B Wisdom (Ruth) Pilg 2021
Ruth 1:16-17, 3:1-5, 7-11, 4:13-17
September 8, 2021
In the book of Deuteronomy, chapter 23, verse 3,
Scripture reads: “No Ammonite or Moabite
shall be admitted to the assembly of the Holy God. Even to the 10th generation none
of their descendants shall be admitted to the assembly of the Holy One.” As subtle as a sledgehammer, throughout the
book of Ruth, the main character is always named as “Ruth the Moabite.”[1]
It is a way of saying, “Here is someone we would normally consider the
antithesis of being a faithful Jew, a part of our community.” Yet, throughout the story, Ruth is the one
who exhibits one of the primary values of God, the Hebrew word, chesed,
or steadfast love, a love that is loyal and true and endures. Ruth models chesed.
In that way, the book of Ruth is a parable. Parables offer familiar figures that make you
believe you know how the story will end.
Then the script gets flipped.
John Dominic Crossan refers to the mind-bending suspension offered by
parables “the dark interval.”
With all that we know about Moabites from the Bible,
Ruth is objectified as a foreigner, outsider, an immigrant, a border-crosser, one
who does not belong. In fact, the story
plays with the understanding that Moabite women were thought to be sex-crazed
people. In the Jewish Midrash, it is
even said that everyone who saw Ruth orgasmed.[2]
Everyone orgasmed?
The hyperbole lets us know that judgments and pre-conceived notions are
being tested here as we see Ruth in command of her sexuality when she offers it
to Boaz. Ruth uncovers the feet of Boaz—a
euphemism for male genitalia and sex that is not so distant from present day
euphemisms. Ruth does this so that he will take her in
marriage, redeem Naomi’s family, and provide protection for both of them.
As good parables do, the story of Ruth upends a
familiar Jewish script and asks us to see what it means to be an immigrant, a
border crosser, a Moabite, with new eyes.
“There is need for a simple story to trouble the simple stories we
sometimes tell about borders.”[3]
The script in the Jewish Scriptures comes from
Wisdom Literature which talks about Woman Wisdom or the excellent woman. In the Jewish Scriptures, the book of Wisdom
Literature, Proverbs, ends with a description of this Woman Wisdom or excellent
woman, a father telling his son the characteristics of a woman who would be
good to marry. In the last chapter of
Proverbs, Proverbs 31, this excellent woman “[O]pens her mouth with wisdom and
the teaching of kindness is on her tongue.
She looks well to the ways of her household and does not eat the bread
of idleness.”[4] This is a father, speaking to his son,
wanting him to find a nice Jewish girl with Jewish values for his bride. Thus ends the book of Proverbs.
Throughout Wisdom Literature, is that same counsel,
from father to son, to listen for and find the wise and excellent woman and
eschew the strange, foolish, and foreign woman. This was an ancient part of Jewish teaching as
the Jewish people came into contact with other peoples and other religious
practices and faiths. Other religious practices and faiths encouraged men to go
to the
Wisdom Literature defines a life of justice,
righteousness, equity, and steadfast love by heeding the call of Wisdom or Sophia as
she calls from the city gates for people to come in and dine with her. In
contrast to the Jewish Wisdom Woman, there is a Strange or Foreign Woman who
seduces young men with a meal of her own, laced with a strange, forbidden, and
foreign sexuality. At times, these teachings became strongly ethnocentric as
the Jewish people sought to maintain their social, political, and religious
identity over and against other people and their faith practices.
In Jewish Scripture, directly following the
description of the wise and excellent woman in Proverbs 31, is the book of
Ruth. The book of Ruth is a parable
because it clearly knows the Jewish script and chooses to flip that script, to
critique the well known story.
The book begins with the patriarch, the one who
should be the hero of our story in a patriarchal culture, Elimelech, leaving
with his wife Naomi and their two sons because of a famine, a hunger, a time of
climate disruption, in the land of Judah. Hunger in the Hebrew Bible is often narrated
as a time of displacement and death. God
is sometimes seen as holding back crops so that the people reflect on their “mistakes,
wrongdoings, or betrayals.”[5]
Jewish midrash, or commentary, suggests that
Elimelech is a leader in Judah who abandons his community for his own personal
benefit.[6]
Elimelech goes with his family to
In contrast to the usual hero of our story, the Jewish patriarch, Ruth is the one who practices Wisdom’s social virtues to save and redeem Naomi and her family’s name. Could the story draw the contrast any more starkly?[7]
Ruth even calls herself the strange and foreign woman before the feet of Boaz. The book of Ruth flips the script, is a Jewish critique of Jewish ethnocentrism and contemplates a God who is far wider and broader in steadfast love than religious bigotry can imagine.
The book of Ruth is like the father who tells his son, over and over again, “Watch out for those women who wear tattoos and have piercings. They tend to be a little too wild, will lead you down the wrong path, and get you into all kinds of trouble.” And then, Junior introduces Dad to his new fiancé who has sleeves tattooed down her arm, a nose ring, and a pierced tongue. Wouldn't you know, she just happens to be the kindest, most well-read, and most respectful young woman Dad has ever met? She ends up being the best mother a grandparent could every hope for. Our prejudices about who is a saint and who is a sinner get foiled by the actual content of someone's character. Who knows? Some family member from one side of the river may actually marry someone from the other side of the river find out that the people on the opposite side are really not so bad after all. I'm not saying for a certainty that that will be your experience. But it could happen?
Naomi tells Ruth and Orpah to go find some nice Moabite boys while they are still young. Literally, in the Hebrew, Naomi tells Ruth and Orpah to go find rest and peace[8], the passive form of Sabbath practice. Go find rest and peace, a life free of obligation with me. Orpah leaves to find a nice Moabite boy. Ruth remains with Naomi, without power in a patriarchal society. Namely, they are both without a man. Ruth is the protagonist for the active forms of Sabbath practice found in the Jubilee traditions: hospitality, gleaning, and redeeming are central to the health and welfare of Ruth and Naomi.[9] In contrast to what our wider culture teaches, that you judge a community and nation’s sustainability and resiliency by its middle-class and rich, Jewish teaching believed that a community and nation’s sustainability and resiliency was to be judged by how things were going for its poor or its most vulnerable. Hospitality, gleaning, and redeeming helped to make communities and vulnerable people within their communities sustainable and resilient against such things like famine, natural disaster, and war.
Rabbi Binah Wing, from Temple Beth-El in Rockford, once shared with me this week that Ruth is preached in synagogue as the first convert to Judaism. For, rather than leading her husband away from his faith as a Moabite or foreigner, or going back to her people after her Jewish husband has died, Ruth proclaims her loyalty and allegiance to her mother-in-law in a profound and beautiful poem or love song. “Where you go, I will go. Where you live, I will live. Your people shall be my people. Your God shall be my God. Where you die, I will die and may God do the very worst to me if anything but death parts me from you.” Throughout the story, Ruth practices the Jewish faith in a way that is righteous, resolute, and steadfast. Again and again, she demonstrates a way of living out the Jewish Sabbath, ways of economic and ecological practice, that are intended to preserve the most vulnerable and save the community.
Ruth saves her mother-in-law, Naomi, and herself by
being . . . the righteous Jew. She is a
woman of welcome, hospitality, and loyalty. Three times in the book, Ruth acts with chesed,
a Hebrew word we translate as steadfast love, loving kindness, and loyalty. Chesed
is most often used to describe the actions of God.[10]
Without proposal or prodding from Naomi,
Ruth goes out into the fields to glean grain for the both of them, reminder of
the Jubilee code, within Sabbath mythology, found in Leviticus. Boaz, the owner of the field, notices Ruth,
and from the double entendres that go back and forth, Ruth notices Boaz as
well.[11]
(double
eyebrow raise) Ruth throws herself
at the feet of Boaz, calling herself the strange woman, the foreigner, the
interloper, so that if you had any doubts before, you know now that the
conventional Wisdom story is being turned upside down. The conventional Jewish script is being
flipped.
And the story plays and has fun with the mysterious,
seductive, and forbidden sexuality of the foreign or strange woman. Ruth eats the “seed” of Boaz and is “filled.”
Boaz gives Ruth “his seed” so that Ruth
and Naomi may be sustained in the midst of famine. I don't make these things up.
Remember the rest and peace Naomi offered Ruth and
Orpah at the beginning of the story? Ruth
proves that sometimes the moral challenge of life requires precisely the
opposite of rest and peace. In contrast
to the patriarch Elimelech, Ruth chooses meaningful actions and experiences
that permit and demand growth from all those around her.[12]
When Naomi sends Ruth back to Boaz to offer herself
sexually, Ruth willingly agrees in an attempt to redeem “family” for Naomi. In
the Jubilee redemption process, the closest male relative is to marry a woman
whose husbands die so that the women have “protection” in a patriarchal
culture. Ruth challenges Boaz to do the
right thing, the moral thing. Though
Boaz is the one who will be referred to as the redeemer in this story, it is
Ruth who is making all this happen, creating a new family for everyone. Ruth
cuts across the patriarchy, ethnocentrism, and xenophobia of her time to
deliver a message that is at the core of Jewish social values, thought, and
theology. In the end, because Boaz does do the right thing, the child born from
the mixed marriage of Boaz and Ruth goes on to be the ancestor of the famed
King David.
Now the easy moral to this beautiful parable is
don’t judge a book by its cover. But we
do a disservice to a parable that sought to upend a national narrative, a
narrative used to keep and uphold their identity as a people when the Jewish
people feared they might fracture or lose their way. Who would Ruth have to be to scare us, to be
a strange and foreign woman to us? Maybe
Muslim? A Haitian immigrant? Maybe, because her sexuality scares us, a
lesbian? What if we have the national
narrative so locked in our skulls that there is no way God has a chance to
expand our minds and enlarge our hearts?
Deep within the Jewish script is this negative stereotype
against Moabite women. Even deeper still
is the understanding that foreign women will lead you away from your Jewish
identity. So it is that the prophet Ezra
who preaches against the sins of intermarriage.
As a result, an assembly is called in Ezra’s time. All the men are to gather in the town square
or face impoverishment. Under torrential
rain, the men gather. There they are commanded to separate from their foreign
wives.[13] The book of Ezra ends with a permanent
listing of all the men who had married such foreign women, a permanent blemish
on their family name.[14]
It is into this world that the story of Ruth is
told. It is a challenge to upend a
familiar script.
Remember that Ruth challenges Naomi to receive her
kindness and devotion, and if Naomi flat out refuses, the story ends and Naomi
dies. Remember that Ruth challenges Boaz
to do the right and moral thing, but that if he refuses, Naomi and Ruth may
live on the edge till they die and that the story ends right there with no
ancestor to King David. God forever
offers steadfast love through people like Ruth, but what if, what if we
refuse? What if we refuse?
The challenge is forever before us. Strange and foreign, yes, but mind expanding
and heart enlarging. Do not let the
story end. Accept Ruth’s challenge. Tell this simple story to upend the simple
stories we often tell to label women, immigrants, and borders. Amen.
[1] Ruth 1:22; Ruth 2:2; Ruth
2:21; Ruth 4:5; Ruth 4:10.
[2] Pádraig Ó
Tuama and Glenn Jordan, Borders & Belonging: The Book of Ruth: A Story for Our Times (Norwich,
England: Canterbury Press, 2021), p. 19,
referencing Rabbi Yochanan, Ruth Rabbah, chapter 4.
[3] Ibid, p. 18.
[4] Proverbs 31:26-27
[5] Borders and Belonging,
p. 15
[6] Mira Morgenstern, “Ruth
and the Sense of Self: Midrash and Difference,” Judaism, Spring 1999.
[7] Ibid.
[8] Ibid.
[10] Amy
Jill-Levine, “Ruth,” The Women's Bible Commentary, ed. by Carol A Newsom
and Sharon H. Ringe (Louisville, Kentucky: Westminster/John Knox Press, 1992),
p. 78.
[11] See Amy Jill-Levine’s
article for an extensive discussion of this.
[12] Mira Morgenstern, “Ruth
and the Sense.”
[13] Ezra 10:9-11
[14] Borders and Belonging,
p. 51.
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