The Book of Ruth is a short but extraordinary gem tucked between the chaos of Judges and the rise of King David — and in this episode, we dive deep into why it matters. Dr. Kathryn Schifferdecker and Rev. Katie Langston welcome Diane Jacobson, Professor Emerita of Old Testament at Luther Seminary, for a conversation that brings the Book of Ruth to life. Together they explore the book's rich literary structure, its key characters — Ruth, Naomi, and Boaz — and the powerful Hebrew themes woven throughout, including chesed (covenant love), goel (kinsman-redeemer), and the journey from famine to fullness that drives the entire narrative.

Professor Jacobson also places the Book of Ruth in its post-exilic historical context, revealing how this compact four-act story serves as a bold response to the exclusionary laws of Ezra and Nehemiah — and why its message about foreigners, widows, and belonging speaks with striking relevance today. The conversation traces Ruth's unexpected path from Moabite outsider to ancestor of King David and, ultimately, to a place in the genealogy of Jesus in Matthew chapter one. Whether you're reading the Book of Ruth for the first time or returning to it with fresh questions, this episode offers new depth and new delight in one of scripture's most beloved stories.

Welcome to the Bible in a Year podcast, a resource from Enter the Bible. Journey with us through the books of the Bible, discovering more about scripture and how it shapes our lives today. I'm Kathryn Schifferdecker

I'm Katie Langston. And today on the podcast, we have returning one of our very favorite guests, ⁓ Professor Diane Jacobson. She's a professor emerita of Old Testament at Luther Seminary and the former director of the Book of Faith Initiative of the ELCA. So, welcome. We're so happy to have you back with us,

Yeah

be back. This old person doing podcasts, it's an amazing thing.

Thanks for.

Natural

⁓

You are. You're brilliant. You're brilliant at it. Absolutely. So today ⁓ we are in the Book of Ruth, which is ⁓ one of my favorites. So I'm excited for this conversation. Yeah, it's awesome. And kind of to dive in or to get started, Dan, why don't you share just a quick summary or outline of the Tell us a little bit more about what's going on.

to say

where the book is because it's this transition book between the end of Judges and the book begins in the days of the judging of the judges. There was famine in the land and the end of Judges is this horrible, massive, dreadful thing, especially for women. the book ends with David, with the birth of David.

and moving into First Samuel and the connections with Hannah and her song. So this is a really important transition book. And the characters that transition this book, there are three of them. There is Ruth, this Moabite woman. There is Naomi, this widow. And there is Boaz, this relationship.

Man of Hyah, yes, Man of Worth. so the book is about these three characters and their contrasting characters and this movement from famine to birth. that's kind of the, that's not quite a summary, but it's the way the book moves. Yeah.

And it's a brief book, for those who have not read the Book of Ruth, you can read it easily. chapters! Yeah, like 15-20 minutes. It's kind of a four act play. It's really quite a quick read and a good read. ⁓ What kind of book is it, Diane? What's the genre?

Okay, the

most important thing to know about the book of Ruth as in terms of type is it's a narrative. And so in order to read the book of Ruth in a fun and productive way, knowing what the art of narrative is in scripture is way, way important. So for example, characters are really important. So those three characters we mentioned, they're central.

And who has name, who gets to speak, who gets to act, those are all how you sort of think about biblical narrative. So that's in some ways how you think about Ruth. There are also really important themes, for example, and wordplays and all kinds of things. So in the beginning, it is famine in...

the city of Bethlehem, which means house of food. So there's a famine in the house of food. And where do they go? They go to Moab. And you have to know about Moab because Moab was despised in Israel. And Ruth is never referred to in the book without saying Ruth the Moabitess. So that's like,

Yeah

are saying Ruth the Muslim. It would be constantly in your face that she's a robotist. Another theme in the book is food. The time of harvest and gleaning and meals and how Ruth eats and bringing food to Naomi and that movement from famine to fullness.

Yeah. Emptiness to.

Emptiness to fullness. Two other really important things in terms of this narrative piece is there are a number of blessings and you watch the blessings in the book and how they work. the other theme that's all through this book, and I think it's like 33 times as a verb or noun, is the word redeemer or to redeem or goel in Hebrew.

And we watch how that word works its way out through and we'll maybe talk about that more.

So what's the

basic context? Like when was it written and who was it written for? Where did it come from?

It's a part and parcel kind of guess when you are trying to say when something is written and there are theories that, know, different people, but I think the best guess is that it's written sort of immediate post-exilic when the people of Israel are really scared of foreigners and immigrants and women and... ⁓

They're really wanting to think about the law and how the law functions. And this book of Ruth is in conversation with all of those. It is one of the things that makes this book so important for our time.

So when you say post-exilic, it's after they've been the.

After they've returned, they're still

thinking about what it was like to be in a different land, what it was like to be in exile themselves, and then coming back. Whose land is this? Whose family? How do we define all of this?

Would you, would you contrast it in that way with like Ezra and Nehemiah?

absolutely. Thank you. That's really helpful. So Ezra and Nehemiah have a very strict view of how you treat foreigners and women. And I think Ruth is very much in conversation with those and in the laws that Ezra and Nehemiah. So when I have taught this book, I always have.

someone volunteered to be Ezra or Nehemiah and read the laws from Ezra and Nehemiah so that they're Nehemiah.

Those laws say stay away from foreign women.

Even if you've married a foreign woman, have to divorce her in Ezra Nehemiah.

and never let a moabite come near the temple. ⁓ And all of those sorts of things.

Yeah.

So yeah, it does seem to be a direct answer or rebuttal to that. As we've said on this podcast before, one fruitful way we think of thinking about the Bible is a conversation. That there are conversations within books, there are conversations between books, between the Old Testament and New Testament, and then an ongoing conversation with interpreters through the centuries.

and she went

Yeah, definitely a conversation, maybe a somewhat heated conversation between Ruth and me and my...

you

So even though it's set in the time of the judges, it's written, we think, post-exilic after the return from looking back and sort of saying maybe a little historical fiction kind of thing going on.

All right, so we're coming to one of our favorite parts of this podcast, Bible Bingo. ⁓ So we've asked you to name five concepts, words, people, places, historical things that would be on your bingo card as you read through the book of Ruth. What would you check off on that bingo card? So we'll go through these quickly. You've answered ⁓ first two widows.

We don't think of widows as the most important people in scripture. Right. But the main movers of this book are Naomi and Ruth, two widows, and really their relationship with each other and how they become rather mother and daughter, but also sisters. And their relationship is entirely key to how we move from famine to the birth of David.

Because they're both like widows in scripture are often understood as the most vulnerable the month, know They need the most help along with orphans and foreigners and Ruth is two of those three, right? She's not only a widow And yet it's Ruth and Naomi. I hear you saying that are the the movers and the shakers really correct in this book. All right Next one and your Bible bingo card gift of the resident alien

Yeah. And really the first people who are resident aliens are Naomi and her family. They made from Israel to Moab. So the book begins with them traveling and being resident aliens. And then the principal resident alien is Ruth, the Moabite, I said, she's never called.

like that.

That's a great point.

Just Ruth.

She's

always Ruth and Moa. And her role, by the time you get to the last blessing of this book, well, the second to last blessing, they're saying, may you be like Rachel and, know, Tamar and, you know, may you be like our mothers. ⁓ So they're inviting this resident alien, the women of the town are saying, you're one of us.

You're one of us.

I've heard you say in other contexts, it's like someone today saying to ⁓ a recent immigrant, may you be like Martha Washington or ⁓ the mothers, founding, Dali Madison or the founding mothers of this nation. Yeah. Eleanor Roosevelt. Yeah. Next bingo ⁓ term for the bingo card, man of worth.

Eleanor.

Okay. And this is Boaz. And I don't want to neglect Boaz. He's also crucial to this book. And what's really interesting, there's lots of interesting things about Boaz, but he's introduced as a man of chayil, a man of worth. And usually people interpret that as a wealthy man. He's a wealthy man, but in a way it's a question.

What is it to be a man of worth? What makes someone worthy? Is it that they have money or how they treat others? And very much in this book, you get to the notion that he is a man of worth because of how he treats other people, particularly Ruth. And he calls her a woman of high ill, a woman of worth, which ties to the end of Proverbs.

So they become Mr. and Mrs. Hiaw. Mr. and Mrs. Worth.

And probably in both senses, They're both, he's like high character as well as, you know, high net worth or whatever.

That's good, I love that.

Yeah, and the name Boaz. Do you want to say anything?

Boaz means strength. And one of the things that's really interesting is it's the name of one of the pillars in the temple. Yeah. So Boaz is tied not just to Bethlehem where he's born and he's also or lives. It's also tying him to the whole notion of the temple, which if this is opposed to exilic book becomes really important. Yeah.

Yeah, He's quite literally a pillar of the community.

Yeah, yeah

that is good. Good job, Katherine.

⁓ Alright, next term, the role of the law.

Okay, I think you cannot read the Book of Ruth fully without thinking about a conversation about the law. So one is don't let Moabites into the temple, they're evil, horrible people. And the other is treat resident aliens with grace and with charity. And one of the charities is allow them to glean.

One of the principal charities is saying that when you have gathered the harvest, let the foreigners and the widows and the others follow your folks and get the gleanings of the field, the leftovers, and that becomes their food. ⁓ That's really, really important. The rule of the Leverite, which is to say, if someone

loses their kids, you replace, you keep the family going by the eldest son or the next son marrying the previous woman so that you can have a baby in his name. Well, Ruth goes wild with that. Who would be the next of kin who would do that?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So if a man dies without children, then it's, according to Levirate marriage, his brother would marry his widow and then the first child would be raised in the name of the dead brother.

Right. And so the Book of Ruth just expands the notion of who a brother is.

Because

Boaz is not the brother of, I forget which of the two sons Ruth is married to, but it's not the brother of ⁓ Naomi's son, Ruth's husband, but ⁓ he's a relative. He's a next of kin. A go-ill. Yeah, a redeemer.

Next of-

And that's all connect. A lot of these laws are founded Leviticus by the way, right? The gleaning law, the Goel laws, laws of Jubilee. so yeah, there's a lot.

to decide, Boaz and the other characters have to decide which laws are relevant and how they're relevant. Is it reject the Moabite or let the Moabite glean? It's a lawful conversation about what's at the heart of the law.

Yeah. And in this case, the heart of the law really is care for the vulnerable.

And that's how Ruth, the Book of Ruth says.

Yeah.

All right. The last term on our bingo code, unexpected blessings.

Yeah, there are five blessings in the book, and so you can go through those and look at, but I think the most unexpected blessing is the way that the word goel functions. We keep talking about that word. The word goel in the Book of Ruth is usually translated next of kin. But if you read Job, which we're going to...

You know, I know that my Goel lives. I know that my Redeemer lives. It is the word for redeem. So the next of, the role of the next of kin is to be a blessing to the, not just to the individual, but to the community and to redeem the community. And in the book of Ruth, finally, it's the newborn child who becomes the Goel, who is the Redeemer.

of Naomi and the community. Why? Because your daughter-in-law who loves you has born him.

That's my favorite verse. daughter-in-law who loves you, who is more to you than... has born this child. Yeah, I love that. Well, this has been Bible Bingo. Thank you for playing. Those are all very important terms. You hear me? Yay! Bingo! ⁓

Seven Sons.

So what's kind of weird or interesting about the Book of R-

You know, I gotta confess, I think almost everything in the book of is weird and interesting. So it's almost impossible to choose the word plays and all that stuff. But I think one of the unexpected things is Ruth and Naomi are so central in the first three chapters of this war chapter book. They're the main speakers.

with Boaz, but mainly Ruth and Naomi. And then in chapter four, they never talk again. It's Boaz and the community who help us know who they are. ⁓ Kind of the guys take over, but they take over by recognizing their importance.

I've never noticed that.

But it's also the women of the village. Yeah, yeah.

Women of the village speak

and they become an instrument of blessing. But it's also the men at the gate. It's the place of the law where the men gather at the gate. It's the mignon. So I think that's kind of, some people get really bothered by that. And I think it's more interesting than bothersome, but it is something you don't notice.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

I've never noticed that, but you're right. Yeah. Me neither. kind of put the seal of approval or I don't know.

They'll.

They've done their thing and now the community lets them know why it's important. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah, that's a good way to put it.

Yeah, I like that. ⁓ So what memorable versus chapters passages? I know that's an impossible question, but...

Right, it was like, you-

Yeah,

I had talk about some of

It's, it's so there's so many four chapters and like the entire book, I could do this. But the one I think a lot of people know is, whether they'll go as I will go where you will be, which is the speech that Ruth gives to Naomi when she's going to go back home. And Ruth, this Moabite says, I'm going to leave my land and follow you and your people will be my people.

People say this at weddings. But it's this speech of this Moabite daughter-in-law to her Israelite mother-in-law, widow. And it's such a crucial speech and it's really a loyalty oath. You can see the similarities of that speech in other loyalty oaths, often to the king, that you get in other parts of scripture. So that's really an important person.

the Mr. and Mrs. Highill. ⁓ You know, you are woman of worth. ⁓ What you've done is really important. And I just love the speeches about Ruth just eating till she's satisfied and then taking food back to her mother-in-law and those kinds of things.

⁓ huh, huh.

Yeah, you're right. There's just so many beautiful pieces here. What would you say, ⁓ so chapter three is the scene on the threshing rack, right? Which some people are uncomfortable with, right? Naomi needs to ⁓ secure Ruth's future, right? So she advises her to take a bath, put on her best clothes, right?

and go to the threshing

Only the guys are gathered because they're protect...

the harvest, And then to, yes, find Boaz and uncover his feet, which may be feet or... Right, right, right. ⁓

You from this. Lay at his feet. Go do that.

And then he'll tell you what to do. Instead, Ruth tells Boaz what to do. Ruth says to Boaz, all right, cover me with your cloak, which is the same word. It's a wordplay for the wing of God that is in the previous chapter, that you will be protected so.

Yeah.

Boaz's cloak becomes God's wing becomes Boaz's cloak in this highly questionable encounter.

The PG-13 actor. ⁓

And

the thing is, most, the word for prostitute in Hebrew is foreign woman. And that's what people would have expected this widow to do, is to go, this foreign widow who has no connections, they would expect her to just go make some money. And instead she says, you're next of kin. You're the go-

foreign widow.

You're the go-ail. Well,

you have a duty.

And he says, wow, you haven't gone after the young guys. You haven't gone after these other people. You came to me, my daughter. He calls her my daughter the same way. calls it, because they're kind of the same age.

little sketchy maybe, no? Is that not sketchy?

But yeah, so Naomi says he'll tell you what to do, chuckle, chuckle, chuckle, right? And Ruth is the one who tells Boaz what to do and pretty much proposes marriage, ⁓

Or at least be the Go-Hail of the Gimps.

Calling him to responsibility. Yeah. Right. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Why is this book important for Christian life and theology, would you say?

I I think it's important for all the reasons we've talked about, you know, that it's important about how you treat the foreigner and how you treat the widow and what a man of worth is and all of those things and how blessings work. it becomes important technically because Ruth is part of the genealogy of Matthew. so she leads to the birth of Jesus. Yeah.

chapter one

I've read this at other times, but I'll read it again. Here's Luther's quote about this. But Christ our Lord wanted to be born from the blood of various nations, for he had Rahab, Ruth, and Tamar as mothers. Since he was not ashamed of these women, and indeed Egyptian Canaanite and Moabite women are listed in his genealogy, the same thing can be said of David and other kings.

who were born of the same mothers, for with God there is no respect of persons.

I love that. didn't know Luther said that. ⁓ So yeah, the book of Ruth ends with this genealogy where Obed, the child of Ruth, ⁓ with mean servant, becomes the father of Jesse, who becomes the father of David. yeah, and then of course, coming right after the book of Ruth in the Christian ordering of the book is First Samuel, where you get the

Yeah. Good job, Luther.

sure.

David becoming king. But yeah, and then of course Matthew picks that up and Ruth as part of the genealogy of Jesus in Matthew chapter

Matthew adds the women. Yes, yeah.

Yeah,

yeah, yeah. We haven't talked about the word chesed ⁓ in the book. So chesed is a beautiful Hebrew word meaning what? Loving kindness, covenant love, love in action. like that definition of it.

It's there, somewhere I have how many times, 11 times in the book or something. I'm making that up.

That's

okay.

thing I like about it is it describes, so it's often used to describe God's love, God's loving kindness, God's faithfulness. But in the book of Ruth, the human love, right, of Ruth for Naomi and Naomi for Ruth and Ruth and Boaz, that becomes the kind of acting out of God's chesed. Right.

And the word hesed appears in three of the five blessings in the book. So a hesed is also part of blessing. When you bless each other as well as when God blesses you. You are blessed with this capacity for a kind of love. What's the Greek word? Agape? Agape. Hesed is a kind of predecessor of agape.

yeah.

It's a kind of love that's outside of what people normally think.

Yeah, like above and beyond the committed love and above and beyond the requirements of the law.

And community takes care of community. a really important idea.

I think about that in terms of the importance for Christian life and theology. think it's just a really good model. The the story is a model for us of how God's chesed is often demonstrated in human acts of kindness and chesed and loyalty.

right. This act of chesed is even greater than the first. says Boaz on the threshing floor.

Yes.

Alright, our last question. Describe this book in seven words or less.

Unexpected relationships lead to birth of David. You can't have David, you can't have the kings, you can't have Jesus without these totally unexpected relationships.

Alright.

Yeah, I mean, who would have thought, you know, a Moabitess widow living in Bethlehem becomes the ancestor, not just of King David, but of Jesus, of the Messiah. Yeah, there's a kind of happy surprise there.

It's one of the things that makes the book so important.

Yeah, it's a short book, but it really is a gem of a book.

Yeah. And one of the things that's fun about it being a short book is you can gather with people and spend one or two or three study days on this book or four. Right. And it's fun.

Yeah, you can follow it, right? Some of the narratives in the Bible are harder to follow, but this one is clear and straightforward and lovely. Well, thank you. Thank you so much, Diane, for being with us today. And thank you, of course, to our listeners or viewers for being with us on this episode of the Year in a Bible podcast. Of course,

We invite you to take advantage of this entire series and really dig deep into scripture and discover new ways of reading and exploring the Bible. Of course, you can get more resources as you enter the Bible on our website, enterthebible.org.

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