89 Fun Facts About Book of Ruth

What disaster, named in the first verse of Ruth, drove Elimelech's family from Bethlehem into Moab?

A famine in a town whose name means 'house of bread' is the irony the book opens on, and it sends an Israelite family to live among a people the Torah viewed with suspicion.

Ruth's opening verse sets the story 'in the days when' which officials ruled, before Israel had a king?

The judges' era was the Bible's stretch of tribal chaos and local strongmen, which makes this quiet tale of decency in Bethlehem a pointed contrast; Christian Bibles shelve it right after Judges.

Sealing her pledge to Naomi, Ruth swore that only what would ever part the two of them?

Death alone, she swore, 'if ought but death part thee and me', calling the Lord's punishment down on herself if she broke it, an oath formula Israel's kings use elsewhere in the Bible.

Elimelech's family came from Bethlehem in which tribe's territory, as distinct from a second Bethlehem up in Zebulun?

Judah is spelled out as 'Beth-lehem-judah' in the King James text, because Joshua's tribal lists also record a second Bethlehem far to the north in Zebulun.

Naomi and Ruth reached Bethlehem, the text notes, just as the harvest of which grain was beginning?

Barley ripens first, around April, which puts Ruth in the fields for the whole season, through the wheat harvest that followed, before the threshing-floor scene.

Following Naomi's plan, what did Ruth do once Boaz had lain down to sleep beside his heap of grain?

Uncovered his feet and lay down is all the text says; Boaz woke to find her there, called her a virtuous woman and promised to settle her case by morning.

In Ruth 4, what did one man hand to another to seal the transfer of Elimelech's land?

His sandal, a 'shoe' in the King James wording, changed hands because, the narrator explains, this was the custom 'in former time' in Israel, a hint that the book was written long after the events.

Who, in the book's final chapter, gave Ruth and Boaz's newborn son his name, announcing 'a son is born to Naomi'?

The neighbourhood women credited the grandmother rather than the mother, and the boy they named grew up to be King David's grandfather.

Ruth left the threshing floor at dawn carrying six measures of grain from Boaz in what?

Her shawl, a 'vail' in the King James wording, took a load so heavy that Boaz laid it on her himself, and Naomi read the gift as a sign that he would settle the matter that very day.

The elders witnessing the deal likened Boaz's future house to that of which twin son of Tamar, born in Genesis 38?

Perez heads the genealogy that closes the book, and his own birth to Tamar came from another irregular union that kept a family line alive, a pattern the blessing seems to wink at.

The crowd witnessing Boaz's deal wished Ruth would be like which two women 'who together built up the house of Israel'?

Rachel and Leah were Jacob's two wives and, with their maids, mothers of the twelve tribes, so the blessing wishes the Moabite widow a matriarch's place in Israel's story.

Announcing the marriage before the elders, Boaz names which of Elimelech's sons as Ruth's late husband?

Mahlon is identified as her husband only in the final chapter; the opening never says which brother married which Moabite bride.

The names of Naomi's two sons, who die within the first five verses, are often read as Hebrew puns meaning what?

Sickness and wasting suit two men whose only role is to die, leaving three widows and no heir, which is the whole problem the rest of the book sets out to solve.

Ruth Rabbah, the midrash on the book, reads Elimelech's name unflatteringly as meaning what?

One eager for royalty is the rabbis' jab at a leading man of Bethlehem who, they say, fled for fear that all his neighbours would turn up at his door, each holding out a basket.

Back in Bethlehem after about ten years in Moab, Naomi asked to be called by which name, meaning 'bitter'?

Mara was her retort to neighbours who greeted her as Naomi, a name meaning 'pleasant': the Almighty, she said, had dealt very bitterly with her, yet the narrator never once uses the new name.

Naomi, releasing the two widows in Moab, told each to go back to whose house?

Her mother's house is the surprise: elsewhere in the Bible a widow goes back to her father's house, as Tamar is told to in Genesis and as a law in Leviticus takes for granted.

When Naomi sent the two widows away, Orpah kissed her goodbye, while Ruth did what, in the King James wording?

Clave unto her uses the Hebrew verb dabaq, the same word Genesis uses for a man cleaving to his wife, which is why Ruth's loyalty reads like a marriage vow.

Home again in Bethlehem, widowed and bereaved, Naomi said the Lord had brought her back how?

Empty is her verdict on a decade that cost her a husband and two sons, and she adds that the Almighty has 'testified against' her, all said with the loyal daughter-in-law standing right beside her.

What greeting did Boaz call out to his reapers on arriving at the field, a line Christian liturgy still uses?

The Lord be with you drew the reapers' reply 'The Lord bless thee', and the Latin Bible's wording of his greeting, 'Dominus vobiscum', became the priest's standard salutation at Mass.

What did Boaz quietly order his harvesters to do to boost Ruth's gleanings?

Drop handfuls on purpose went beyond the law, which only obliged a farmer to leave the field's edges and whatever the reapers missed, and he told them not to scold her either.

At mealtime in the field, Boaz invited Ruth to eat bread dipped in what?

Vinegar here was a sour wine used as a thirst-quenching dip; Boaz also passed her parched grain, and she ate until satisfied with some left over to take home.

What news, heard in Moab, persuaded the widowed Naomi to set out for Bethlehem again?

The Lord had visited his people 'in giving them bread', she heard, so the story's turn for home starts with a rumour of food reaching a foreign field, not with a vision or a summons.

Boaz blessed Ruth for sheltering under the Lord's what, an image she later turns back on him at the threshing floor?

Wings in Hebrew is kanaf, which also means the corner of a garment, so when Ruth asks Boaz to spread his 'skirt' over her she is asking him to be the shelter he wished for her.

Why did the nearer kinsman withdraw once Boaz explained that buying Elimelech's field meant marrying Ruth too?

It would mar his inheritance, he said; on the usual reading, a son born to Ruth would count as her dead husband's heir and take the very land he had just paid for.

Which Hebrew placeholder name, used much like 'John Doe', comes from how Ruth 4 addresses the unnamed kinsman?

Ploni Almoni, roughly 'so-and-so', is all the narrator calls him, so the man who declined to keep a dead relative's name alive ends up with no name of his own.

Where did Boaz go, first thing the next morning, to settle the question of Elimelech's land before witnesses?

The town gate was where legal business was done in ancient Israel, and Boaz seated a panel of the city's elders there before so much as mentioning the field.

Naomi told Ruth not to make herself known at the threshing floor until Boaz had finished doing what?

Eating and drinking left Boaz's 'heart merry', the text says, before he bedded down at the end of the grain heap, as farmers did to guard a harvest overnight.

At what hour did Boaz wake with a start to find a woman lying beside him on the threshing floor?

Midnight is when he 'was afraid, and turned himself', and rather than a scandal the scene ends with his promise to settle her case by morning.

Why, in his own words, did Boaz send Ruth home before it was light?

So none knew she had come, he said, guarding both reputations, and he sent her off with grain so that she would not arrive home to Naomi with nothing.

Ruth is one of the five heroines honoured by which Masonic-affiliated society open to women?

The Order of the Eastern Star was devised in 1850 by the Freemason Rob Morris so that Masons' wives, daughters and other female relatives could share in the fraternity, with Ruth as one of its star's five heroines.

In Jewish tradition Ruth is the paradigm of what, with several religious laws derived from her pledge to Naomi?

A convert, a ger, is how the rabbis read Ruth, and her 'your people shall be my people' became a source text for how a conversion is accepted.

Which Greek name did Hellenistic Jews give Shavuot, the harvest festival at which the Book of Ruth is read?

Pentecost to Jews meant the grain-harvest festival fifty days after Passover; Christians later attached the same name to the day the Spirit came to the apostles.

Genesis traces the Moabites, Ruth's people, to the elder daughter of which nephew of Abraham?

Lot's elder daughter named her son Moab, and his brother Ben-Ammi fathered the Ammonites; the Bible counts both peoples as Israel's kin and its rivals.

Moab, where Naomi's family settled, lay across the Dead Sea in what is now which country?

Jordan's highlands east of the Dead Sea were home to the Moabites, whom Deuteronomy barred from Israel's assembly to the tenth generation, yet this book makes a Moabite widow King David's great-grandmother.

Jewish tradition, following the Talmud, ascribes the Book of Ruth to which prophet?

Samuel, who anointed David, would have had every reason to record the king's ancestry, though most scholars now think the book was written centuries after his lifetime.

Many scholars date the writing of Ruth to which era, long after the time the story describes?

The Persian period (550–330 BCE) fits a book that welcomes a foreign wife just as Ezra and Nehemiah were ordering Jerusalem's men to send theirs away.

Ruth's name is usually linked to the Hebrew re'ut, a word meaning what, in keeping with her loyalty to Naomi?

Companion fits the story, though the Puritans liked the name for a different reason: the old English noun 'ruth' meant sorrow or pity, which made it a virtue name.

Which book, read at Passover, joins Ruth, Lamentations, Ecclesiastes and one other among the five festival Megillot?

Song of Songs, love poetry that Jewish tradition reads as an allegory of God and Israel, is read at Passover; Esther, read at Purim, completes the five.

In the Hebrew Bible, Ruth sits in which division rather than among the history books?

The Writings (Ketuvim) also hold Psalms, Job and Daniel; Christian Bibles follow the old Greek translation, which moved Ruth forward to stand among the history books, beside the era in which it is set.

Naomi was told that her devoted daughter-in-law was worth more to her than how many sons?

Seven sons stood for fullness, the Bible's picture of a complete family, so the compliment is extravagant, and it comes just as Naomi takes her new grandson in her arms to nurse.

Ruth Rabbah makes Ruth and Orpah sisters, both daughters of which Moabite king?

Eglon rose from his seat out of respect when his assassin Ehud announced a message from God, and for that, the midrash says, his daughter's descendants were given Israel's throne.

Which Romantic poet imagined Ruth 'sick for home' and 'in tears amid the alien corn'?

John Keats put the lines in his Ode to a Nightingale, written in spring 1819; by his housemate Charles Brown's account, he spent a morning under a plum tree writing it as a nightingale sang from its nest nearby.

Nicolas Poussin's cycle of the seasons in the Louvre uses Boaz finding Ruth in his fields to represent which one?

Summer gets the harvest scene, as Autumn gets the spies hauling grapes out of Canaan; Poussin painted the set in Rome in his last years, when a tremor had left his hands shaking.

In the 1960 film The Story of Ruth, the heroine begins as a child priestess of which Moabite god?

Chemosh was Moab's chief god, and the film invents a backstory the Bible lacks: Ruth is sold as a child into his service and rises to priestess before an Israelite craftsman she falls for shakes her faith.

Nahshon, named in Ruth's closing genealogy, was brother-in-law to which high priest through his sister Elisheba?

Aaron married Elisheba, which ties Boaz's family sideways to the priesthood as well as forward to David; Nahshon also led his tribe at the head of Israel's march through the wilderness.

The law that let Ruth gather behind the reapers told farmers to leave the field's edges for the poor and whom?

Strangers, meaning resident foreigners, are named in Leviticus, and a second law adds widows and orphans, so the Moabite widow qualified twice over.

Boaz shares his name, taken to mean 'in him is strength', with a pillar at the portico of which building?

Solomon's Temple had two bronze pillars at its portico, named Jachin and Boaz in 1 Kings 7; when Jerusalem fell, the Babylonians broke them up and carried the bronze away.

Naomi knew Boaz would spend that night at the threshing floor because he was doing what there?

Winnowing, tossing grain into the evening breeze so the chaff blows clear, kept a farmer at the floor overnight to guard the heap, a routine Naomi turned into an opportunity.

Boaz's marriage to Ruth, taking a dead kinsman's widow to carry on his line, is often likened to which custom?

Levirate marriage takes its name from the Latin levir, 'husband's brother'; Boaz was a more distant kinsman acting as redeemer, so scholars call his case a close cousin of the custom, not the thing itself.

Which talk-show host was named after Ruth's sister-in-law in the Bible, though a misspelling stuck?

Oprah Winfrey was registered at birth as Orpah, after the Moabite widow who turned back, but it was mispronounced so often that the swapped letters stuck.

Ruth the Moabite became the great-grandmother of which king, the last name in her book?

David closes the book as its final word: the family tree runs from Ruth's baby down two more generations to Israel's shepherd king.

Which New Testament book lists Ruth among Jesus's ancestors, one of five women in its genealogy?

Matthew names Ruth alongside Tamar, Bathsheba (as the wife of Uriah) and Mary in a family tree otherwise made up of fathers and sons.

Ruth is one of only two books in the Hebrew Bible that bear a woman's name; which is the other?

Esther is the other, and the two heroines mirror each other: Esther hides her Jewish identity in a foreign court, while Ruth is a foreigner who joins Israel in the open.

On the Bethlehem road, Ruth vowed to adopt which two things of Naomi's as her own?

Her people and her God: 'Your people will be my people, and your God my God' is the heart of the vow, spoken after Naomi had repeatedly urged her to turn back.

Ruth gleaned beside Boaz's young women through two harvests in a row, the second being which crop?

Wheat was the second crop, so Ruth worked through the whole reaping season in Boaz's fields, going home each night to Naomi.

In Talmudic legend, Orpah, who kissed Naomi goodbye, became the mother of which biblical villain?

Goliath was one of several giant sons the Talmud gives her, each said to repay a tear she shed when parting from Naomi.

Fragments of several Ruth manuscripts, the oldest from around 50 BCE, surfaced in which famous find?

The Dead Sea Scrolls include pieces of Ruth from the caves at Qumran, and their wording differs only slightly from the Hebrew text copied a millennium later.

At the threshing floor, Boaz blessed Ruth for a kindness: she had not gone chasing after whom?

Younger men, whether rich or poor, were the suitors Boaz expected her to prefer, which suggests he saw himself as the older and less likely match.

Which grandson of Ruth, a Bethlehem sheep farmer, gives his name to a family tree in Christian art?

Jesse sits at the foot of the Tree of Jesse, the image that traces the ancestry of Jesus upward from Ruth's grandson, echoing Isaiah's line about a shoot from his stump.

Which woman of Jericho does the New Testament name as the mother of Boaz, Ruth's second husband?

Rahab, usually taken to be the woman who sheltered Joshua's spies, appears as Boaz's mother in the genealogy of Jesus, so Ruth married the son of another famous outsider.

Deuteronomy bars Moabites like Ruth from the Lord's assembly, along with which neighbouring nation?

Ammonites share the ban because, Deuteronomy says, neither nation met Israel with food and water on the way out of Egypt.

Ruth can be read as a reply to which two leaders, who campaigned against marriages to foreign wives?

Ezra and Nehemiah fought marriages to foreign women, and Ezra had such wives sent away; a tale in which a Moabite widow becomes a royal ancestor argues the other side.

Which food, handed to Ruth at the reapers' meal, did she eat her fill of and save some for Naomi?

Roasted grain was Boaz's own offering to her, and once she had had her fill Ruth carried the leftovers home to Naomi along with the day's gleanings.

After Boaz woke on the threshing floor, Ruth asked him to spread what over her as near kinsman?

The corner of his garment was her request, a gesture of shelter that asked Boaz, in effect, to marry her as the family's redeemer.

When Ruth grew thirsty gleaning in his field, Boaz told her to drink from what?

Jars his men had filled were hers to drink from, and Boaz added that he had ordered those same men not to lay a hand on her.

Whom did Boaz ask about the unfamiliar young woman gleaning in his field on the day he met Ruth?

His harvest overseer replied without using her name, calling her only the Moabite who came back with Naomi and had worked since morning with barely a rest.

Boaz calls Ruth an eshet hayil, or worthy woman, a phrase that opens the poem closing which book?

Proverbs ends with the poem of the capable wife, and in the Aleppo and Leningrad codices Ruth comes straight after it, as if she were the poem's living example.

Ruth's loyalty to Naomi is a classic model of which Hebrew virtue, often translated loving-kindness?

Hesed is kindness that goes past duty: Ruth owed Naomi nothing once her husband died, yet she left Moab for a land she had never seen.

Which Hebrew term for a redeeming relative, used of God in Isaiah, fits Boaz's role toward Ruth?

Goel names the nearest kinsman bound to buy back a relative's land or freedom, and Boaz takes the role only after a closer relative gives it up.

Ruth's first chapter calls Elimelech's family by which clan name, tied to an old name for Bethlehem?

Ephrathites came from Ephrathah, the district around Bethlehem, and the elders use the old name again when they bless Boaz's marriage.

Which painter of The Gleaners spent three years on Harvesters Resting, his scene of Ruth and Boaz?

Jean-François Millet called it his most important painting; it was the only one he ever dated, and it won him a medal at the Salon of 1853.

A hillside tomb in which ancient West Bank city is traditionally said to hold Ruth and her grandson?

Hebron's Tel Rumeida holds the small shrine, which draws visitors at Shavuot, when Ruth's story is read aloud.

Which English poet and artist depicted Naomi entreating Ruth and Orpah to turn back in a 1795 work?

William Blake made it in the same year as his famous Newton, picking the moment on the road when Naomi urges both young widows to go home.

Which son of Nahshon does the closing genealogy of Ruth name as the father of Boaz?

Salmon would have belonged to the generation that entered the Promised Land, since his father Nahshon was a tribal leader under Moses.

How did the rabbis square Ruth's marriage to Boaz with the Torah's ban on Moabites joining Israel?

The ban covered only men, the Mishnah rules, and in rabbinic retellings Boaz himself explains this to Ruth when she protests that she is an outsider.

How did Ruth first react when Boaz offered her his protection in the harvest field?

Bowed face to the ground, she asked why he should take any notice of her, and Boaz answered that he had heard everything she had done for Naomi.

In a midrash, Boaz woke in fright and feared Ruth was a demon until he touched what?

Her hair settled it, because in that folklore demons were bald; once reassured, Boaz blessed her instead of scolding her for coming.

Home in Bethlehem, the grieving Naomi told everyone to stop using her name and call her what?

Mara means bitter, yet nobody in the story ever uses it: the narrator and everyone else go on calling her Naomi to the end.

The Hebrew name Naomi, which its bearer renounces on her return to Bethlehem, carries which meaning?

Pleasant, or lovely, is the sense of Naomi, from the Hebrew na'im, which is why she says the name no longer suits a woman who has buried a husband and two sons.

Why, Naomi told Orpah and Ruth, could she never provide them with new husbands?

She was too old to remarry, Naomi argued, and even if she bore sons that very night the widows could hardly hold out until the boys grew up.

What role did Naomi take toward Ruth's baby after cradling him in her arms in the book's last scene?

His nurse is the text's word, a fitting end for Naomi: the widow who lost both her sons finishes the book with a child in her arms.

In her lament on returning to Bethlehem, Naomi twice blames her suffering on God under which title?

The Almighty translates Shaddai, a name for God that Naomi uses twice in two verses as she insists that he has turned against her.

Before sending Ruth to the threshing floor, Naomi told her to wash, dress well and do what else?

Put on perfume, or anoint yourself in older translations, was part of a bold plan: Ruth was to go by night, dressed in her finest clothes.

When Ruth came home at dawn carrying Boaz's gift, what did Naomi tell her to do next?

Sit still and wait, Naomi said, sure that Boaz would not rest until he had settled the matter that same day; they are her last words in the book.

By which tender term does Naomi address Ruth throughout the book, a term Boaz also uses for her?

My daughter is how both Naomi and Boaz speak to Ruth, which suggests that Boaz belonged to Naomi's generation rather than to hers.

Why did Naomi urge Ruth to keep working beside Boaz's young women rather than try another field?

She might be harmed elsewhere, Naomi warned, a reminder of how exposed a woman gleaning alone could be; Boaz had already ordered his men not to touch her.

How did Naomi respond on learning that the generous landowner Ruth met was named Boaz?

She blessed him by the Lord, calling on the same God she had blamed for her losses a chapter earlier, and then told Ruth that Boaz was a close relative of theirs.

How did Bethlehem react when the widowed Naomi walked back in after her years in Moab?

The whole town was stirred, and the cry went round, 'Can this be Naomi?', a greeting she answered with a lament instead of a hello.

Boaz said he knew Ruth had left her parents and what else to settle where she knew nobody?

Her native land: Boaz's words echo God's call to Abraham to leave country and kindred, which sets the Moabite widow beside Israel's founding ancestor.