Dangerous Sisters of the Hebrew Bible

9: Ruth and Naomi

9 Ruth and Naomi Among the Bible’s narratives concerned with having sons and selecting heirs, the book of Ruth tells an unconventional family story featuring women. As Ilana Pardes observes, the book of Ruth “violates” a number of biblical conventions, particularly the convention of featuring male protagonists.1 Although named for only one woman,2 female characters populate and are central figures in the story that chronicles the preservation of Elimelech’s family and the birth of King David’s ancestor. Ruth’s notable focus on women has led scholars to consider whether it might have been authored by a woman. Epigraphic evidence, such as prayers and letters attributed to Sargon’s daughter Enheduanna (c. 2300 BCE), supports the assumption that women wrote in the ancient world.3 Because the Bible records that queens Jezebel (1 Kgs 21:8) and Esther (Est 9:29) wrote, it is not an unreasonable assumption that Ruth was authored by a woman.4 Even if not formally written by a woman, the book of Ruth may be an indirect product of women’s culture and could consequently reflect women’s experience. S. D. Goitein suggests that women composed stories and songs while they worked together.5 In this way, Ruth may be a product of a women’s network, as described in chapter 7. Unable to identify an author definitively, Carol Meyers urges scholars to focus less on the author’s gender and more on the gender perspective of the book.6 Meyers delineates six features of the book that support her argument that Ruth preserves a female perspective: a woman’s story is being told; a wisdom association is present; women are agents in their own destiny; the agency of women affects others; the setting is domestic; and marriage is involved.7 The presence of these features convinces Meyers that Ruth provides a rare glimpse into the lives and experiences of women.8 Meyers notes that the book of Ruth is not only about women; it is about their relationships.9 Similarly, Pardes observes that Ruth is the only biblical book in which the word “love” defines a relationship between women.10 The 157 story focuses on the interpersonal relationship between Moabite Ruth and her Israelite mother-in-law Naomi. Bereft of husbands and sons while in Moab, Ruth and Naomi make their way back to Bethlehem to rebuild their family. Not bound by biology or familial obligation, Ruth and Naomi’s relationship is the Bible’s most developed and positively portrayed sisterhood. In this chapter, I contend that an ideal sisterhood, one that is surprisingly modeled on the relationship between biological sisters, forms between Ruth and Naomi. This sisterhood secures the house of Elimelech and establishes the line of David. Many of the recurrent themes related to sisters and sisterhood appear in Ruth. Paired sisters, a vulnerable patriarchal house, Moabites, marriage, and even, as we will see, sororal desire and agency are all part of Ruth’s story. My reading of the book of Ruth reveals how ideal sisterhoods support Israelite society, and how they redeem dangerous sisters and sisterhoods. As Pardes notes, this sisterhood story rewrites the Bible’s paradigmatic sister story—the story of Rachel and Leah.11 When the people of Bethlehem pray that Ruth will be like Rachel and Leah (Ruth 4:11), who “together built the house of Israel,” their prayer removes the rivalry that defined Rachel and Leah’s relationship and provides these earlier sisters with closure to their story. These now ideal sisters may be imagined to have built the house of Israel, but Ruth and Naomi’s sisterhood secures its future by enabling the birth of Obed, King David’s grandfather. Although ultimately kinship determines dynasty, it is a sisterhood—a non-biological relationship among women—that establishes the Davidic dynasty. The book of Ruth demonstrates the power of sisterhood to alter individuals and to shape Israel’s story and destiny. Before considering Ruth and Naomi’s relationship, I begin by looking at the more obvious sisterhood in the book, the sisterhood comprised of the women of Bethlehem. For Meyers, mention of the women of Bethlehem in Ruth provides textual evidence for the existence of women’s networks in ancient Israel.12 The women of Bethlehem first appear at the beginning of the narrative when Ruth and Naomi arrive from Moab sonless and widowed. Appearing again at its end to name Ruth’s son, the women of Bethlehem neatly frame the narrative. Their...