Ruth (Interpretation | INT)

Ruth is one of "the little books of the Bible," only four chapters long. Katharine Doob Sakenfeld has written a commentary of unusual sensibility and discernment that makes very clear why this book has such great importance as literature and as scripture. Ruth is a very human book; its subject matter is the stuff of everyday life: family, marriage, children, homes, food, departures, deaths, good times, and bad times. The narrative is a drama of ordinary human affairs, but the drama unfolds against a background of the providence and purposes of God. In this excellent commentary Sakenfeld does justice to both the human and divine dimensions of the text. Her interpretation is both sociological and theological, a synthesis reflective of the simple profundity of the story itself.