Ruth and the King Who Asked About Wisdom

The Question at Ptolemy's Table

Ptolemy II Philadelphus ruled Egypt from 285 to 246 BCE and had the habit, according to the Letter of Aristeas, of posing philosophical questions to the scholars at his table while the wine went around. He asked them about justice. He asked about freedom from anxiety. He asked about how a king could maintain his authority without fear. The scholars answered him with statements that were, technically, Greek political philosophy and were actually something much older.

One evening the king asked how a man could maintain the truth. The answer came back: "By recognizing that lying brings disgrace upon all men, and most especially upon kings. Since kings have the power to do whatever they wish, why should they resort to lies? And besides: God is a lover of the truth."

Three Words on a Road in Moab

Ruth did not have a seat at Ptolemy's table. She was a Moabite widow following her mother-in-law down a road away from everything she had ever known. Her husband was dead. Her father-in-law was dead. Naomi was going back to Bethlehem alone, and she had told both her daughters-in-law to go back to their own families, to find new husbands among their own people, to rebuild their lives in the land where they were known.

Orpah kissed her and turned back. Ruth refused. Naomi pressed her again: "Look, your sister-in-law has gone back to her people and to her gods. Return after her." And Ruth said what she said. The words in Hebrew are short and they have been examined by interpreters for two thousand years: "Where you go, I will go. Where you die, I will die. The Lord do so to me and more also if anything but death parts me from you."

What the Philosophers Called Truth

The Jewish sages at Ptolemy's table were answering his questions about truth and mercy from a tradition that had been shaped by stories like Ruth's. When they said that a king should maintain truth because God is a lover of truth, they were not drawing on abstract philosophy. They were drawing on the tradition of a woman who chose truth over safety, loyalty over convenience, a foreign God and an elderly widow over the familiar gods and the familiar land and the reasonable alternative of starting over somewhere else.

Ruth's loyalty is the example the book of Ruth holds up without commentary. She does not explain herself. She does not give reasons. She states what she will do and she does it. Naomi does not thank her. She falls silent. They walk on together to Bethlehem.

Mercy and Truth in the Same Motion

The scholars at Ptolemy's table, when they were asked about mercy, said that mercy is what holds a kingdom together. The king who shows mercy creates loyalty. The king who rules by fear creates subjects who flee the moment the fear is removed. Mercy is the longer strategy. It is also, in the Jewish tradition, the attribute most closely associated with God's governance of the world: chesed, lovingkindness, the word that describes both Ruth's loyalty to Naomi and God's faithfulness to Israel across all the centuries of covenant and failure and return.

Ruth's act on the road to Bethlehem is one of the places in the Hebrew Bible where chesed is demonstrated in the most compressed form: a foreign woman with nothing to gain and everything to lose choosing loyalty over self-preservation. The philosophers at Ptolemy's table were explaining the same thing in the language of court wisdom, but the story they were drawing on was older than any Greek king's table and shorter than any philosopher's explanation.