Ruth: casualty of a ruthless lectionary
The short story, Ruth , sadly gets no use in the normal Sunday lectionary. It is tempting, following on from the absence of Deborah and Jael ( see yesterday’s post ), to wonder if the men who compiled the lectionary were giving in to a little bit of unconscious bias against women’s stories! Jean-François Millet, The Gleaners. Ruth meets her future husband while gleaning To be fair, however, it is hard to pull out a single excerpt from a very tightly written short story. The book tells the story of an Israelite family who go to live in the neighbouring country of Moab. The husband dies, leaving his widow Naomi and two sons. The sons marry Moabite women, and then the sons die. Naomi, accompanied by her loyal daughter-in-law Ruth, goes back to Israel. There Ruth attracts the attention of a wealthy and kind man, and ends up marrying him. Their child is named as the grandfather of King David. The story is placed between the books of Judges and Samuel, because of when it i...