cheenc03a.pdf

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RUTH, BOOK OF
form, must surely oa linguistic groundr be regarded as
ii post~eniiic work, and we shall see later that, even if
it is to some extent based on an earlier foik-story, the
skill of the artist has enabled him so to expand, to I
enrich, and to fiise his material that if is virtually all
his own work, and thnt a Inter editor has only touched I
the proper names and appended the genealogy.
Wellhausen is of opinion that the most important sign (
of date is the genealogy of Dwid (Ruth 418~12, cp I Ch.
The names of the ancestors
+, aeneal ow,
of
~IO-L~).
Dwid were known ns fur as Bouz.
Then memory failed. and a leap w;ri made in I Ch. 2rx
Ruth 4 %~ to Snlma (in Ruth, Salmon), who, in r Ch.
29. is called ,the father of Bethlehem.' But Snlma
belongs to the same group as Cnleb, Abi, and Hur.
and, 'if anything is certain, it is thir-that in the olden
times the Cvlibbitrr dwelt in the S. and not in the N.
of J"%h, and that David in particu!ar by his birth
belonged. not to them, but to the older part of Ismel,
which gravitated in the opposite direction to Israel
proper, and stood in the closest connection with Ren-
jamin., Cvelihauren add5 that 'of the other members
of the genealogy Nahshon and Amminadab are princes
of Judah in P, is,hilrt Ram ir the firstborn of Hezron
(I Ch. 225). and by the meaning of his name ('the high
one') is, iike Abmm, qualified to be the starting~point
of the princely line.' On the other hand, Sam, only
That the genealogy war borrowed from Chronicles and
added to Ruth by a later hand srenls certain, for the
author of Ruth clearly recogrlirer thnt 'Obrd was legally
the son of Mahlon, not of Roaz' (lira). [Driver, too,
remarks (fnirod161 qjj) that the genealogy 'may well
have been added long after the book itself was written,'
and, iike Konig (187). leaves out of the linguistic data
for the zolutton of the problem of age, t8i&fafh and
hg/i,i, which are churacieristic of P in the Pentateuch
(CP GENEALOCZES i.. 5 I). Bertheau, Kuenen, and
Budde adhere to the view that the closing section is an
inteeral ~oifion of the book. But swelrl, if the author
e . ,.
hid given a genealogy, he would hare traced it through
Mahlon. The existence, however, 01 the genealogy
5"-L-ests - - the oosrihilitv that t,vo vie,,.s of the descent of
D;:d \sere &rent, inr of which traced him to Perez
by bluhlon, and the other to the same Perez by Boaz.
[VJe have arrived nt this point without having been
ohheed to interfere with the traditional texr. It is, however,
necessa~y to take that step if we would
6,
obtain a more complete comprehension of
names. the narrative and of its hirtorical ori~in.
That Ruth, as it now stands, is a post-exilic wori is
certain ; we must therefore examine the text in connection
with fkcf of other nor less certainly port-exilic
rrarkr, in the study of which we have already reached
rcsults irhich. though in points of detail subject to
revision, yet on the whole seem to throw conriderable
light on ancient editorial processes. We shall thus
find revon to rusprct that the personal and grugraphical
names in the Book of Ruth (11-4.7) were
not altogether originally as they now stand.
Hethlehem-iudsh. ss in the rtrrneerlorieraooended to ludecr.
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RUTH, BOOK OF
'Ephrath' itself (like the 'Perrth' of Jer. 144.7) 15 yossibly a
mutilntcd form of ZaxE:HarH [p.v.l, and 'Moab, may bc
a rubsrirure fur 'Jli$rur (cp hl"*", g in), r reglo" ro the
S. of the ounrry calledSrrepiiathite or Ephrzrhite. Liimeiech,
Mrhlon, and Chilion-the two latter of which ha>" bccrl ru
fatally misunderstood as if !hey ,vere rymbalical names-are
no douhr clm-namc; (or dlfferent forms of the rarne dnnname)
dcrircd from the great eihnic ?:me, Jeiahmeel:
'Orprh,' has ~ ~ ~ arlrcn + h by l ~ 'mernthcns from 'Ophrah
-s.r. Ephralh: Ruth (Rr'uih, cp Perh.) is pro!rbly the
fern, 'or KC." (~~~.11~8$!, which ir equluaicnt to
Kc'uel; now Re'uel s prsrr m Gen 384 as r run of Erau, md
hir name is most progably a dinor;ion of Jcrahmeel, a name
which in its various broken forms =Itached lfself to different N.
Arabizn clans. Nnomi(No'omi)ir doubrlerr conn~credwith the
clm-namc~Nn'ami Pir'rmnni.' '~uar'(ly~)islc\irr~nsp~~~~t:
hence Stucken and \Vinckler do not heritare lo identify the
original Boa? with amylhological figure. But file place of the
bearer of rh~r name m the genealopy, - well as in rhr story uf
Ruth,rhuwl,hnf he toomar havcaclan-name.* 2nd remember.
ing the 'Ezbi'(.=>n) of r Ch. 1137, which corrcspo~!di lo '31.~
(MT) or rather i,,n (CP BQ*) in 2S.2335-ir., to .IKc~..
'* leiahme'&.' . . we mslv rescore rr rhe arieiwl name mr. - >
'Arch.
my, 'Obcd,' too, ir probably by m~ratherir from >!Y, Arabia.8
The statement of the narrator then, if the present
writer's conjectures are sound, amounts to this-that o
member of a Jerahmrelite clan who belonged to Beth~
jerahmcei (in the Ncgeb) removed with his ttn!ily,
under the pressure of famine, into the land of Missur,
arid sojourned there for about ten years. This agrees
with the original form of the story in Gen. 12 ros.
to which Abram (='father of Jerahmeel')
removed from the same cause from the Jerahmeelite
country to Mi~ur
OT Mirrim (see MLZXAIM, g 26).
Another pa7alicl story is that of the Shunrmm.ite womm who
was wsrned by Eiirha of the ap roach of r iam%c!e and went ta
the land of the 'Phiiirilnes'(? R. 8 1.3): the original nor)., the
pmmt wrirrr thinks (cp Saaurm), reprcsen~d hcr as r dweller
I, the Jerahmerlire Nc eb (?till in Isr=el~t~rh occupation), and
as in? father S. to ge lind of Sz~repl~arh (in r wide rense
05 the phrue).
Nor was it only famine that drove dwellers in the
Uegeb to the neighburinglandof Mibsur. The original
text of I s. 22, f seems to have represented Unvid as
placing his father and mother under the protecrion of
the king of Mi+r at Sarephath (see MIZPPH, 3), while
he w;ls himself a wanderer in the land of Jerahmrel,
and there is, in the present writer's opinion. hardly
room for doubt that Uarid lived it), or close to, the
Je~nhmeelit~ Negeh (see NECEB, 5 3. and note 3), and
had strong Jernhmeelite (and Mirrite) affinities. The
latter parrage is specially innportant, because the astensible
ohiect of the writer of Ruth is to prove the descent
of David from a noble-minded Mirrite woman.' It
. . . .
portion of .\lisrui which lay nearest to and included the
city of Sarephnth-war the locality to which Elimelech
and his family repaired. But the connection of Sare-
~hath with ~ases. with the 1,evires. and apparently with
ihe prophets, conjectured by the preseii writer (see
MOSES, 5 q; PROPHECY, 5 6), makes if reem to him
not improbable thnt the narrator had this place or
district in his mind. and in 412 the kindly wish is erpressed
that the house of Hoaz might he like the houre
of. Peres' (from ' Sorephath '?) whom Tamw (=Jerahmeelitli?)
bore to Judah.
, :,, :,'.-': uc,,e,
1 >I 20) I,*., ,.,.,,v .I., ,am,.?: -.,>p..,
m.1. ,.em ,.~,,A. I, i \. .\,',I 8 :. V