Read this if you…
- want a brief, exquisite OT love-and-loyalty story you can finish in 20 minutes
- like that a Moabite outsider becomes great-grandmother of King David (and ancestor of Jesus)
- care about the 'whither thou goest, I will go' speech (one of the great loyalty lines in literature)
Skip this if you…
- don't want to read explicitly religious/Christian texts
Depicted in Art
Ruth kneels before Boaz in a sweeping golden wheatfield as harvesters work behind them; the landscape dwarfs the human encounter.
Nicolas Poussin, 1664
Ruth bows low before a richly dressed Boaz at the edge of a sunlit field; reapers and sheaves recede toward a hilltop town.
Gustave Doré, 1866
Boaz leans toward a kneeling Ruth at the field's edge, offering grain from his own hand in a quiet, intimate moment.
Barent Fabritius
A standing Boaz stretches a protective arm over a seated Ruth in a stylized fieldside grouping painted in proto-Impressionist color.
Frédéric Bazille, 1870
Tiny figures of Ruth and Boaz meet in the foreground of a vast Romantic landscape of mountains, fields and Italianate trees.
Joseph Anton Koch, 1825
Ruth in a blue cloak stands among bound sheaves as Boaz approaches her across a Bethlehem wheatfield, harvesters scattered behind.
Julius Schnorr von Carolsfeld, 1828
Boaz questions Ruth at the edge of his field with harvesters bending to the grain behind them and an open sky above.
Gerbrand van den Eeckhout, 1651
Recommended Editions
King James Version
Oxford University Press · 1611
The most influential and commonly quoted translation in English. The prose rhythm everyone else is responding to, even modern translations.
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Notable Quotes
Intreat me not to leave thee, or to return from following after thee: for whither thou goest, I will go; and where thou lodgest, I will lodge: thy people shall be my people, and thy God my God:
Screen & Stage
Posters via The Movie Database (TMDB)
- John Keats, English Romantic poet, 1795–1821: "Through the sad heart of Ruth, when, sick for home, / She stood in tears amid the alien corn."
- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, German poet, novelist & statesman, 1749–1832: Ruth is the loveliest little whole that has been handed down to us in epic and idyllic form.
- Phyllis Trible, feminist biblical scholar, Union Theological Seminary, 1932–2023: "There is no more radical decision in all the memories of Israel."
- Robert Alter, professor of Hebrew & comparative literature, Berkeley; Bible translator, b. 1935: A late bucolic idyll — Ruth embodies loyalty, love, and charity in a wholly harmonious world.
- Harold Bloom, literary critic, Yale; author of The Western Canon, 1930–2019: Of all the books of the King James Bible, Ruth may be its most beautiful work.