 He Qi: Ruth and Naomi 2001 |
The
Tanakh (Hebrew Bible) uses marriage as a central metaphor for the relationship
between Hashem (YHWH) and Israel (human kind).[1] In this fashion, Israel is
variously characterized as a bride, an adulteress and frequently
unfaithful in other ways, forgetting it’s sacred covenant (kettubah?) with
God. In the Tanakh, especially in Vereshit (Genesis) many scenes of boy
meets girl, betrothal and marriage are recounted—Adam and Eve; Avraham and
Sarah; Yitzak and Rivka; Jacob, Rachel and Leah; Moses and Zipporah;
Judah and Tamar. In each of these scenes, specific characters drive the
plot through variations on the theme of meeting at a well, but also tell the
listener/reader something about that other larger covenant. Much is to be
learned from the way water is dispensed to a stranger.
Megillat
Ruth, it seems to me, marks the end of the line in the recounting of encounters
leading to marriage, a literary bridge between the tribal time of the Judges
and the ascendance of the Kings. Remarkably, none of the significant
characters after the time of Ruth meet their mate at an oasis.[2]
The
reading of Ruth that follows focuses first and foremost on the betrothal to
marriage metaphor and its intersection and illumination of what I understand to
be the crux of Judaism.
In the Talmud, a story is told of
Shammai and Hillel, two of the great rabbinic sages of Judaism, who were also
contemporaries of Jesus of Nazareth:
On another occasion it happened that a
certain heathen came before Shammai and said to him, “Make me a proselyte, on
condition that you teach me the whole Torah while I stand on one foot.'
Thereupon he repulsed him with the builder's cubit which was in his hand. When
he went before Hillel, he said to him, 'What is hateful to you, do not to your
neighbor: that is the whole Torah, while the rest is the
commentary thereof; go and learn it.'
Shabbat 31a.
Rabbi Akiva, the major second century sage, also characterized love your
neighbor as the major principle of the Torah (JT Nedarim 9:4).
Matthew,
Mark and Luke tell of a like exchange between Jesus and someone else, in the
guise of a scribe, a Sadducee and a lawyer respectively. Mark 12:28-34,
Matt. 22:34-40, Luke 10:25-28. All three accounts quote Deuteronomy 6:4-5:
“You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, and
with all your strength and all your mind and then add Leviticus 19:18 “and love
your neighbor as yourself.” In response to a follow-up question by the
lawyer – “And who is my neighbor?” -- Luke’s version then segues into the
parable of the good Samaritan. The story reflects badly on a priest and a
Levite who both pass by a stranger who had been beaten and robbed on the road
from Jerusalem to Jericho. The gentile Samaritan stops, gives aid,
carries the stranger on his donkey to an inn and pays for his further
sustenance and care. Jesus asks his lawyer interlocutor: Which of
the three loves his neighbor?
In
a footnote to Shabbat 15a it is said that Hillel commenced his Patriarchate a
hundred years before the destruction of the Temple, and he was followed by
Simeon, Gamaliel and Simeon, his direct descendants, the four spreading over
that century. V, Halevi, Doroth, I, 3, pp. 706. From this and
the similarity of the teachings of Hillel and Jesus, some have speculated that
one was the teacher of the other. More likely, the writers of the gospels
(for the most part learned Jewish boys) recognized a good story and adapted it
to their ends. What can be said with some confidence is that both stories
focus on the crux of Judaism, which resides in the “holiness code” that makes
up Leviticus 19.
But
how then can it be said that the shema is derived from love your
neighbor? Do we here go back to the beginning and unwrap the making
of Adam and Eve in the image of God, the implication being that something of
the divine can also be found in the human and deserves, therefore, reciprocal
recognition and respect?
The
formulation of Hillel, as many have noted, is negative – a “thou shalt not” in
contradistinction to the “positive” commandment formulation of Leviticus
directly quoted in the Jesus story. One consideration that Hillel may
have had in mind: “shalt nots” may be easier for a novice to grasp than
the “shalls.” But is there a difference in meaning/import in the way the
proposition is stated? Is “shall not” a category of conduct that is a
subset of “shall”? Is one de minimus and the other de maximus?
One merely secular and the other holy? One profane, the other
sacred? One good enough and the other moral perfection?
“Whenever love depends on some selfish end, when the end
passes away, the love passes away; but if it does not depend on some selfish
end, it will never pass away. Which love depended on a selfish end? This was
the love of Ammon and Tamar. And which did not depend on a selfish end? This
was the love of David and Jonathan. (Avot 5:15)" David, of course,
being the descendant of Ruth, and the hesed of Ruth leading to the birth of
David.
The
Big Picture
Before
diving into a close reading of Ruth, it is helpful to get a bird’s eye view of
the story. This bird’s eye view is mostly about the writer’s craft (and
craftiness). Some of this shows up in the King James Version and the
Revised Standard translation, but much that helps to drive the action only
becomes apparent with some clues that are only clearly evident in Hebrew, and
can be made somewhat more evident to an English language ear with phonetic
transliteration.
Ruth
consists of four chapters that were not demarcated in the original Hebrew
scrolls. Those divisions are bequeathed to us by the second century
translators of the Hebrew bible into Greek and Latin. Nevertheless, the
divisions follow exactly certain linguistic dividers (envelops) that typically
appear in biblical narratives, so have become the same divisions used in the
modern Tanakh.[3] I think of the four divisions as four acts or scenes,
depending on whether I visualize Ruth as a play or as a short film. I
call the four scenes: On the Road; In the Field; On the Threshing Floor;
and At the Gates.
Why
think of Ruth as a play or a short film? In my view, Ruth was written to
be heard, possibly acted in some sense and may have been a reduction to written
form of a story initially part of an oral tradition.[4] What is the evidence
for my view? First, Ruth has the highest ratio of dialogue verses to
narrative verses (55/85) of any equivalent story in the Tanakh.[5]
Second, the story unfolds making use of various story-telling devices that make
it easy to follow, but also exact attention from the listener by taking
unusual turns and setting up a problem to be solved. Third, the story
makes use of key words specific to each of the sections, e.g. return
(shuv) On the Road and glean ( ), In the
Field. Fourth, the writer/teller plays with words (paronomasia) so often
and so cleverly that one cannot help being drawn closer to hear better.
Fifth, the story consists of binary oppositions such as famine/plenty;
escape/return; barren/fruitful; reward/punishment; tradition/novation; and
life/death that resonate with all literature that preceded and followed Ruth,
in literary time.[6] Sixth, each character’s name means something, a device very
familiar in English literature (e.g. The Importance of Being Earnest), but used
in a way that seems to flatten the character to serve solely as narrative
device.
Elements
of the Ruth story, both grand and trivial, show up in the Western literary
canon, most notably perhaps in John Keats Ode to a Nightingale, but no less
evident, though unnamed, in classic Hollywood films such as It Happened One
Night and Mr. Deeds Goes to Town, Frank Capra films of the Great Depression, a
time of drought and dislocation. Imitation (adaptation) being the
sincerest form of flattery, the films speak volumes about the character,
dialogue and plot lines in Ruth.
Typically,
a Hebrew commentary on Ruth begins with the question: why do we read Ruth on
Shavu’ot, the giving of the commandments at Sinai? Three answers are
generally accepted, the first two more so than the third:[7]
1.
The story takes place during the annual barley then wheat harvest which ends in
the harvest festival (Hag haKatzir), the answer first found in the Mahzor in
accordance with the traditions of the school of Rashi.
2.
Ruth embodies the archetype of the convert and Shavu’ot (=Mattan Torah)
represents the “mass conversion” of Am Ysra’ek (see BT Keritut 9a, MT Issurei
Bi’ah 13:1-4) and also the Mahzor Vitri.[8]
3.
In the Midrashic collection Ruth Zuta (1:1): “What does Ruth have to do with
Shavu’ot, the season of the giving of Torah? To teach you that the Torah
was given through afflictions and poverty.”
The
JPS Bible Commentary on Ruth (at xxvi) offers a few others, which can be viewed
as variations on the same theme:
1.
Both the Torah, which was given on Shavu’ot, and Ruth are all about hesed
citing Lekach Tov (11th commentary compiled by R. Toviah ben
Eliezer);
2.
At Sinai, Israel took upon itself obedience to the Torah; Ruth likewise takes
this obligation upon herself;
3.
According to one tradition, David was born and died on Shavu’ot; Ruth ends with
the lineage of David;
4. Reading Ruth
teaches us that actions, not mere study, are the essence of righteous living or
goodness.
In
my view, the most compelling rationale for reading Ruth on Shavu’ot is its succinct
and engaging recapitulation of the destination wedding at Sinai, idealistically
pointing toward a grand reconciliation and redemption of the land in a future
time through acts of lovingkindness.
[1] The other major
metaphors are, of course, “king” and “shepherd” which would seem to signify a
different kind of relationship, less reciprocal and far less familial than the
marriage metaphor. These metaphors work their literary magic in the same
way whether the relationship is viewed specifically as with Israel or
universalized to all human kind,
[2] Another sort of
watering hole, a bar called “The Oasis”, served as a primary meet and greet
venue just across the creek from the Stanford University campus.
[3] The early Christian
translators also place Ruth between Judges and 1st Samuel in
accordance with the temporal slot stated in the beginning of Ruth and the
epilogue genealogy leading to David. In the Tanakh, Ruth appears in the
writings along with the other Megillot, traditionally associated with specific
religious festivals. Perhaps the traditional Hebrew placement indicates a
lesser status for Ruth than that reserved for the Torah and those histories
immediately following the Torah.
[4] These comments on
the storyteller devices are derived primarily from Jack Sasson’s essay on Ruth
that appeared in The Literary Guide to the Bible, edited by Robert Alter and
Frank Kermode. Sasson does not conclude, however, that the use of these
devices necessarily imply a pre-existing oral tradition for the story.
[5] The possible
exception would be Job since that story consists of lengthy indictments by the
various speakers, almost entirely in poetic style apart from the very beginning
and the very end.
[6] Ruth was probably
reduced to writing sometime after the composition of 1st and 2d
Samuel and 1st and 2nd Kings, after the return from the Babylonian exile,
and at a time when the Jerusalem leadership was attempting to enforce rules
against inter-faith marriages to discourage conversions to Judaism. In their
JPS Bible Commentary (at p. xvi), one of the principal sources for this essay,
Tamara Cohn Eskenazi and Tikva Frymer-Kensky conclude that “the preponderance
of the evidence points to a date in the postexilic/Persian period around the
fifth century B.C.E.” The evidence for this conclusion consists of the
nature of the language in Ruth (Aramaisms), the socio-legal institutions and
practices reflected in the scroll , the relationship to other biblical
traditions, the socio-political matrix, especially attitudes toward Moabites in
Ruth and in Israeli history and the role of King David, whose birth concludes
the book, although an earlier or later date cannot be ruled out entirely.
Id. at xvii. I am persuaded by the view of Yair Zakovitch that the
book of Ruth is a deliberate polemic against the policies of Ezra-Nehemiah,
Ruth: Introduction and Commentary, for reasons that will be obvious from the
textual analysis that follows.
[7] Many of the Talmudic
references in this piece are derived from “A World of Kindness: An
Analysis of Megallit Ruth” by Yitzchak Etshalom, Educational Coordinator of the
Jewish Studies Institute of the Yeshiva of Los Angeles. He In turn
credits Rav Elhanan Samet of the Herzog Teacher’s College in Alon Sh’vut.
[8] BT stands for
Babylonian Talmud; MT stands for the Mishneh Torah, a codification of Jewish
law by Maimonides also known as the Rambam.
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