THE STORY OF RUTH

Isaac Asimov presents the story of Ruth as a plea for brotherhood, written originally as a dissent from Ezra's prohibition of mixed marriages (it contends that King David himself was descended from a non Jew). His admirably clear introduction describes the situation in Jerusalem after the return from Babylonia (when Ruth was written) and the hostility toward Moabites which dates from Balaam's curses on the army of Moses, while painstaking commentary — explaining the custom of levitate marriage, the charitable practice of allowing gleaners to follow the harvest, and the probable motivations of all concerned — alternates with the verses of Ruth as translated for the New English Bible. Indeed, everything is spelled out in so much detail that the flow of the narrative is lost; this is not, then, a way of meeting the virtues of Ruth for the first time, but a teaching tool which answers all possible questions after the fact.