THE BOOK OF, is inserted in the Scripture canon, according to the English arrangement, between the book of Judges and the books of Samuel, as a sequel to the former and an introduction to the latter. Among the ancient Jews it was added to the book of Judges, because they supposed that the transactions which it relates happened in the time of the judges of Israel (Ruth i. 1). Several of the ancient fathers, moreover, make but one book of Judges and Ruth. But the modern Jews commonly place in their Bibles, after the Pentateuch, the five Megilloth—1. The Song of Solomon; 2. Ruth; 3. The Lamentations of Jeremiah; 4. Ecclesiastes; 5. Esther. Sometimes Ruth is placed the first of these, sometimes the second, and sometimes the fifth. The true date and authorship of the book are alike unknown, though the current of authority is in favour of Samuel as the writer. That it was written at a time considerably remote from the events it records, would appear from the passage in ch. iv. 7, which explains a custom referred to as having been "the manner in former time" in Israel, concerning redeeming and concerning changing" (comp. Deut. xxv. 9). That it was written also at least as late as the establishment of David's house upon the throne, appears from the concluding verse—"And Obed begat Jesse, and Jesse begat David." The expression, moreover (ch. i. 1), "when the judges ruled," marking the period of the occurrence of the events, indicates, no doubt, that in the writer's days kings had already begun to reign. The canonical authority of

Ruth has never been questioned, a sufficient confirmation of it being found in the fact that Ruth the Moabitess comes into the genealogy of the Saviour, as distinctly given by the evangelist (Matt. i. 6). The principal difficulty in regard to the book arises, however, from this very genealogy, in which it is stated that Boaz, who was the husband of Ruth, and the great-grandfather of David, was the son of Salmon by Rachab. Now, if by Rachab we suppose to be meant, as is usually understood, Rahab the harlot, who protected the spies, it is not easy to conceive that only three persons—Boaz, Obad, and Jesse, should have intervened between her and David, a period of nearly 400 years. But the solution of Usher is not improbable, that the ancestors of David, as persons of pre-eminent piety, were favoured with extraordinary longevity. Or it may be that the sacred writers have mentioned in the genealogy only such names as were distinguished and known among the Jews.

The leading scope of the book has been variously understood by different commentators. Umbreit ("Ueber Geist und Zweck des Buches Ruths," in Theol. Stud. und Krit. for 1834, p. 308) thinks it was written with the specific moral design of showing how even a stranger, and that of the hated Moabitish stock, might be sufficiently noble to become the mother of the great king David, because she placed her reliance on the God of Israel. Bertholdt regards the history as a pure fiction, designed to recommend the duty of a man to marry his kinswoman; while Eichhorn conceives that it was composed mainly in honour of the House of David, though it does not conceal the poverty of the family. The more probable design we think to be to pre-intimate, by the recorded adoption of a Gentile woman into the family from which Christ was to derive his origin, the final reception of the Gentile nations into the true church, as fellow-heirs of the salvation of the gospel.