Passing land from father to son through the generations was considered in Israel as a means to protect the dignity and freedom of everyone in the tribe. Furthermore, the practice of redeeming land and remembering the names of those whose died without children is highlighted in the Book of Ruth.

An old tradition held that among David's ancestors there was a foreign woman named Ruth. She protagonizes and is the heroine of this beautiful book whose pages preserve for us scenes from the lives of ancient Palestinian farmers, Christ's ancestors, as they lived for centuries before his coming. In the simple but difficult lives of these peasants we find a strong and noble culture, displaying an exquisite human quality full of integrity and perseverance.

A spirit of supra-natural openness inspires this story, written around the fourth century BC, and is in complete contrast to the edicts Ezra had forced upon the Jews to abandon and get rid of their foreign wives lest they might entice their husbands into following pagan religions. We see here in the Book of Ruth, the protagonist is a foreign woman who willingly accepts the true God of Israel and his precepts and is welcomed into the community of the people of God.