KUTH, Book of. This book is inserted in the can- on, according to the English arrangement and that of the Sept., 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 (Judg. i, 1). Several of the ancient fathers, moreover, make but one book of Judges and Ruth. In the Hebrew Bible it stands among the Ke- thubim, or Hagiographa. But the modern Jews com- monly place, after the Pentateuch, the five Megilloth (q. V.) — 1. The Song of Solomon; 2. Kuth; 3. The Lamentations of Jeremiah ; 4. Ecclesiastes ; 5. Esther. Sometimes Kuth is placed the first of these, sometimes the second, and sometimes the fifth.
1. The true date and authorship of the book are alike unknown, though the current of tradition is in favor of Samuel as the writer (Talmud, Baba Bathra, 14, 2). That it was written at a time considerably remote from the events it records would appear from the passage in iv, 7, which explains a custom referred to as hav- ing been " the manner in former time in Israel, concern- ing redeeming and concerning changing" (comp. Deut. XXV, 9). That it was written, also, at least as late as the estaljlishment of David's house upon the throne ap|)ears from the concluding verse, "And Obed begat Jesse, and Jesse begat David." The expression, more- over (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 be- gun to reign. Add to tliis what critics have considered as certain Chaldaisms with which the language is in- terspersed, denoting its composition at a period consid- erably later than that of the events thenaselves. Thus Eichhorn finds a Chaldaism or Syriasm in the use of N for n in NITS though the same form occurs else- where. He adverts also to the existence of a super- fluous Yod in "iPTSi:: and imni (iii, 3) and in ipnaui (ver. 4). As, however, the language is in other re- spects, in the main, pure, these few Chaldaisms may have arisen from a sliglit error of the copyists, and therefore can scarcely be alleged as having any special bearing on the rera of the document. The same re- mark is to be made of certain idiomatic phrases and forms of expression which occur elsewhere only in the books of Samuel and of Kings, as, "The Lord do so to me, and more also" (Kuth i, 17; comp. 1 Sam. iii, 17; xiv, 44; XX, 23; 2 Sam. iii, 9, 35; xix, 13; 1 Kings ii, 23; xix, 2; xx, 10; 2 Kings vi, 31) ; "I have discov- ered to j-our ear," for "I have told j'ou" (Kuth iv, 4; comp. 1 Sam. xx, 2 ; 2 Sam. vii, 27).
2. The canonical aulhorify of Kuth has never been questioned, a suflicient confirmation of it being found in the fact that Ruth, the JMoabitess, comes into the geneal- og\' of the Saviour, as distinctly given by the evangelist (Matt, i, 6). The principal difiiculty in regard to the book arises, however, from this very genealogy, in which it is stated that Boaz, who was the husband of Kuth,
and the great-grandfather of David, was the son of Salmon by liahab. Now, if by Kahab we suppose to be meant, as is usually understood, Kahab the harlot, who protected the spies, it is not easy to conceive that only three persons— Boaz, Obed, and Jesse— should have intervened between her and David, a period of nearly four hundred years. The solution of Usher is not prob- able, that the ancestors of I)avi<l. as persons of pre-em- inent piety, were favored with extraordinary longevity. It may be that the sacred writers have mentioned in the genealogy only such names as were distinguished and known among the Jews. But a more reasonable explanation is that some names are omitted, as we know is elsewhere the case in the same genealogy. (See above.)
3. The leading scope of the book has been variouslj' understood by dift'erent commentators. Umbreit {Ueber Geist und Zweck des Buches Ruth, 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, be- cause 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 marrj' his kins- woman ; while Eichhorn conceives that it was com- posed mainly in honor of the house oj" David, though it does not conceal the poverty of the family. The more probable design we tliink to be to preintimate, 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. The moral lessons which it incidentally teaches are of the most interesting and touching character: that private families are as much the objects of divine regard as the houses of princes; that the present life is a life of ca- lamitous changes; that a devout trust in an overruling Providence will never fail of its reward; and that no condition, however adverse or afflicted, is absolutely hopeless, are truths that were never more strikingly il- lustrated than in the brief and simple narrative before us. — Kitto.