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The royal house of David certainly retained the memory of a foreign woman, a convert, who, because of her filial devotion, had deserved to become part of the illustrious lineage from which the Messiah was to be born; this happened back in the time of the judges of Israel. This recollection was exploited in a pleasing way and turned into the Book of Ruth; its composition may be dated toward the end of the fifth century B.C. It represents, therefore, a simple family tradition that was introduced into the history of the chosen people and became part of the history of the salvation of humanity.
The facts are not told as though they were directly of concern to the history of Israel or bore witness to the action of God in the working out of his people’s destiny. The touching idyll of Ruth resembles rather an edifying tale, like the stories of Tobit and Jonah.
Ruth is a woman of Moab, of a race that is rejected by Deuteronomy (23:4); she becomes a daughter of Israel and through the kind arrangement of God takes her place in the genealogy of King David. What a beautiful subject, and what a fine lesson!
The author, like the author of the Book of Jonah, seems to have been written in order to protest against an overly narrow nationalism. Is he perhaps criticizing the excessively severe measures taken, after the Exile, against marriages with foreign women, all as part of an effort to protect the Jewish community from contact with pagans (Ezr 9–10; Neh 13:1-3, 23-27)? Or the story may have in view an older but surely quite similar situation. In any case, it is not unimportant, is it, that a pagan woman of exemplary life should have been accepted as one of the ancestors of David and the Christ (Mt 1:3-5)? Compassion toward relatives, acceptance of strangers, and gratitude for the grace of faith that God granted a foreign woman: these are the rich and always relevant lessons of this Book.