While Reading Through The Bible (in alphabetical order, in one year), I came to the book of Ruth on my birthday! (November 8). A little birthday treat for myself.
Ruth has to be on the list of "The Best Short Stories Ever Written." It is so beautiful and satisfying. In a Hebrew class in seminary, we translated it verse by verse and studied it in depth. Turns out, as usual, the more you study and understand the text, the more amazing it is.
I hardly knew anything about the Bible when I married my beloved John. But I was sort of familiar with the book of Ruth, at least with that immortal passage, "Whither thou goest, I will go, and where thou lodgest, I will lodge: Thy people shall be my people, and thy God my God. Where thou diest, will I die, and there will I be buried. The LORD do so to me, and more also, if ought but death part thee and me." We put that into our wedding vows.
It is such an emotional and dramatic story. And, if you study it very carefully, you can see that it's a tour de force of story telling. Part of our study in that seminary Hebrew class was to write some of the passages as a screenplay. Never has there been a more enjoyable class assignment!
It still stumps me that there haven't been more dramatic interpretations of Ruth. There was that old movie from 1960. I just read the Wikipedia summary; it sounds kind of awful.
Maybe one of these days I will write said screenplay. (Hopefully, it will write itself!) Aside from the drama, the dialog, and the love story, the beauty of the book of Ruth is the confirmation of God's faithfulness to those who are faithful to Him.
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