Ruth

Samuel. Samuel anointed David and would have had reason to record the line David came from.

A writer the book does not name. The book makes no claim about its writer, and its last word is David's name.

In the monarchy, close to David's own generation. The aside at 4:7 explains a custom already out of use, and the genealogy ends on David rather than on a later king.

After the exile. Some features of the Hebrew are read as late, and LaCocque reads the book as an answer to the dissolving of foreign marriages under Ezra and Nehemiah (Ezra 9 to 10; Nehemiah 13:23 to 27).

The witnesses to the text, 4

The Masoretic Text (c. AD 900 (Leningrad and Aleppo Codices)). The standard Hebrew text of Ruth's 85 verses, and the base of every English translation of the book. The Qumran Ruth fragments (2QRuth-a, 2QRuth-b, 4QRuth-a, 4QRuth-b) (c. 1st century BC). Four fragmentary copies from Caves 2 and 4, covering parts of all four chapters between them. They agree closely with the Masoretic Text and push the witness for this short book back roughly a thousand years. The Septuagint (LXX) (c. 2nd century BC). The Greek translation that places Ruth after Judges, the order the Latin and English canons inherited, and the text behind Matthew's spelling of the names in his genealogy. Targum Ruth (Aramaic, compiled in the talmudic period). An expansive Aramaic rendering that reads Ruth's confession at 1:16-17 as a formal conversion, spelling out commandments the Hebrew leaves unstated. Reception history rather than the text itself.

The finds, 2

The Mesha Stele (the Moabite Stone) (c. 840 BC, discovered 1868 at Dhiban, Jordan). A royal inscription of Mesha king of Moab, written in a language close to Hebrew, describing his wars with Israel. It establishes Moab as a real, literate kingdom east of the Dead Sea with a long history of conflict with Israel, which is the border Ruth crosses in chapter 1. The Bethlehem bulla (City of David excavations) (7th century BC, excavated 2012). A clay seal impression from an administrative shipment carrying the name Bethlehem, the earliest reference to the town outside the Bible. Ruth's Bethlehem is a real place in the fiscal records of Judah.

A legal appeal, made at night for privacy. Ruth's act is a formal request for the protection and marriage duty of a near kinsman, made to a man asleep beside his grain at harvest.

A scene written to be charged. The night, the wine and the vocabulary carry a deliberate tension, and the risk Ruth takes is the literary point.

The bar falls on Moabite men. The Hebrew forms of Deuteronomy 23:3 are masculine, and 23:4 grounds the bar in what Moab's men did on Israel's road out of Egypt.

Her confession changes her standing. Ruth takes Naomi's God as her own, and the book carries her from that sentence into the royal line.

The redemption of land. Boaz buys the land that belonged to Elimelech from Naomi (4:9), the duty Leviticus 25:25 puts on the nearest kinsman.

The duty of the brother-in-law. Boaz marries Mahlon's widow to raise up the name of the dead on his inheritance (4:10), the duty Deuteronomy 25:5 to 6 puts on the dead man's brother, though Boaz is a kinsman and not a brother.

The neighbours' own laws, 3

The Middle Assyrian Laws (Tablet A), Assyrian, surviving copies c. 1100 BC, laws older. Provisions binding a dead man's family to a surviving widow, including obligations that fall on the father-in-law and the brothers rather than leaving the widow to her own household. A genuine parallel at the level of custom. Israel's levirate law sits inside a wider ancient Near Eastern practice of keeping a widow and a dead man's name inside his family, which is background for Ruth 4 rather than a source for it. The Hittite Laws, Hittite, c. 1650-1500 BC, copies later. A levirate provision extending the duty for a dead man's widow beyond the brother to the father and other kin. Directly relevant to the legal question in chapter 4, since it shows a neighboring culture applying the same duty to kin more distant than a brother, which is the step Deuteronomy 25 leaves unstated and Boaz takes. The Nuzi tablets, Hurrian, from Nuzi, c. 1500-1400 BC. Property transfers arranged to keep land inside a family, including sale-adoption contracts that work around the rule that family land could not simply be sold away. Supports the picture of a real legal culture in which land carried family obligations, the assumption Ruth 4 works from when Naomi's parcel has to be bought by a kinsman or by nobody.

A conveyance of the land. The narrator explains it as the way a matter was made binding in former times in Israel (4:7), and the nearer redeemer hands it over with the words, buy it for yourself (4:8).

A milder form of the shaming in Deuteronomy. Deuteronomy 25:9 has the widow pull the sandal off the brother who refuses her and spit in his face; in Ruth the man who refuses stays unnamed while Boaz's name is kept.

A type of the redeemer. Boaz is near by blood, willing where the nearer man declines, and able to bear the cost, and Christ redeems on the same three terms.

A figure of Christ receiving the Church. Ruth leaves her people and her father's house before the marriage, as the Church leaves the customs of its fathers.

Paired scenes around a centre. The famine and three deaths answer the genealogy to David, Naomi's return empty answers her son at the gate, and the field by day answers the floor by night.