Category: Ruth

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Movie Review: The Story of Ruth (1960)

Another Saturday upon us and another review of an older cinematic work. I confess I watched this one in greater detail than other classic works I reviewed in the past. Only two weeks ago, I did not know this movie existed and when I discovered it I was thrilled to know that there was some adaptation of the biblical story of Ruth out there.

This is a historical romance directed by Henry Koster in 1960. I have read several critical responses written in the day and the movie received overwhelming praise. The cast is quite fabulous, and the lovely Elana Eden delivers an aggressively charming portrayal of Ruth.Of course, the commentary we wrote on Ruth published a few years back gave me a particularly endearing perspective into a book I know quite well. But the movie is an adaptation, and I am comfortable with adaptations because I am expecting interpretive acts from the writers and directors and this frees me to be an analogical observer rather than a hermeneutical one.

The story–unlike the text itself–begins by giving us a context into Ruth’s upbringing revealing her development as a little girl into a priestess in the Moabitess religion. The movie sees Ruth through the lens of a spiritual teacher who prepares chosen Moabite girls in the catechism of Chemoshian religion. As a grown priestess, Ruth’s task is to supervise the eventual sacrifice of these little ones to Chemosh. Ruth has seen these sacrifices numerous times, but prior to the sacrifice of a particular young girl whom she has learned to love, Ruth had been ideologically courted by Mahlon, a Jew who traveled with his brother Chilion, his father Elimelech, and his mother Naomi to Moab running from the famine (Ruth 1:1). Now, after being catechized in the law of God, Ruth has changed and upon seeing the death of the little girl–whom she trained–the law of God begins to take effect in her life, and she openly rejects the famous practices of the religion she was sworn to uphold.

The Moabite leadership quickly condemns Mahlon and Chilion, and his father Elimelech for influencing Ruth. Both Chilion and Elimelech die in prison, and Mahlon is sentenced to the quarries for his entire life. In an attempt at rescuing Mahlon from the quarries, Ruth seeks aid from additional guards, but upon Mahlon’s escape, he is injured. Upon his death bed, he marries Ruth sealing this epic union (It should be noted that in our commentary, Mahlon and Chilion receive a less than flattering description).

Ruth and Naomi are now left desolate, and though Naomi seeks to dissuade Ruth from following her back to Bethlehem, she refuses. This portion of the adaptation is quite clearly textual and I enjoyed this scene playing itself. When Naomi and Ruth return to Bethlehem, they encounter an anti-Moabite group that is constantly antagonizing Ruth and her ethnicity. Ruth and Naomi seek to restart life, and two suitors appear as solutions to their solitude. The nearest kinsman appears to be a charlatan who wants Ruth but shows no love for her. The other, Boaz, is honest and honorable and wishes to marry Ruth but must accept the Law of Moses as the supreme law of the land, which gives the right of the nearest kinsman to marry Ruth. In the end, as both men are resting at the winnowing barley on the threshing floor, Ruth approaches Boaz and they declare their love for one another. The story derails at crucial points from the actual biblical text, but the overarching status of the nearest kinsman is quite close to what Ruth 4 describes. He appears to be quite committed to preserving his wealth and unwilling to make sacrifices to redeem and love.

With the nearest kinsman out of the picture, the movie ends with the wedding of Boaz and Ruth and a narration of the final genealogy found at the end of Ruth 4, declaring the messianic line of Ruth’s son, Obed.

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The story is quite compelling, and a couple of additional images help solidify this portrayal as an astute adaptation. Two images come to mind: a) the first is the scene of Ruth next to a well meditating on marriage. Uniquely, wells in the Bible are almost always represented as places synonymous with weddings or marriage. Jesus meets the woman at the well and the discourse is one rooted deeply in marriage. b) the second scene is the appearance of an angel who invites himself to Naomi’s house and asks that she bake him bread. When Naomi returns with the bread, the angel of the Lord disappears but blesses the land with much-needed rain showing favor to the house of Naomi. God blesses obedience.

While there are a plethora of unique considerations in this 1960 adaptation, I left rather pleased with the attempt at portraying a story I love so dearly.

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The Lord be with you!


Just then Boaz arrived from Bethlehem and greeted the harvesters, “The LORD be with you!” “The LORD bless you!” they called back.

It is interesting that one of the most famous liturgical responses in church history comes from the text in Ruth. It appears where a Master is greeting his harvesters. It’s almost like a call to corporate work.

I think this is a good context for us. The greeting “The Lord be with you” ought to be seen as the Greater Boaz, Jesus Christ, inviting you to a harvesting mission. This greeting is not synonymous with “Good Morning;” it is synonymous with a partnership.

When a minister/fellow churchman greets you, he/she is inviting you into a harvesting mission; the mission of making all things new; the mission of reaping the joys of the kingdom. We are God’s harvesters.

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Call Me Mara!

There is an interesting observation in the book of Ruth that I didn’t catch until recently. When Naomi and Ruth return to Bethlehem, the women immediately recognized Naomi. But Naomi refused to be recognized as Naomi. In that famous text in Ruth 1, she says, “Don’t call me Naomi, call me Mara for the Almighty has made my life very bitter.” Don’t call me ‘Pleasant’ which is what the name Naomi means, but call me “bitter” which is what “Mara” means. She is asking to be identified as someone different from the way God identified her.

But as you read through the rest of Ruth, no one calls her Mara. The author of the book whom I believe to be Samuel continues to call her Naomi. And even the others in the narrative don’t refer to her as Mara, but Naomi, which is pleasant. Moral of the story: how you view yourself does not change how God views you. How you interpret God’s actions towards you does not change God’s good purpose for you as the text will indicate. God’s mark on you is much more permanent than any identity crisis you undergo. In the end, you may be bitter, but God marked you with his pleasantness and no circumstance can change that.

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Answering Questions on the New Ruth Commentary

What is the point of the Book of Ruth?

I think there are two central points: a political and Christological dimension:

What we argue is that Ruth is actually a political tract making the case for the Davidic Kingdom…in other words, why Israel needs a faithful King who will be strong like Boaz, loyal like Ruth, and whose fortunes will turn like Naomi’s.

It’s Christological because it sets the stage for a kinsman redeemer who woos his bride through his generosity and strength, who covers his bride under his wings, who becomes this new land where God’s people can glean freely until the end of history. Jesus is this unending source of blessing to the foreigner and to the citizens of the land.

How do you preach through the book?

It’s such a compelling story that if I were a pastor who had not preached through Ruth, I’d go to Amazon and buy this commentary right now and start a series through it. I kid. But seriously, what are you waiting for? CLICK HERE!

I think the beauty of preaching through it is that you are preaching through a familiar story, which means the contextual dimensions are fairly known, but it also means that people have expectations for what you are going to say, but our goal in the commentary was to show just how nuanced the commentary is and just how the language of Ruth is filled with redemptive meanings from the names of Mahlon and Chilion and to the genealogy in chapter 4 which is generally overlooked.

The pastor can take his time working through each character and bringing out their significance in the larger story.

What is it like to write a commentary?

Well, I think we both have to preach through it first as pastors…we need to read and re-read the text. Lusk, who is the genius behind this, taught a Sunday school class on it and I both preached and taught through numerous times here in the US and in Brazil.

The process can be really slow because we both have full-time jobs, children and other concerns, but we have to find time whenever it is available.

So, the benefit of the Through New Eyes Series commentaries is that much of our theology is already developed. It’s based on the genius of James B. Jordan whose imprint is in every page. With that starting point, we are looking at two elements: first, what does the text say? We are operating on a section or verse by verse analysis of the text

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Left Over Food

A parishioner, Ben Calisch, made a helpful connection between two narratives. The first is from Ruth’s account. Ruth 2 where we read:

So she sat down beside the harvesters, and he handed her some roasted grain, which she ate until she was satisfied. She kept what was left over.

Ruth receives abundant kindness. She is filled and still has more left over. Her cup runs over. Her Groom provides for her when she is hungry and needy and when she is full there is more.

In the Gospels, Jesus does the same as the new Boaz. In Mark’s account, after having fed 5,000 people, we read:

All of them ate and were filled. 43 Then the disciples picked up twelve baskets full of leftover bread and fish.

Like Ruth, the people were filled and there was leftover. Jesus provides exceedingly more than we can ask or think.

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This Worldly

Here is a short section from our upcoming commentary on Ruth:

The Christian hope is very this worldly.  It’s future worldly, but it’s not other-worldly.  It’s this world that’s going to be redeemed.  It’s this body that you’re in right now that you’re going to inhabit for all eternity.  It’ll be transformed and glorified, but it’s your body that is going to be raised up on the last day.  And that’s the Christian hope:  that the very body that has borne the curse of sin will now bear the full weight of blessing and glory and splendor and majesty. And we’ll see how all this is worked out through this theme in the following chapters.

 

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God’s obligation comes from within himself

As the Ruth project continues, here is another quotation from the section on the righteousness of God:

God’s justice or God’s righteousness obligates him to redeem his people and reward their labors on behalf of his kingdom.  It’s because God is righteous that he must keep his covenant and, of course, that covenant is a covenant of grace with us.

So this obligation, then, does not come from outside, as if we had some intrinsic claim on God’s salvation or as if our works could somehow put God in debt to us.  Rather, God’s obligation comes from within himself, from his own determination to be trustworthy and to make good on his covenant pledge, no matter what.

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How Boaz Wields Authority

This is how he wields authority.  He doesn’t use his authority to take advantage of others or to exploit others.  Rather, he uses his power and authority, his wealth, his greatness, we could say, in light of the way he’s described at the beginning of the chapter, in order to serve others.  We’re going to see that he does that specifically with Ruth, that he uses all of this authority, everything that’s in his domain, in order to serve Ruth, which I think is a very important principle to see. – Forthcoming Commentary on Ruth, Rich Lusk and Uri Brito

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A Glimpse into the Ruth Commentary

Here is a little sample of our labors on Ruth; hopefully to be sent to the publisher before the end of the year:

Ruth also shows the world just what she needs.  In a sense, in this book Israel is in the position of Naomi and Ruth.  Where are Naomi and Ruth at the beginning of the book?  They’re without a king; they’re without a husband; they are left desolate and destitute.  The story of Ruth is proof that God will not abandon his covenant bride but will provide for her ultimately by giving to her a greater Boaz and a greater David, a greater Kinsman-Redeemer, and a greater King who will do in reality what Boaz and David could only do in type and in shadow.

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This world is not my home…or is it?

Those who follow me on twitter may see several tweets with the hash-tag #Ruthproject. The Ruth project is a new work I am working with a fellow pastor from Birmingham. We are working on a commentary on Ruth. But this will not be just a normal, exegetical work, it is actually a pastoral and theological labor focusing on the nature and goal of redemptive history. We will focus on the content of Ruth’s majestic love story, but also detailing why Ruth serves as a miniature picture for all of God’s history.

We will offer a theological framework for how we are to look at redemptive history and how God is working in it. The commentary hopes to be practical, pastoral, and layman-friendly.

Here is a quote from the introduction:

What you believe about the future shapes how you live in the present.  If your final expectation is just to go and dwell forever in ethereal heaven, compare what your world view and your practice would be to someone whose final hope is of dwelling in a renovated and perfected physical creation in a resurrection body.

Lord-willing we will be able to provide a manuscript draft to our publisher by the end of the summer. Our goal is to have it published by the Family Advance Conference in November.