Ruth — Loyalty and the Stranger
The Book of Ruth is Judaism's supreme narrative of chesed (loving kindness) — the Moabite woman who chooses the God and people of Israel, and whose loyalty becomes the origin of the Davidic dynasty.
The Book of Ruth is a masterpiece of Hebrew narrative, celebrated for its beauty and its radical message. Ruth, a Moabite widow, refuses to leave her Jewish mother-in-law Naomi after both their husbands die: 'Where you go, I will go; where you lodge, I will lodge; your people shall be my people and your God my God' (1:16-17). This declaration of total commitment — across ethnic, national, and religious boundaries — is one of the most beautiful expressions of loyalty in all of literature. Ruth's chesed (loving kindness) to Naomi, and Boaz's chesed to Ruth (honoring the custom of levirate marriage), generate a chain of kindness that ultimately produces King David — and through him, the Davidic dynasty and the messianic lineage. The rabbis taught that the entire Book was written to show that David descended from a Moabite woman — to teach that chesed transcends ethnic origin, and that God's purposes are served through the loyalty of a foreigner.
Where you go, I will go; where you lodge, I will lodge; your people shall be my people and your God my God.
Philosopher Nel Noddings's ethics of care — grounded in the response to the concrete other in their vulnerability and need, rather than abstract principles — finds its biblical archetype in Ruth's care for Naomi: the ethical commitment that arises from relationship, not from principle.
Tanakh
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- What Judaism says about community
Ruth is an outsider who chooses the people rather than being born into them. The tradition makes her the ancestor of its royal line, which says something about who ends up counting as inside.