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120 • 9 • T H E S T O RY B E G I N S W H E R E I T E N D S Harvesters know secrets. They know how the green of the bean blends with the green of the leaf; how sometimes it is necessary to peek beneath a leaf and find a colony of beans, hidden by shape and shade. They know how to bend down and enter into the world of the plant, row by row, leaf by leaf, turning over, looking under, peering in to find the fruit. Even those fruits that beacon their ripeness with color still hide behind and beneath the leaves of the plant. A game of hide and seek. The baskets fill. They know that they are not alone in the game. Our gardens were bordered by young woods to the west, home of deer. A large brush pile stood next to the first garden, haven for rabbits and groundhogs. Fields stretched out behind as far as the eye could see behind the copse of blueberries. Birds filled the skies above. Sometimes my mother would go to the gardens in the morning, lawn chair under her arm, twelve-gauge shot gun held against her shoulder. Those were the days I did not cross the creek. I watched her disappear behind the orchard trees to take up her post in the gardens. Any shots fired were largely symbolic—a rabbit here, a groundhog there, a Pyrrhic victory against nature’s prolific and exuberant bounty. Ruth ends with a double genealogy. First Naomi’s “son” is named Obed and the text immediately notes that “he is the father of Jesse, father of David” (4:17). Next the genealogy of David is extended further back to Perez with a toledoth formula: “And these are the generations of Perez: Perez begot Hezron, and Hezron begat Ram, and Ram begat Ammindab, and Ammindab begat Nahshon, and Nahshon begat Salmon, and Salmon begat Boaz, and Boaz begat Obed, and Obed begat Jesse, and Jesse begat David” (4:18–22). It may seem to contemporary English readers of Ruth that the genealogy functions as a neat ending, closing the narrative; however, in Hebrew narrative a genealogy always begins rather than ends a story.1 Based on Ruth’s divergence from all other Hebrew narratives, many historical-critical scholars propose that the genealogy was not original to the story of Ruth but appended later.2 There are, however, persuasive arguments that read the genealogy in other ways. For example, Linafelt argues that it was a part of the original composition of the THE STORY BEGINS WHERE IT ENDS 121 text. First he presents a literary reading of the genealogy. As the book began with a male line subject to famine, infertility, and then death, it ends with a male line full and fertile. There may even be a connection between the ten years spent in Moab and the ten generations that descend from Judah through Boaz to David.3 Second, Linafelt continues his literary reading to note the many connections between Ruth and the books of both Judges and Samuel. He uses this evidence to argue that Ruth was written to introduce the book of Samuel and that the genealogy therefore is not at the end of the story but at the beginning, the beginning of David’s story. The placement of Ruth in the LXX and the Christian canon (between Judges and 1 Samuel) is not just a chronological ordering due to the book’s narrative setting but possibly even intended by the author of the book.4 To support his thesis Linafelt notes that the book of Ruth serves to link the book of Judges with the books of Samuel: Ruth begins with the phrase “In the days of when the judges ruled” (or, literally , “in the days of the judging of the judges”) and ends with the word David. As Linafelt notes, “the reader has moved, in the space of four chapters, from the period of the judges to the period of the monarchy, making the book of Ruth a natural connector between the book of Judges and the books of Samuel.”5 The Greek-speaking Jews of the Diaspora who assembled the LXX placed Ruth between Judges and Samuel. This ordering was adopted by the Christians when they canonized the LXX as their Old Testament. The Hebrew-speaking Jews of Judah placed Ruth in the final section of the Tanak, the Ketuvim...

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