Ruth: Continental Commentaries

This volume provides a readable introduction to the narrative book of Ruth appropriate for the student, pastor, and scholar. LaCocque combines historical, literary, feminist, and liberationist approaches in an engaging synthesis. He argues that the book was written in the post-exilic period and that the author was a woman. Countering the fears and xenophobia of many in Jerusalem, the biblical author employed the notion of h.esed (kindness, loyalty, steadfast love), which transcends any national boundaries. LaCocque focuses on redemption and levirate marriage as the two legal issues that recur throughout the text of Ruth. Ruth comes from the despised people of Moab but becomes a model for Israel. Boaz, converted to the model of steadfast love, becomes both redeemer and levir for Ruth and thus fulfills the Torah. In the conclusion to his study, the author sketches some parallels with Jesus' hermeneutics of the Law as well as postmodern problems and solutions. "Lacocque's brilliance can sometimes take your breath away. His insight into the way the narrator sensitively plays off the moab/moabite motif, for example, reveals not only a mature understanding of the power of metaphor but also a sensitive understanding of Transjordanian history...This commentary illuminates several literary, historical, sociological, anthropological, and psychological aspects of Ruth hitherto unnoticed by mainstream scholarship on the Book of Ruth."(Michael S. Moore).