RUTH IN THE DARK: FOLKTALE, LAW AND CREATIVE AMBIGUITY IN THE OLD TESTAMENT

Abstract

In His translation of and commentary on Ruth, Jack M. Sasson affirms that the story hews closer to folktale patterns than most Biblical narratives do.1 Elsewhere he suggests that treating Ruth as a folktale differs significantly from 'fine elaboration of its narrative art.'2 The approaches need not conflict: the story is a perfect wedding of folktale and narrative art, a union as happy and fruitful as the marriage of Ruth and Boaz. One folktale theme crucially employed in Ruth is the 'bride-in-the-dark' or bed-trick stratagem, the device of surprising a man with a bed-partner or of substituting one 'bride' for another. W. W. Lawrence has a brief survey and analysis of this folktale device in its Shakespearean context, noting that it often is used in Virtue Stories which exalt the devotion of a woman to the man who forgets his duty to her or treats her cruelly—tales dealing with 'the clever wench' who is set to the 'fulfillment of tasks.'3 Like the plays (All's Well That Ends Well and Measure for Measure) in which Shakespeare uses the bride-in-the-dark machinery, Ruth's story 'contains more elements, levels, stimuli [and psychological reality] than any folktale could.'4 Nonetheless, in the course of her Bethlehem adventure, Ruth is a bride in the dark.