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26. “Why Are You So Kind . . . When I Am a Foreigner?”: Reading Ruth vs. Esther
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26 “Why Are You So Kind . . . When I Am a Foreigner?” Ruth vs. Esther Primary Reading: Ruth and Esther. Surface Similarities Ruth and Esther are two of the best-known books of the Hebrew Bible. At first glance they seem quite similar. Both are short stories named for female figures . In each one, women and foreigners play a prominent role. This chapter will compare these two similar works. This comparison will raise explicitly a central issue that has until now been largely implicit: how the Bible functions as a collection that expresses a diversity of views. Beyond History: The Genre of Ruth and Esther As we have seen, identifying a work’s genre can help us understand how to read or interpret that book.1 Both Ruth and Esther are historical in the sense of “narratives that depict a past” (see “The Bible’s Limits as a Source for History” in chapter 4), but neither is history in the sense of depicting an actual past. In fact, both works signal that they are not to be read historically. The Book of Ruth Ruth, at least in its final form, dates from much later than “the days of the chieftains [judges],” the period mentioned in its opening verse. This is certain because it introduces the ceremony in 4:7 with the words “Now this was for267 merly done in Israel in cases of redemption or exchange.” In other words, the narrator needed to explain a ceremony that had long since become defunct.2 Although a work that has literary merit may also be historical,3 Ruth is more easily labeled as literature than history. It is remarkably well formed from a literary or rhetorical perspective (though such features do not always come through clearly in the translation). In this story, a gibbor chayil (ly!c- rob