Is the book of Ruth anti-David?

The story of Ruth presents us with several ironic dilemmas. In this post I will deal with just one of them.

The story begins with an Israelite family (Elimelech and Naomi and their two sons Mahlon and Chilion) travelling to the neighbouring territory of Moab during a famine. While there, Mahlon and Chilion marry Moabite women, but then they die, leaving childless widows. Ruth was married to one of the brothers, although the story doesn’t say which one (it was apparently not important to the storyteller). However, according to a law in Deuteronomy, “No Ammonite or Moabite shall be admitted to the assembly of the LORD. Even to the tenth generation, none of their descendants shall be admitted to the assembly of the LORD … you shall never promote their welfare or their prosperity as long as you live” (23:3-6). While this doesn’t specifically mention marriage, the intention that Israelites should have nothing to do with Moabites or allow them to join their community seems pretty clear. Inter-marriage, while not specifically stated, seems to be implied. Somewhat ironically, a famine made it necessary for this family’s welfare that they moved to Moab. It would be only natural that in time the sons Mahlon and Chilion would seek wives, and so they married Moabite women.

At this point I should note that we don’t know when the book of Ruth was written. Some traditions attribute it to the prophet Samuel in the 11th century BCE, while many scholars date it much later to the Persian period (5th century BCE), which we also call the post-exilic period. One reason for scholars to date it to this later period is that the books of Ezra and Nehemiah indicate that inter-marriage with foreigners was an issue in the Persian period, and it is therefore argued that this debate provided the raison d’être for the writing of the story of Ruth. Just to complicate things further, there is also considerable scholarly debate about when Deuteronomy was written and/or edited/redacted, with some scholars dating it (or at least its final redaction) to as late as the exilic period. In other words, we don’t know which text was written first, Ruth or Deuteronomy. If Ruth was written first the writer couldn’t have known about the Deuteronomic prohibition against Moabites. If Deuteronomy was written first, did the writer of Ruth know about it, and was the story specifically responding to the anti-Moabite laws? We may never know. All we can do is to speculate about possible connections or allusions. In this post I will be working off the hypothesis that Deuteronomy is late (at least in its final form) but that Ruth is later.

We should also note here that the book of Ruth is full of irony and humour (I touch on this here). We should keep this in mind when reading the story; there must be a reason for the irony and humour as it was unlikely to be there simply to entertain.

It seems to me that the writer is presenting his audience with at least one dilemma in the story: an Israelite from Bethlehem married a Moabite, which if not actually unlawful at least would have been contrary to the spirit of the law in Deuteronomy 23. There was also a Deuteronomic law known as “the law of Levirate marriage” (Deuteronomy 25:5-10, from the Latin word “levir” meaning “husband’s brother”) which put the brother of a deceased man under a legal obligation to marry the deceased man’s widow. Now, while Boaz wasn’t the actual brother of Mahlon and Chilion, the book of Ruth calls him “a kinsman on her husband’s side.” It’s debatable if he was legally obligated to marry Ruth. But if he was, then the story presents us with a dilemma for Boaz: does he obey the law in Deuteronomy 25 and carry out the legal obligation as a “kinsman-redeemer”, or does he obey the prohibition in Deuteronomy 23 against marrying a Moabite? To obey one law would be to break the other.

This kind of dilemma is fairly typical in biblical stories and in later rabbinic literature. We see an example of it in the New Testament in Mark 12:20-23 (which may have been based on a similar story in Tobit 3:7-9), where the Sadducees presented Jesus with a theological dilemma about a hypothetical woman who was married multiple times. This type of dilemma was later a common device in Rabbinic literature where the Sages and Rabbis would discuss highly unlikely hypothetical situations, often dealing with situations where there seemed to be conflicting laws at play, and they would attempt to determine which law took precedence or if there was a way to observe both.

The story is further complicated by the question of whether Boaz was under any such legal obligation as he was not the actual brother of Ruth’s late husband. Even if the story pre-dates the Deuteronomic law, the law may have been based on a long-standing practice or tradition, which is likely considering that several other cultures have similar laws or traditions, and Ruth 4:7 refers to long-standing customs about levirate marriage. But there is nothing in Deuteronomy to suggest that if the brother of a deceased man was unable or unwilling to fulfil this Deuteronomic legal obligation then another relative had to be found. In Deuteronomy the man who refused to marry his brother’s widow was shamed, but the law ends there. In the book of Ruth, Boaz said that there was actually a closer relative, and a large part of the story details the negotiations about who had the right or duty to be the “kinsman-redeemer”, or person who would take Ruth as his wife. It seems that Boaz was not actually obliged to do anything, so the dilemma could have been easily resolved by doing nothing, and not marrying the Moabite Ruth.

The story of Ruth revolves around these legal dilemmas. That in itself is worth exploring further (another time perhaps). The conclusion to the story, which highlights that King David was descended from the union of Ruth and Boaz, presents us with the awkward situation that David ultimately had Moabite ancestry and should therefore technically have been excluded from membership in the community of God’s people.¹ This questions his legitimacy to be the ruler of a community of which he was not even a full member (akin to a modern non-citizen being elected to high office). Like a lot of biblical stories, this story doesn’t resolve the dilemma but leaves it to readers as a prompt to further discussion/debate. The books of Samuel-Kings seem to make a point that laws related to kings were often broken or ignored. That may be the point of the Ruth story.

It’s important to note that Deuteronomy is the only book in the Torah (or Pentateuch) to include the laws about levirate marriage and prohibiting Moabites from becoming Israelites. The other books in the Torah are simply silent on these matters. Interestingly, Deuteronomy is also the only book in the Torah to have the laws about kings. Again, the rest of the Torah is silent. Is this a coincidence? For a considerable period of time biblical scholarship has generally described Deuteronomy, Joshua, Judges, Samuel, Kings and Jeremiah as “Deuteronomistic literature” with the historical books of Joshua, Judges and Samuel-Kings being called “the Deuteronomistic history” (and sometimes argued to have been written by Jeremiah or his scribe Baruch). This body of literature is called “Deuteronomistic” because these books share common major themes and terminology which, it is thought, originated in Deuteronomy. It is noteworthy that Deuteronomy has “the law of kings” and Judges, Samuel and Kings describe various attempts to establish a monarchy and how the kings failed to live up to the Deuteronomic standards. The point of this is that dynastic (hereditary) monarchy ultimately failed to protect Israel from invasion and exile. It’s also almost certainly not coincidental that the book of Ruth brings together allusions to the Deuteronomic laws about Moabites and levirate marriage, and concludes with a reference to the genealogy of David. This strongly suggests that Ruth was Deuteronomistic in nature, building on the views of the writer(s) of the Deuteronomistic history. It appears that the writer was familiar with this body of literature and was writing about one of its major themes. If it’s Deuteronomistic then the writer of Ruth was reinforcing the point that kings were imperfect, monarchy was flawed, and that the Divine standards set for kings were never met, not even by David. Why make this case? Well, the writer(s) of the books of Chronicles tell the histories of Israel and Judah differently. They portray David and Solomon as model kings, even excluding details from their accounts which present these kings in a poor light (such as David’s affair with Bathsheba and his murder of Uriah, and the murders and bloodshed associated with Solomon’s reign). For the priestly (Zadokite) writers of Chronicles their own legitimacy as the rightful spiritual leaders of the nation depended on the appointment of their ancestor Zadok to the position of High Priest by David and Solomon. They had, or so they claimed, a divine right to be the nation’s spiritual leaders because of their ancestry. It makes perfect sense, at least to me, that the alternative histories of Samuel-Kings, and the story of Ruth, are a polemic against this claim.

To my mind there are two possible reasons why this story was written and included in the Bible:

1. It may have come out of the debate in the Persian period (highlighted in Ezra-Nehemiah) about whether or not Israelites could marry foreigners, as some scholars suggest, and argues that such inter-marriage is permissable (because even King David was the result of such a marriage); OR
2. It may have been written by an anti-monarchic, anti-David (or anti-Zadok) group which questioned David’s legitimacy as king. There is good evidence in the books of Samuel and Kings that in the post-exilic period an anti-monarchic sentiment was prevalent, and there was some resistance to restoring the monarchy when they returned from exile. It would not be surprising for anti-David literature to be written as part of this debate, or at least for a story which questioned the ‘purity’ of the Davidic dynasty.

My personal inclination is towards the second option. The use of puns, irony, satire and ridiculing humour is characteristic of propaganda literature and it seems to me that the book of Ruth has an abundance of these features. In future posts I will look further at more of these features.

---

¹ Most scholars these days would argue that even if Deuteronomy wasn’t as late as the exile, it was almost certainly later than David. If that is the case then this law was written long after the time of David.