Book Notice: Daniel Hawk on the Book of Ruth

L. Daniel Hawk

Ruth 
Apollos Old Testament Commentary.
Downers Grove, IVP, 2015.
Available at Amazon.com

By Jill Firth

L. Daniel Hawk (PhD, Emory University) is professor of Old Testament and Hebrew at Ashland Theological Seminary in Ashland, Ohio and an ordained minister in the United Methodist Church. His work on narrative and identity formation includes Evangelical Postcolonial Conversations (as co-editor and contributor), Joshua in Berit Olam and Joshua in 3-D, which engages with the American master narrative of Manifest Destiny and reflects on the relationship between conquest and westward expansion.

Hawk is interested in ethnicity and collective identity in Ruth. Ruth, Naomi and Boaz occupy different positions in the social setting in gender, ethnicity and status. Ruth’s Moabite ethnicity ‘drives the plot.’ The story addresses the question of the place of outsiders in the nation of Israel. The narrative grapples with the place of a foreigner among the Israelites. The book of Ruth turns antagonism against Moabites on its head, as Deuteronomy’s rejection of the Moabites (Deut. 23.3-6) is addressed in the scene where Ruth goes to the threshing floor by night. Evoking the feared image of a sexual approach by a Moabite woman to an Israelite, the scene leads to devotion and incorporation into the Israelite community and the establishment of the Davidic monarchy.

Ruth focuses on human agency and the hiddenness of God. Ruth portrays God as responding to human acts of faithfulness, rather than causing them, as in the patriarchal narratives. The author discusses various views of the date of composition of Ruth, but joins other recent commentators in locating Ruth in the Persian period, as a response to Ezra and Nehemiah’s marriage reforms.

This commentary engages with recent insights into historiography and the role of collective memory. Each section includes a translation of the Hebrew text, an examination of form and structure, a detailed exegesis and an exposition within the framework of Biblical theology. Additional resources for navigating the commentary include author and subject indexes, a Scripture index and a bibliography. Written in a scholarly but accessible style, it will be valuable for students, pastors and scholars and all who wish to understand and apply the Book of Ruth.

Jill Firth lectures in Hebrew and Old Testament at Ridley College in Melbourne.