Old Testament Foundatiosn with Philip Yancey/Old Testament Foundatiosn with Philip Yancey - Disc 1.iso/pc/data/m11h04.dir/00092_hypertext definition.txt

Text File | 1996-09-06 | 1.1 KB | 3 lines

Ruth:

"In the English Bible, the book of Ruth has generally been considered an addendum to the book of Judges.  Its opening words—have contributed much to that understanding.  In the Hebrew Bible, however, the book is considered an addendum to the book of Proverbs.  The character of Ruth is thus portrayed as a historical example of the 'virtuous woman' of Pr 31:10-31.  The poem in Proverbs is a Hebrew acrostic, each line beginning with a different letter of the Hebrew alphabet.  The first line begins with the question 'A wife of noble character who can find?' (v. 10), and the last line is 'let her works bring her praise at the city gate' (v. 31ff).  The only other book that uses the term 'virtuous woman' or 'wife of noble character' is the book of Ruth (3:11), where Boaz calls Ruth 'a woman of noble character.'  In that same passage, Boaz says of Ruth, 'All my fellow townsmen [lit. those at the city gate] know that you are a woman of noble character' (3:11).  Boaz thus says of Ruth, the ancestress of David, precisely what the poem in Pr 31 says of the virtuous woman."  (John H. Sailhamer, The NIV Compact Bible Commentary, © 1994 Zondervan, p. 213)