Violence in the Fields?

Translating, Reading, and Revising in Ruth 2

DAVID SHEPHERD
Bnercrest Seminary Caronport, SK SOH OSO Canada

WHILE THERE ARE undoubtedly numerous ways in which the term "transla tion" may be defined, it has been argued that the process of translation may be understood as the negotiation of meaning between a source text in one language system and a target text in another.1 Although language systems may differ due to a variety of factors (e.g., regional and social variation), the discipline of his torical linguistics bears witness to and investigates the phenomenon of the diachronic variation of languagethat is, the change in language over time.2 This historical development of a living language is significant in that it produces in any translation a built-in obsolescence that may require a given text to be re-translated or updated more or less frequently. In this sense, the history of English translation of the Bible is inextricably bound up with the history of the English language itself. Because there is not sufficient space here to explore either of these great histories in its entirety, our discussion is necessarily restricted to more manageable tasks. The focus of the present article is limited to two passages within the Hebrew
A draft of the present paper was read at the Annual Meeting (1999) of the Society of Biblical Literature The author would like to thank Dr Ellingworth (Aberdeen) and Profs G Hammond (Manchester) and Graeme Auld (Edinburgh) for their careful reading of the paper, but any remaining inadequacies in it are, of course, the sole responsibility of the author 1 Hatim and I Mason, Discourse and the Translator (New York Longman, 1990) 223 2 For further reading in historical linguistics see, for example, J Aitchison, Language Change Progress or Decay7 (New York Universe Books, 1985), R Anttila, Historical and Comparative Linguistics (Amsterdam/New York John Benjamins, 1989)

444

VIOLENCE IN THE FIELDS? RUTH 2 445 book of Ruth and a collection of English renderings of these passages Although the tradition of translation of the Bible into English had its beginnings well before the seventeenth century, our discussion begins with the King James Version and traces to the present day the development of its tradition alongside others that have grown up to challenge its supremacy We begin with a brief analysis and com parison of several English translations of the Hebrew text of Ruth 2 9 and 2 22 I Ruth 2 9 and 2 22 Traditions of Translation In Ruth 2 the recently arrived Ruth providentially comes upon the field of Boaz and is gleaning behind the reapers (v 3) Boaz then appears on the scene and asks his foreman, "Whose young woman is she?" 3 The servant informs Boaz that she is the Moabite woman who has returned with Naomi and that she has been gleaning all day without a break In 8 Boaz approaches Ruth and insists that she continue to glean in his field and remain close to his female servants, adding in 9 "Have I not ordered the young men not to ngc you? When you get thirsty, go to the vessels and drink from what the young men have drawn " Later on in the same chapter, Ruth, having returned home to Naomi after gleaning and recounted to her the day's events, mentions that Boaz instructed her to stay close to his male-servants until they have finished his harvest Naomi then responds, "It is better, my daughter, that you go out with his young women, otherwise they (masculine) will/might pgc you in another field " Before discussing what the Hebrew lexemes ngc and pgc may mean in context, we must first turn to examine how the KJV and its successors in the tradition have rendered these two terms For ngc in 9 the KJV reads simply "touch" "have I not charged the young men that they shall not touch thee?" In 22 the King James translators render Naomi's response to Ruth "[it is] good, my daughter, that thou go out with his maidens that they meete thee not in any other field " A translation with slightly more sinister overtones, "Heb 'fall upon,' " is preserved in a marginal note This marginal reading may have been drawn from the so-called "Breeches" or Geneva Bible, and if that is so, it is a witness to the well-documented tendency of the translators to follow The Geneva Bible despite the Jacobean mandate to work primarily from The Bishops' Bible 4 The first major revision of The King James or Authorized Version did not come until the 1880s, and 9 remains unchanged there, ngc being rendered
3 Unless otherwise indicated, citations from the Book of Ruth are the author's translations, while citations from outside of Ruth are taken from the NRSV 4 The Bishops' Bible reads "come against thee in another field " C C Butterworth (The Literary Lineage of the King James Bible 1340-1611 [Philadelphia University of Pennsylvania Press 1941] 237) sums up The Bishops Bibles contnbution to the KJV "Altogether not much that was new entered the lineage of our Bible from the Bishops' Version as a source It was the function of this version rather to transmit the contents of the Great Bible or of the Geneva Bible, while making

446 THE CATHOLIC BIBLICAL QUARTERLY I 63, 2001 "touch " However, in editions of The Revised Version subsequent to its initial production (1885), the marginal note to 22 which translates pgc "fall upon" (so, "it is good, my daughter, that thou go out with his maidens that they not fall upon thee in another field") is dropped, thereby eliminating to some extent the aggres sive overtones preserved in this marginal translation The seemingly innocuous elimination of the marginal notes in The Revised Version did not go unnoticed by the well-known biblical scholar S. R Driver, who criticized the move in his monograph on the Books of Samuel.5 Elimination of the marginal note and preser vation of the version, "that they meete thee not in any other field" seems to reflect an understanding of pgc as an almost euphemistic term expressing a negative but basically harmless encounter between Ruth and the male field workers. With the publication of an American edition of The Revised Version in 1901, the primary impetus for revision and publication within the KJV tradition shifted to North America, where the copyright for the translation passed to the Interna tional Council of Religious Education in 1928 By 1952 The Revised Standard Version of the Bible (without Apociypha) had been completed and published.6 It is worth noting, first of all, that the RSV translation of vv 9 and 22 departs from the RV in providing a single translation equivalent for the different Hebrew verbs used in the two verses, ngc and/?gc. The word chosen by the RSV translatorrevisers to replace both "touch" in 9 and "meet" in v. 22 is "molest." Thus, the relevant portion of v. 9 in the RSV reads: "have I not charged the young men not to molest you?" while v. 22 has Naomi warn Ruth to remain in safe fields "lest in another field you be molested.''' This phenomenon of lexical leveling (rendering different terms in a source text with a single term) is not necessarily ill-advised, for it is perfectly conceivable that one or more Hebrew roots may best be trans lated by only one English word On the other hand, lexical leveling may also result in distortion of the source text 7 With regard to 22, the use of "molest" in place of "meet" may reveal a shift toward a more malevolent and aggressive
certain improvements in the form and organization of the text " For further discussion see his treat ment of the "Authorized Version as a Cumulative Result" (pp 227-38) 5 S R Driver, Notes on the Hebrew Text and Topography of the Books of Samuel (Oxford Clarendon Press, 1890) xvu "This is a retrograde step, which is greatly to be deplored The Revisers' marginal notes contain not only much other information helpful to the reader, but also a large number of renderings unquestionably supenor to those of the text 6 L A Weigle, Introduction to the Revised Standard Version of the Old Testament (New York Nelson and Sons, 1952) 7 The phenomenon of lexical leveling is also attested in ancient translation of Scripture See H Szpek, Translation Technique in the Peshitta to Job A Model for Evaluating a Text with Docu mentation from the Peshitta to Job (SBLDS 137, Atlanta Scholars, 1992) 193-98, R Gordon, "Targum as Midrash Contemporising in the Targum to the Prophets," Proceedings of the Ninth World Congress of Jewish Studies (Jerusalem Magnes, 1988) 63

VIOLENCE IN THE FIELDS? RUTH 2 447 understanding of pgc 8 And in 9 too, it would seem that the substitution of "molest" for "touch" as a rendering of ngc is less euphemistic and armed with negative sexual connotations On closer examination, however, the RSV s shift to a more forensic transla tion of these two terms in Ruth 2 is more apparent than real It is important to note that in the standard English lexicographical record up until 1974, the concept of "molest," while denoting harm or injury, did not necessarily denote sexual harm of the kind we now normally associate with the term 9 A review of the 1993 edition of The Shorter Oxford English Dictionary confirms our current conception of "molest " While the first definition is identical to that of 1974, the definition under the second heading includes an addition "Now, especially attack or abuse sexually " The semantic shift in the meaning of "molest" is thus a comparatively recent phenomenon, and we may assume that the RSVs translation now appears to come closer to the intended meaning of ngc only because the meaning and use of "molest" shifted considerably during the latter half of the twentieth century For confirmation of this hypothesis, we turn to The New Revised Standard Version (NRSV, 1990) The translator-revisers have again been at work in Ruth 2 9, 22 The RSVs decision to translate both ngc and pgc with the same word has been followed by the NRSV, but in both places the RSVs "molest" has been replaced in the NRSV with "bother " It appears that the revisers of the NRSV correctly perceived that the meaning of "molest" had shifted considerably since the 1950s, and that for a reader of the late 1980s and early 1990s the term "molest" had acquired not merely a vague sexual connotation but a genuine sexual denotation The revisers thus seem to have sought to preserve (or perhaps recover) their nonspecific understanding of ngc and pgc by providing the alter native rendering "bother " Again, the revision process dedicated to sustaining the KJV tradition has apparently seen ngc and pgc in vv 9 and 22 as best translated with generic equivalents signifying that although Ruth may be a potential victim of negative interference, it is an interference of a nonspecific, even trivial sort The latest translation in the KJV tradition was published in 1995 as The 10 Contemporary English Version (CEV) Advancing the argument that the Bible
The Oxford English Dictionary (Oxford/New York Oxford University Press, 1989), under the subheadings 3a and 3c of the entry for "meet" (p 563), reveals that this verb was once used with specific reference to encountenng or facing attacks, but the dates of the texts cited in support of this usage indicate that this was not a signification in active use beyond the middle of the nineteenth century 9 The Shorter Oxford English Dictionary (Oxford/New York Oxford University Press, 1974) The entry under "molest" reads as follows "1 To cause trouble, to vex, annoy, put to inconvenience 2 to meddle with a person injuriously or with hostile intent " 10 Unlike the RV RSV and NRSV before it, The Contemporary English Version God's Promise for People of Today (London/Nashville Nelson, 1995) claims to be not a revision but a new trans lation That it deserves, nonetheless, to be considered alongside its predecessors in the KJV tradition
8

448 THE CATHOLIC BIBLICAL QUARTERLY I 63, 2001 in English is now more often "heard" than "read," the translators of the CEV have, accordingly, sought to produce a rendering that is more easily read aloud. While the evaluation of such an approach is not our concern here, the CEVs rendering of Ruth 2 9 provides further evidence of a continuity of revisionsthe NRSVs translation "bother" has been retained for the CEVs rendering of ngc. Interestingly, however, the CEV has not followed the RSV and NRSV m rendering both ngc and pgc with a single English term but, instead, introduced a question into its rendering of v. 22* "who knows what might happen to you in someone else's field9"11 The CEVs transformation of this statement into a question serves to shift the burden of construing the meaning of Naomi's utterance from the text to the readers. In other words, a reader of the CEVs translation of v. 22 is likely to read it primarily in the light of personal presuppositions about things that happen to foreign women in fields. This analysis shows that successive revisers of the KJV have done their job well to the extent that they sought to update the language of each successive version while, at the same time, they preserved the basic understanding of the inherited translation tradition 1 2 In the case of the translator's choices made in the RSV (1952), a careful examination of contemporary lexical resources has shown that the choice of "molest," though it sounded appropriate and accurate to a late-twentieth-century ear, in fact reflected the understanding inherited from pre ceding translators and, at the time, preserved the euphemistic translation of the two passages The subsequent renderings of the NRSV and CEV seem to confirm this underlying sense of the two passages The accelerating pace of revision of the KJV stems in part from technical considerations, such as advances in biblical scholarship and lexical and gramma tical obsolescence, but must also be attributed to the explosion of competing English translations and revisions in the twentieth century Having examined the manner in which Ruth 2:9 and 2*22 have been treated in the KJV tradition, it will be useful to turn our attention to a selection of its competitors Both the vast number of English versions and the limited range of difference among their
is made abundantly clear m its preface "The most important document in the history of the English language is the King James Version of the Bible To measure its spiritual impact on the Englishspeaking world would be more impossible than counting the grains of sand along the ocean shores Historically, many Bible translators have attempted in some measure to retain the form of the KJV But the translators of the CEV of the Bible have diligently sought to capture the spint of the KJV by following certain principles set forth by its translators in the document 'The Translators to the Reader' printed m the earliest editions " 11 It may be that Boaz's rhetorical question in 9 has influenced the CEVs introduction of this question here in 22 12 Weigle {Introduction to the Revised Standard Version, 83) suggests that the updating of "misleading" translations is a pnme motivation for the production of the RSV, but the present passages are not included in his selective list, "Some Misleading Words in the King James Version "

VIOLENCE IN THE FIELDS? RUTH 2 449 renderings preclude a comprehensive survey of English translations of our texts.13 Instead, we focus here on a selection of major committee versions, like the KJV, that have undergone revision during the twentieth century. Beginning with The Jerusalem Bible, completed in 1966, we see that the translators agreed with the RSV in rendering both ngc and pgc with "molest." Although this translation appeared several years after the RSV, it seems likely that the translators shared the sense of the meaning of "molest" that we attributed to the RSVs above.14 While those responsible for the NRSV would not release their completed translation until the end of the 1980s, their competitors, the revisers of The Jerusalem Bible, had finished their work before the decade reached its midpoint; and the culmination of their efforts, The New Jerusalem Bible, became available in 1984. While, as we have seen, the NRSV (1989) has substituted "bother" for the RSVs "molest," the NJB revisers opted, in their translation of ngc in v. 9, to retain the choice of their predecessors, "molest." This decision is the more signi ficant if we can reasonably assume that the use of "molest," with its more recent sexual denotation acquired by the 1980s, was intentional. In v. 22 the revisers of the NJB abandon "molest" as a translation for pgc\ but instead of the NRSVs "bother," they provide "ill-treat." When taken together, the NJB's renderings of Ruth 2:9 and 2:22 (Boaz's statement, " I have forbidden my men to molest you"; and Naomi's, "It is better for you, daughter, to go with his work-women than to go to some other field where you might be ill-treated") seem to reflect a shift in understanding. For most readers at the end of the twentieth century, this shift would seem to suggest a rather more specific and more malevolent type of inter ference than that expressed by the succession of revisions in the KJV tradition. Not long after the first English edition of The Jerusalem Bible was released, The New English Bible (NEB, 1970) was offered to readers as yet another alterna tive to existing translations. Its version of v. 9 again followed the RSV and the
13 According to the calculations of A Duthie (How to Choose Your Bible Wisely [Carlisle, PA Paternoster Press, 1995] 13), the number of English Bible translations by the mid-nineties was nearly 60at least five times the number available in the seventeenth century 14 Partly in response to the encyclical of Pope Pius XII, Divino afflante Spiritu (1943), the Catholic scholarly community began work on a translation from the original languages rather than from the Latin version that had served as the basis for The Douay-Rheims Bible (1582-1609/10) and Challoner's revision (1750) The New American Bible's version of Ruth was published in the same year as the RSV (\952) and renders 2 9 as follows: "Watch to see which field is to be harvested, and follow them, I have commanded the young men to do you no harm When you are thirsty, you may go and drink from the vessels the young men have filled." In 2 22 the NAB reads " 'You would do well, my dear,' Naomi rejoined, 'to go out with his servants, for in someone else's field you might be insulted ' " While "harm" (ngc) m 9 possesses a generic, negative denotation whose precise nuance is deter mined by a reading of the context, the understanding of pgc as referring to merely a possible insult is clearly to be located alongside the other euphemistic translations discussed here A revision of the NAB OT is greatly anticipated and will mark the birth of yet another "translation tradition "

450 THE CATHOLIC BIBLICAL QUARTERLY I 63, 2001 JB m providing "molest" for ngc. The NEB's rendering in 22, "let no one catch you in another field," also follows the RSV in conveying, in a nonspecific and colloquial manner, the inappropnateness of Ruth's presence in "another field." By the 1980s those responsible for the NEB were moving toward a revision of their translation, and the result of their efforts, The Revised English Bible (REB), was released m the same year that the NRSV was published (1990). Unlike its contemporary in the KJV tradition, the REB joined the NJB in retaining "molest" for ngc in 9, implying that its understanding of this Hebrew verb included the late-twentieth-century connotation of sexual harassment. In v. 22, likewise, the REB reflects a less ambiguous understanding of pgc by modifying the earlier NEB translation with "in another field you might come to harm " 1 5 Again, as we saw to be the case in the JB tradition, the revisers of the NEB seem to have parted company with their counterparts in the KJV tradition Whereas the revisers in the KJV tradition have preserved an understanding of vv. 9 and 22 m the sense of non-specific and trivial interference with Ruth in the fields of Boaz, the renderings that have appeared m these other traditions of modern translation seem to reflect an understanding of ngc and pgc that is not only sharper, but in some ways more seriously and specifically hostile.16 II. Ruth 2:9 and 2:22: In Search of a Context Having identified two divergent strands in traditions of twentieth-century trans lation of ngc and pgc in Ruth 2 9 and 2:22, respectively, we must briefly examine the Hebrew expressions themselves in context We are primarily concerned with a descriptive rather than prescriptive approach to the study of translation, and therefore this examination seeks not to validate or legitimate one understanding over against the other, but rather to understand how these divergent translations are derived from the Hebrew.17 We read that Boaz, returning to the fields outside of Bethlehem, approaches Ruth after having been informed of Ruth's identity Boaz tells Ruth, in 2 8, not to leave the field for another, and "thus, in this way, you shall keep close to my
15 J De Waard and E Nida (A Translator's Handbook on the Book of Ruth [London United Bible Societies, 1973] 45) are critical of the NEB translation, preferring "so that no one may attack you in the fields " 16 Further support for this suggestion is gleaned from other recent non-committee translations such as the rendering of pgc with "assault" in D Fewell and D M Gunn, Compromising Redemp tion Relating Characters in the Book of Ruth (Literary Currents in Biblical Interpretation, Louisville Westminster/John Knox, 1990] 45), and the choice of "be rough with" for the same verb m E F Campbell, Ruth A new translation with introduction, notes, and commentary (AB 7, Garden City, NY Doubleday, 1975) 108 17 See G Toury, Descriptive Translation Studies and Beyond (Philadelphia Benjamins, 1995), for a recent programmatic and methodological statement regarding a more rigorously scientific ap proach to translation studies Toury's "pure" translation studies are composed of both a theoretical and a descriptive branch (see pp 18-19)

VIOLENCE IN THE FIELDS? RUTH 2 451 servants" (fern. pi.). He then adds (v. 9): "your eyes (shall be) on the field which they are reaping and you will go after them (mase pi.); have I not ordered the male servants not to nagckl And when/if you become thirsty, you should go to the containers and drink from that which the servants (mase pi.) have drawn " Our concern here is with exactly what it is that Boaz claims to have ordered his male workers not to do The Hebrew form here (qal infinitive construct of the verb ngc with 2 fern sg suffix) is a relatively general term often translated by the English verb "to touch " But it is hardly surprising that this general English gloss conceals various nuances of meaning. One of the standard Hebrew-English lexicons, that of Brown, Driver, and Briggs, first identifies passages in which ngc is used in the sense of simple physical contact (BDB, 619) This type of usage occurs widely in the legal discourse of Leviticus with reference to ritual purity (Lev 11:39). "If an animal of which you may eat dies, anyone who ngc its carcass shall be unclean until the evening." This literal, "neutral" use of ngc is paralleled by a similarly neutral, but this time idiomatic use, as in 1 Sam 10.26, where we read that Saul was accompanied back to Gibeah by "men whose hearts God had ng c ." The context of our passage and the absence of "heart," a necessary component of the idiom, seem to preclude this idiomatic use of ngc in Ruth 2. Furthermore, the text does not allow us to think of this kind of evidently physical touch being in any way neutral: Boaz's rhetorical question to Ruth suggests that he has expressly ordered his servants not to touch her, he prohibited a distinctly negative and seemingly physical touching of Ruth While even the general discussion thus far presents a rather disturbing picture, can this image be brought into still sharper focus? A look at several other instances of the use of ngc also serves us in this context In Josh 9:19, for instance, when the Israelites have been hoodwinked by the Gibeonites, the leaders tell the congregation, "We have sworn to them by the c LORD, the god of Israel, and now we must not ng them. This is what we will do to them, we will let them live " In Gen 20*6, after Abimelek has unwittingly taken Abraham's wife Sarah for himself, God reassures him of his innocence: "it was I who kept you from sinning against me Therefore I did not let you ngc her " The use of the verb ngc in this context would seem to point toward a sexual component of the Hebrew lexeme. Finally, in Prov 6*29, the sage warns of the guilt of him "who sleeps with his neighbor's wife" and, in the following line, advises that "no one who ngc her will go unpunished." The parallelism here further illustrates the sexual denotation that may be implied by the use of ngc in a given context. In light of this discussion it is not surprising, perhaps, that another lexical resource more recent than BDB offers a different perspective on the meaning of ngc in Ruth 2*9. The English version of the Koehler-Baumgartner lexicon to the Hebrew Bible includes this occurrence of the verb under the English gloss "to touch violently, to strike" 18
18 L Koehler, W Baumgartner, J Stamm, The Hebrew and Aramaic Lexicon of the Old Testament (5 vols with Suppl, Leiden Brill, 1967-96), 2 668

452 THE CATHOLIC BIBLICAL QUARTERLY I 63, 2001 We now turn to v. 21, where Ruth, having returned home to Naomi and recounted to her the day's events, mentions that Boaz instructed her to stay close to his male-servants until they have finished all his harvest. Naomi then seemingly corrects her. "It is better, my daughter, that you go out with his young women, and/so that l* yipgecu-bk in another field" (v. 22).19 As has been already mentioned in connection with the translations' treatment of it, the verb here is a form of pgc, a root that BDB provides with the general English equivalent "to meet or encounter" (BDB, 803) Once again, this definition should be seen as only a general English gloss since it requires given contexts to provide more precise semantic definition. For instance, pgc is used frequently in Joshua to refer to the touching of boundary stones 20 It can be used also with reference to meeting someone "with kindness," as is the case in Isa 64 5, "You meet (pgc) those who gladly do right, those who remember you in your ways." With respect to the usage in v. 22, Naomi seems to rule out this connotation when she portrays Ruth's potential meeting in another field as a clearly undesirable event that might have occurred had Ruth not remained with the female servants. Further examination of the lexicon shows that/?gc can also refer to "meeting with a request," and indeed it is used in this way earlier in Ruth. When, in 1:16, Naomi instructs Ruth to stay in Moab, Ruth responds, "Do not press/implore (pgc) me to abandon youto turn back and not follow you." Other instances of meeting with a request are related to either interceding with God or requesting something desired. If this sense of "meet with a request" is clearly inappropriate here in v. 22, what options remain then regarding the use of pgc here? The writer may have used this verb to indicate that Ruth could have been "met" in the neutral, generic sense of an encounter, as in 1 Sam 10:5, where Samuel informs the young Saul about his return to Gibearr "there as you come to town, you will meet (pgc) a band of prophets coming down from the shrine." On the other hand, Naomi may have been referring to Ruth's being "met with hostility," another nuance this verb has in certain instances of its use A study of syntax indicates that when pgc is used to convey the sense of a generic meeting ( e., Saul meeting the prophets), the direct object of the verb is either unmarked or is preceded by the particle of the objective case.21 When pgc is used to indicate a hostile meeting, however, the object of aggression is indicated by the preposition be. In fact, of the sixteen times that this verb is used in the sense
19 There is a noticeable assonance between ngc m 9 and pgc in 22 Beyond the similarities of reference and context, this assonance emphasizes the linking of these two terms in chap 2 and may well be intentional, see Campbell, Ruth, 85-113 20 Josh 16 7, 19 11, 22, 26, 27, 34 (2x) 21 The sole exception, where the preposition is present, is in Gen 32 2 Another possible exception is in Num 35 19, 21, however the usage there is of a technical nature and less decisive The verb is also used in Gen 28 11 with the preposition be functioning as a locative particle

VIOLENCE IN THE FIELDS? RUTH 2 453 of a hostile meeting, only once is the object of this aggression not prefaced with the preposition be 2 2 In 22, we note that the preposition (with fern sg suffix) is indeed present, leaving no doubt as to the hostility of the potential meeting Having thus established that pgc in 22 refers to a hostile encounter, we are still left with the question as to the exact nature of this encounter In Judg 15 12-13, when the men of Judah come to Samson to turn him over to the Philistines, he responds, "Swear to me that you yourselves will not attack (pgc) me " They answer him, "No, we will only bind you and give you into their hands, we will not kill (mwt hiph ) you " Similarly, we read in Judg 8 21 "Then Zebah and Zalmunna said, 'You come and pgc us, for as the man is so is his strength ' So Gideon proceeded to slay (hrg) Zebah and Zalmunna " In both instances we have the explicit equating of pgc first with mwt hiph , meaning "to execute" or "put to death," and then with hrg, a verb that refers to physical violence resulting in death Both in the light of Naomi's suggestion that Ruth stay with female workers as opposed to male, and in light of 9, the use of pgc here in 22 may well paint a disturbing picture of potential violence in the harvest fields of Judah 2 3 Whereas BDB includes this occurrence of pgc under the rela tively generic rubric of "to encounter with hostility, fall upon," the English version of KB provides Ruth 2 22 with its own subheading and gives the English trans lation, "to molest a woman " 2 4 Because ngc in 9 and pgc in 22 both have generic denotations ( e , both refer to interpersonal contact, broadly speaking), a relatively wide range of English equivalents has been offered in rendering them Although in the case of pgc we are provided with syntactical markers which point toward an intended nuance, the translator is nevertheless confronted in vv 9 and 22 with interpretive decisions which depend, to some extent, on their reading of the immediate context of Ruth 2 as well as on the assumptions which inform one's understanding of the Book of Ruth as a whole Accordingly, we turn now to a brief assessment of trends discernible in the more recent history of the interpretation of Ruth III. Keats, Gunkel, and other Readers of Ruth A bona fide history of the interpretation of Ruth would begin, as D R G Beattie does,25 with the earliest Jewish interpreters, would continue through the
22 The passages are as follows Josh 2 16, Judg 8 21, 15 12, 18 25, 1 Sam 22 17, 18, 2 Sam 115 1 Kgs 2 25, 29, 31 32, 34 36 The one unequivocal exception is to be found m Exod 5 3 where the be is omitted 23 In 21 Ruth's recollection of Boaz's statement, "You shall keep close to my servants,' refers to masculine servants, in contrast to the female "servants" with whom Naomi suggests Ruth should be associating (v 22) 24 Koehler Baumgartner Stamm Hebrew and Aramaic Lexicon 3 910 25 D R G Beattie Jewish Exegesis of the Book of Ruth (JSOTSup 2, Sheffield JSOT Press 1977)

454 THE CATHOLIC BIBLICAL QUARTERLY I 63, 2001 medieval period in primarily Christian and Jewish traditions, and would conclude with the scholarly observations and popular readings of the present day Within the limits of this article we must restrict ourselves to relatively recent times and a rather brief assessment As in his work on the Psalms, Hermann Gunkel's approach to the genre of the book of Ruth has been of critical importance for subsequent inquiries 26 Frederic Bush has recently suggested that Gunkel's definition of Ruth as a novella or idyll owes much to the views of oral tradition and folk literature current in his time 27 Indeed, we might well have begun our short history with Keats, an admittedly unlikely biblical interpreter who, nevertheless, predates Gunkel by a fair margin. A fleeting glimpse of the idyllic perception of Ruth, both book and persona, is evident in Keats's "Ode to a Nightingale," where Ruth's tears "amid alien corn" are caused not by the harassment of the workmen, but by an acute case of homesickness for Moab.28 Whatever the precise sources of this idyllic understanding, Gunkel's labeling of Ruth has proven remarkably durable despite the fact that later definitions of "idyll" have often been quite unlike anything Gunkel originally intended While Gunkel drew on European conceptions of the novella/idyll for his definition of the genre of Ruth, E. Wurthwein saw Ruth as the typical exemplar of the idyll, a classical genre which, he said, was characterized by "an orientation towards an ideal, innocent state . . . as well as the appearance of a few, mostly exemplary, simple characters."29 While it is to be expected that much of the technical discussion regarding genre has not been incorporated into general treatments of the book, it is clear that an idyllic conception of Ruth finds many echoes in the literature. A few examples must suffice to illustrate this tendency. Samuel Cox, in an early-twentieth-century "devotional commentary," assures his readers that "the story [of Ruth] is a love story and is designed to set forth
26

H Gunkel, "Ruth," in Reden und Aufsatze (Gottingen Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1913)

65-92 F W Bush, Ruth, Esther (WBC 9, Dallas Word, 1996) 31 The following treatment of genre with respect to the Book of Ruth is heavily indebted to Bush's lucid discussion of the subject in his introduction The reader is referred to this for a complete discussion of the issue 28 Keats Ode to a Nightingale (1819) lines 61-67 Thou wast not born for death, immortal Bird' No hungry generations tread thee down, The voice I hear this passing night was heard In ancient days by emperor and clown Perhaps the self-same song that found a path Through the sad heart of Ruth, when, sick for home, She stood in tears amid the alien corn 29 E Wurthwein, Die fnf Megilloth Ruth, das Hohelied, Esther, with Der Prediger by Galling, and Die Klagelieder by O Ploger (HAT 1 18, 2d ed , Tubingen Mohr Siebeck, 1969) 4
27

VIOLENCE IN THE FIELDS? RUTH 2 455 the power of love to overcome all the alienations, hostilities, and prejudices of 30 nature and of that second nature which we call habit " Some years later, George Cooke's introduction to his commentary provides a more extensive depiction of the atmosphere of the book "The ancient narratives of the Book of Judges carry us back to a half-barbarous age of struggle and disorder, memorable chiefly for the deeds of Israel's heroes, the Book of Ruth, although the scene is laid in the same age, gives us a very different picture It introduces us to the peaceful life of the home and the village, with its sorrows, and joys, its wholesome industry and kindly virtues, a life which is by no means barren of heroic qualities, but they take the form of unselfish affection and generosity and loyalty to the ties of kindred " 3 1 The emphasis on the contrast between a violent and barbaric Book of Judges and an idyllic Book of Ruth is not restricted to Cooke After mentioning the notorious final chapters of Judgesin chap 19 a concubine from Bethlehem is raped to death by men from GibeahDr William Taylor goes on to conclude that the Book of Ruth is evidence that even the days of the Judges were not beyond redemption (W)e are thereby warned of the danger of judging of the character of a place [Bethlehem] from one or two particularly unpleasant incidents in its history Indeed, when we come, in a rural distnct like that of Bethlehem, and in such an age, upon a quiet, unaffected, simple, pure, and holy home life, like that which is here portrayed, we feel that we must not speak of the days of the Judges too unqualifiedly, as if they had been characterized by constant strife and universal defection from the service of God 32 As the mid-point of the twentieth century is reached, the idyllic perspective may still be found in a popular treatment of Ruth by G A F Knight In his introduction and commentary, Dr Knight observes that "the Book of Ruth is a kindly idyll All the characters in the story are ordinary, nice people, who behave in a manner which we feel as we read it to be right and decent and almost 'Chris tian' Then, what is more, the little story has a happy ending, and that is something else we like to find in a story " 3 3 Despite the fact that the Book of Ruth locates itself within the period of the Judges, the understanding of the atmosphere and context of Ruth discernible in
30

Samuel Cox The Book of Ruth A Devotional Commentary (London Religious Tract Society,

1910) G A Cooke, The Book of Ruth (The Cambodge Bible for Schools and Colleges, Cambodge Cambodge University Press, 1918) 32 W M Taylor Ruth the Gleaner (Bible Biographies, London Burnet & Co, 1892) 18 33 G A F Knight, Ruth and Jonah Introduction and Commentary (Torch Bible Commentary, London SCM, 1950) 15 (italics mine)
31

456 THE CATHOLIC BIBLICAL QUARTERLY I 63, 2001 the quotations above seems to juxtapose the two contextsbarbane and idyllic rather than contextuahze Ruth within the period represented in Judges Evidence that an "idyllic" approach lives on in more recent discussion of Ruth is provided by Carmel McCarthy and William Riley, whose summary of the narrative action in chap 2 offers little suggestion that Ruth's presence in the fields of Boaz involved potential danger to her.34 Although these examples do not constitute an exhaustive survey of the inter pretation of Ruth, they may demonstrate that the understanding of the atmosphere of Ruth as idyllic is a durable and persistent one. As we look back on the latter half of the twentieth century, the interpretation of the Book of Ruth, as of the whole Hebrew Bible, is characterized by an in creasing variety of methodological approaches For instance, Kirsten Nielsen approaches the text armed with the concept of "intertextuality," a term borrowed from secular literary theory.35 Frederic Bush makes use of recent advances in the field of discourse analysis;36 and the recent release of a second edition of J. M. Sasson's commentary bears witness to the popularity of his "formalist-folklonst" approach.37 Alongside, and not always unrelated to these approaches, the rise of feminist reading and criticism has resulted in a heightened awareness of women's roles and perspectives in biblical literature m general, and in Ruth m particular.38 While not strictly feminist, the literary criticism of Ruth by Danna Fewell and David Gunn is, according to the authors, sensitive to issues raised within the context of a feminist critique.39 With respect to Ruth 2, they bring out that "the field [of Boaz] is a place of some menace for an unattached foreign woman." Their discussion of the setting of the harvest field includes the assertion that an
C McCarthy and W Riley, The Old Testament Short Story (Message of Biblical Spirituality 7, Wilmington Glazier, 1986) 60 "As the day wears on, the audience can take pleasure in noting how Boaz' solicitude and generosity towards Ruth increases Not only may she glean with full freedom and drink water from his vessels (2 8-9), but at mealtime she is invited to share parched grain with the reapers The act ends, as it began, with Naomi and Ruth together, the latter recounting to her mother-in-law the happy outcome of her initiative to go gleaning (2 3-22) " 35 Nielsen, Ruth (OTL, London SCM, 1997) 8 36 Bush, Ruth, Esther, 31 37 J M Sasson, Ruth A new translation with a philological commentary and a formahst-folklonst interpretation (The Biblical Seminar 10, 2d ed , Sheffield JSOT Press, 1989) 38 See, e g , Reading Ruth Contemporary Women Reclaim a Sacred Story (ed J A Kates and G Reimer, New York Bailamme, 1994), and A Feminist Companion to Ruth (ed A Brenner, Sheffield Sheffield Academic Press, 1993) 39 Fewell and Gunn, Compromising Redemption, 18
34

VIOLENCE IN THE FIELDS'? RUTH 2 457 atmosphere of potential violence (and, in 9, sexual violence) was intended by the author.40 Kirsten Nielsen is also convinced that v. 9, in particular, refers to the prospect of sexual attack.41 Further illustration of the recent emphasis on female perspectives in Ruth is provided by Ellen van Wolde's novel treatment in Ruth and Naomi.42 Her discus sion is structured around the perspectives of the principal characters, and in chap. 2, specifically, around Ruth, Naomi, and Boaz Under the subheading "Boaz the Boss," she discusses the scene of Ruth at work in Boaz's field: "Boaz puts her under his protection and tells the men to give the order that she is not to be molested. That is surprising, since hitherto she has not seemed to be threatened by any dan ger Evidently it was not so safe to let a solitary (foreign) women do such lowly work." 43 If Boaz, as van Wolde sees him, is sensitive to the general dangers of the harvest, the view of the harvest field through Ruth's eyes is even more striking. She runs a risk there not only as a Moabitess but also as a woman, since despite the nght to glean behind the binders, women were often molested, assaulted, or abducted when in the fields As well as being threatened by racial tensions or the dangers to which women are exposed, Ruth is under threat as a 'loose woman' in a patriarchal society in which only women who are tied to a man are fully respected 4 4 Although van Wolde's assertion that "women were often molested, assaulted, or abducted when in the fields" might be contested, one cannot doubt that the atmosphere she depicts in Ruth 2 would be far short of idyllic for women, and especially for foreign women. That the work environment in the fields near Bethlehem represents a genuine physical or even sexual hazard for Ruth is not so much demonstrated as presup posed by Michael Carnasik in his attempt to explain the significance of the enig matic phrase zeh sibth habbayit meat, "without resting for a moment," in Ruth 2:7.
40 Fewell and Gunn {Compromising Redemption, 122 n i l ) show that the recognition of potential violence m the harvestfielddates back at least to Jewish commentators of the twelfth century Interestingly, while Targum of Ruth does not seem aware of the nuances intended by the Hebrew in its rendering of 2 9 (qrb) and 2 22 (crc, see A Sperber [ed ], The Bible in Aramaic based on old manuscripts and pnnted texts [4 vols in 5, Leiden Brill, 1992] 4A), an English translation of this targum (D R G Beattie [ed ], The Targum of Ruth, with The Targum of Chronicles, ed J S Mclvor [The Aramaic Bible 19, College ville, MN Liturgical Press, 1994] 23, 25) introduces both lexical leveling and a stronger translation, offering "molest" in both verses 41 Nielsen, Ruth, 58 60 Although she recognizes this m her commentary, she seems reticent to incorporate this understanding into her translation, which reads "I will tell the farm hands to leave you in peace" (p 56) 42 E van Wolde, Ruth and Naomi (London SCM, 1997) 43 Ibid, 39 44 Ibid, 45

458

THE CATHOLIC BIBLICAL QUARTERLY I 63, 2001

In plain terms, the situation which so embarrassed the overseer that he stumbled over an explanation of it was this as he was speaking, Ruth was at some distance from them, with her back turned to Boaz, and on her way out of the field, because of an 45 incident of what today we would call sexual harassment Carnasik argues that one of the principal advantages of his explanation is that it makes sense of "other parts of the book," namely, the first of our two passages, Ruth 2 9, where he assumes that the use of ngc implies actual physical contact.46 Richard Bauckham reaffirms that Ruth should be seen as a contrast and counter-example to the viciousness and violence of the closing chapters of Judges. He is also quick to point out, however, that "the 'idyllic' quality which has often been noticed m the book of Ruth can be exaggerated, since the story begins with famine, exile, death, destitution, and Naomi's bitter complaints that the Lord has turned against her and dealt harshly with her. The idyllic quality only gradually colors the narrative as it proceeds and as God is found to be after all gracious and kind " 4 7 In light of the preceding discussion, it is not entirely surprising that Bauckham's comments are to be found in the context of a conscious attempt on his part to engage feminist concerns regarding the interpretation of Ruth. While this survey does not claim comprehensiveness, the examples presented here clearly illustrate two trends regarding the interpretation of the context in Ruth 2. (1) There has been a persistent tendency to view the harvest fields as an idyllic backdrop to a chance encounter between Boaz and Ruth. (2) More recent aware ness of women's perspectives and concerns has given rise to a strand of inter pretation that sees the harvest fields and, more particularly, the male workers in them as a potential source of physical and even sexual endangerment for Ruth. IV. Violence in the Fields? Translation, Revision and Tradition Thus far, we have identified two distinct traditions in the major English trans lations of Ruth 2*9 and 2*22, and we have discussed the contextual interpretation of the Hebrew verbs used in the two passages We now turn to a consideration of how these distinct lines of enquiry may illuminate each other and shed some light on the interrelatedness of translation, revision, and tradition. Here, too, we must begin with the source text. Because both ngc in v. 9 and c pg in v. 22 have generic denotations (i.e., both refer to unspecified interpersonal M Carnasik, "Ruth 2,7 Why the Overseer Was Embarrassed," ZAW 107 (1995) 493-94 Carnasik is quick to point out that even if "sexual harassment" was not a juridically recognized category of behavior in ancient Israel, it cannot be seriously doubted that the experience of sexual language or contact that could make a woman uncomfortable really existed m the ancient world 46 Ibid , 494 6 47 R Bauckham, Is the Bible Male? The Book of Ruth and Biblical Narrative (Cambndge Grove Press, 1996) 10
45

VIOLENCE IN THE FIELDS? RUTH 2 459 contact), English translators are confronted with a comparatively wide range of possible English equivalents We have seen that the revisers of the KJV tradition have, for more than a century, preserved an understanding of ngc and pgc in these passages which suggests that, while the fields of Boaz may be the source of inter ference with Ruth, this interference is of a nonspecific and trivial sort (e g., "bother") Remembering that translators are confronted in v. 9 and 22 with inter pretive decisions that depend, in some measure, on assumptions which inform their understanding of the Book of Ruth in general, it seems wise to locate the tradition of the KJV in chap. 2 within the wider tradition that sees Ruth generally, and the account of the harvest fields in particular, as idyllic On this reading of Ruth, the nonspecific denotations of ngc and pgc are fully consonant with the type of language expected of Boaz and Naomi as people of genteel and delicate sensibilitiesthe kind of people who, when speaking with Ruth, would be expected to use euphemistic terms like, "touch," "bother," "meet," or "encounter," rather than more aggressive terminology such as "harass" "molest" or "assault " 4 8 Successive revisions of the KJV for more than a century have reflected the social values that favor such an understanding of the atmosphere in Boaz's harvest fields. But if the understanding and translation of Ruth 2:9 and 2 22 in the KJV tradition seem to reflect a more "idyllic" reading of Ruth, we must also give consideration to the other traditions of English translation (NEB/REB and JB/NJB), and ask how they have come to preserve an interpretation of ngc andpgc that is clearly at odds with the KJV tradition Since translators, in rendering generic terms like ngc and pgc, proceed on the basis of their understanding of the contexts of the usage, we are prepared to find the idyllic understanding of the fields of Boaz challenged by alternative English versions informed by their trans lators' acquaintance with heightened feminist concerns and with the social prob lems of sexual harassment and abuse. Read with this consciousness, the verbs ngc c and pg cannot be non-specific or euphemistic; the warnings of Boaz and Naomi, as guardians of Ruth's well-being, must anticipate a real danger of violence, sexual or some other kind, in the harvest fields. To abide by generic English glosses for these verbs, such as "touch," "meet," or "bother," seems ill-informed or, worse, disingenuous to interpreters with this new social awareness Indeed, their understanding of ngc and pgc in a more specific sense has the support of the verbs' usage in several passages of the Hebrew Bible as well as of the preposition be accompanying the verb in 22. This more explicitly aggressive rendering of
In characterizing Boaz, McCarthy and Riley (The Old Testament Short Story, 67-68) suggest that "At no point in the narrative does Boaz disappoint [the audience's mounting] expectations He is discreet, he first enquires as to who this newcomer is, before he addresses her and makes her feel at ease in a strange country and in a new and difficult social status of widowhood (2 5-9) He is sensitive, he respects her need to work within the social conditions of the time to sustain both Naomi and herself, but makes it easier for her in many thoughtful ways "
48

460 THE CATHOLIC BIBLICAL QUARTERLY I 63, 2001 the verbs (e g , by "molest," "assault") attests a new tradition of English translating that is more attuned than ever before to the social phenomenon of violence against women A few final observations follow from the preceding study The recent publication of revisions of popular English translations, including numerous descendants of the KJV, the NJB, and the REB, results in the fact that many English-speaking readers are dependent on revised rather than original translations of the Bible In light of this trend, we may conclude by glancing at the preface of The Revised Standard Version (1952), perhaps the most successful of twentieth-century revisions The committee responsible for translation and revision there directed that the RSV should "embody the best results of modern scholarship as to the meaning of the scriptures, and the diction employed was to be suitable for public and private worship, while preserving the traditional quality and dignity of the King James Bible " Setting aside the question of the extent to which these directives are realizable in a single translation, it is worth considering what light this statement sheds on the dynamics of translation, revision, and tradition 49 As with original translations, the RSV translators were obviously concerned with fidelity to the source text ("embody the best results of modern scholarship as to the meaning of the scriptures") as well as with suitability to the target audience ("and the diction employed was to be suitable for public and private worship") But it is in the final proviso, that the RSV preserve "the traditional quality and dignity of the King James Bible," that a "traditional" constraint is imposed that was not operative in the original translation project Although new translations may be forced to work within additional constraints of their own, their primary constraints remain those of the source and target languages As has been documented with respect to Ruth 2, on the other hand, revisions stand, for better or for worse, within a tradition of translation, and the revised renderings of particular passages may be strongly influenced by the tradition from which the revision descends We should also keep in mind, however, that even if revisions may be susceptible to "conservatism" in their rendering of particular passages, they also reflect, as all translations do, the reading assumptions and presuppositions of those who produced them In 1952, the same year that the RSV was published, R Dunkerley took up the subject of Bible revision His criticism of the failure of the tradition of the English Bible to produce any substantial revision of the KJV until the end of the
49 It could be argued that m their justification and legitimization of successive revisions, both the committee and the translators must, of necessity, represent these three aims as being not only realizable in theory, but actually realized in practice and exemplified in the translation that is being presented In fact, it seems likely that discrete requirements found in the directive may, at times, be mutually exclusive Indeed, the entire process of translation or revision should probably be seen as taking place in the tension created by these occasionally conflicting requirements

VIOLENCE IN THE FIELDS? RUTH 2 461 nineteenth century was punctuated by the assertion that "the obviously right thing was for this process of progressive improvement to have been continued and such revisions made every fifty or a hundred years."50 It is difficult to know what Dr. Dunkerley would have made of the increased pace of revision in the last fifty years, but it seems reasonable to suggest that scholars must heighten their critical attention to the ways in which ideological currents and reading traditions shape both the translating and the revising of the Hebrew Bible in English.
50

R. Dunkerley, "Bible Revision," The Modern Churchman 42 (1952) 23-27, here 24.

Table: Translations of Ruth 2:9 and Ruth 2:22 Translation Version/verse 1600-1850 KJV (1611) Tradition of The King James Version Ruth 2:9
a

Tradition of The Jerusalem Bible

b

Tradition of The English Bible

b

4^ to

Ruth 2:22

Ruth 2:9

Ruth 2:22

Ruth 2:9

Ruth 2:22

H
ffl

. . . have I not charged the young men that they shall not touch [margin: fall upon] thee?

. . . [it is] good, my daughter, that thou go out with his maidens that they meete thee not in any other field. [it is] good, my daughter, that thou go out with his maidens that they meete thee not in any other field. It is well, my daughter, that you go out with his maidens, lest in another field you be molested. RSV I have ordered my servants not to molest you. JB It is better for you my daughter to go with his servants than to go to some other field where you might be molested. JB I have given them orders not to molest you. NEB It is best for you my daughter, to go out with his girls; let no one catch you in another field. NEB

E d

1850-1900 RV (1885/1901)

have I not charged the young men that they shall not touch thee?

r o o d
>

3 tu

ON

1900-1970 RSV (1952) JB (1966) NEB (1970)

have I not charged the young men not to molest you? RSV

Translation Version/verse 1970-2000 NJB (1984) REB (1989) NRSV (1989) CV(1995)

Tradition of The King James Version Ruth 2:9a I have ordered the young men not to bother you. NRSV Ruth 2:22b It is better, my daughter, that you go out with his young women, other wise you might be bothered in another field. NRSV My daughter, it is good that you can pick up grain alongside the women who work in his field. Who knows what might happen to you in someone else's field? CEV

Tradition of The Jerusalem Bible Ruth 2:9a I have forbidden my men to molest you. NJB Ruth 2:22b It is better for you, daughter, to go with his work-women than to go to some other field where you might be ill-treated. NJB

Tradition of The English Bible Ruth 2:9a I have told the men not to molest you. REB Ruth 2:22b My daughter, it would be as well for you to go with his girls; in another field you might come to harm. REB <

I have warned the young men not to bother you. CEV

tu

m 3 r
00
"O

Os

Ruth 2:9: "[S73D ^rbb D*nS73n "fen ' Ruth 2:22: " &3 "|3 WEP *T 73 DV "XP 13 310 nn^D

SK IDS73

TDKim

^,
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