Citation

Shepherd DJ. Biblical Interp. 2018; 26(4-5): 528-543.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2018, Brill Academic Publishers)

DOI

10.1163/15685152-02645P07

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

The basic premise that Ruth 2 depicts the threat of violence against Ruth has been increasingly recognised by commentators, even if not all take sufficiently seriously the nature of this violence as potentially lethal and almost certainly sexual. What is less clear, however, is the extent to which the narrative implies that part of Ruth's vulnerability to (sexual) violence in the fields of Bethlehem relates to the fact that she is not a Bethlehemite but a migrant recently arrived from Moab. Taking seriously Ruth's own situating of itself 'in the days of the Judges', this study begins by exploring the way in which the gendered violence of Judges 19-21 flows from the account of an act of sexual violence against a woman who is treated as 'foreign' (Judges 19). Such a context is shown to resonate with Ruth 2 where - as is often case even today - Ruth's vulnerability to violence turns out to be intimately bound up with her multiple identities as woman, worker and foreigner.

Language: en