50 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, a scene readers have debated for two thousand years; Boaz's response is to call her a virtuous woman and promise to settle her case.

In Ruth 4, what did one man take off and 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.

How many measures of grain did Boaz pour into Ruth's shawl before she left the threshing floor at dawn?

Six measures was a load Boaz had to help lift onto her, and she carried it home as a sign to Naomi that he meant to 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 man they say left Bethlehem not from hunger but from fear that his neighbours would come asking him for help.

How long had Naomi's family lived in Moab, by the book of Ruth's count, before both of her sons died?

About ten years of marriage had produced no children for either son, which is why Naomi, heading home, tells the two young widows she has nothing left to offer them.

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

Her mother's house is one of several touches that tell the story from the women's side, in a book where men appear mainly to die, bless or sign off on the deal.

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 Vulgate's 'Dominus vobiscum' for this verse became the Mass's standard call-and-response.

What did Boaz quietly order his harvesters to do so that Ruth would gather more than a gleaner's usual share?

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, ending the hunger that had driven the family out, so the story's turn for home starts with a rumour of food rather than a vision.

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, because a son born to Ruth would carry her dead husband's name and claim 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 grants a man who declined to carry on a dead relative's name, an irony readers have long savoured.

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 away from the threshing floor 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 builds its ritual around five biblical heroines, Ruth among them, each assigned a point of its star; Adah, Esther, Martha and Electa are the others.

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 sat out the hard years, lay across the Dead Sea in what is now which country?

Jordan's south holds Moab's old highlands, close enough to Bethlehem that the family's 'sojourn' was a short journey across a political and religious line, not a migration.

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.

The Book of Ruth, read aloud in a single sitting at synagogue, is divided into how many chapters?

Four chapters carry the whole plot, one per act: the losses in Moab, the field, the threshing floor and the deal before the elders, a tightness that has made the book a model of Hebrew storytelling.

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 is read at Passover, Lamentations on Tisha B'Av and Ecclesiastes at Sukkot, each pairing a short book with a date on the calendar; the fifth is Esther at Purim.

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

The Writings (Ketuvim) also hold Psalms, Job and Daniel, and there Ruth keeps company with the other short books read aloud at festivals.

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

Seven sons was the Bible's picture of a perfect family, so the compliment is extravagant, and it comes in the same breath as the women handing Naomi a grandson to nurse.

Ruth Rabbah makes Ruth and Orpah sisters, both daughters of which Moabite king, said there to be Balak's son?

Eglon, the Moabite king killed by the left-handed Ehud, is rewarded with royal descendants, the midrash says, for rising to his feet when he heard the name of God.

Which Romantic poet imagined Ruth 'sick for home' and 'in tears amid the alien corn' in his Ode to a Nightingale?

John Keats wrote the ode in spring 1819 after a nightingale nested beside the Hampstead house he shared with a friend, and Ruth's exile gave him his image of homesickness.

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; Spring is Adam and Eve in Eden, Autumn the spies carrying grapes out of Canaan, and Winter the Flood, each season told through a Bible story.

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

Chemosh was Moab's national god, and the film's invented backstory raises Ruth in his sanctuary from age eight before 19-year-old newcomer Elana Eden plays her grown up.

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's camp out of Egypt under Moses.

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 pillars at its portico, Jachin and Boaz, according to 1 Kings 7, though whether the pillar honours the man is anyone's guess.

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.

Which custom, by which a relative takes a dead man's widow to carry on his line, is Boaz following with Ruth?

Levirate marriage takes its name from the Latin levir, 'husband's brother'; Boaz was only a more distant relative, which is why the book stresses the purchase of the land as well.