ruth tells the tale of an unlikely marriage between
a destitute Moabite widow and an upstanding citizen of a Judean village. The
deeper import of the story, however, has to do with the internal boundaries
that define the people of God. Is Israel a closed community, held together
exclusively by bonds of kinship, or a nation that welcomes faithful outsiders
into its sphere of belonging? Ruth appropriates marriage as the symbolic
vehicle of a transformation in Israel's self-understanding - from a community
articulated by Naomi's declaration that her daughters-in-law marry within their
own people, to the acclamations by the people of Bethlehem that endorse Boaz's
marriage to a Moabite.
L. Daniel Hawk undertakes a detailed narrative analysis of Ruth that goes
beyond the description of its content and stylistic features to illumine its
deep structure and use of metaphor. Informed by contemporary studies on
ethnicity, he discovers a work of remarkable sophistication that employs a
story of intermarriage to address opposing ideas of Israelite identity. Hawk's
meticulous attention to patterned structures, stylistic devices and
characterization reveals the strategy by which the narrator constructs a vision
of Israel that looks beyond rigid internal boundaries to the welcome of
faithful foreigners as agents of blessing. (= 9780830825257)
Series: Apollos Old Testament Commentary.
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