Through the strange women clustering at the corners I took my way,--women of the
Moabites, Ammonites, Edomites, Zidonians, and Hittites,--and I thought, as I looked into their poor painted faces,--faces but half human, vampirish faces, faces already waxen with the look of the grave,--I thought, as I often did, of the poor little girl whom De Quincey loved, the good-hearted little `peripatetic' as he called her, who had succoured him during those nights, when, as a young man, he wandered homeless about these very streets,--that good, kind little Ann whom De Quincey had loved, then so strangely lost, and for whose face he looked into women's faces as long as he lived.
Whilst I was gazing and wondering, suddenly it occurred to me--being familiar with the Old Testament--that Solomon went astray after strange gods, the names of three of whom I remembered--"Ashtoreth, the goddess of the Zidonians, Chemosh, the god of the
Moabites, and Milcom, the god of the children of Ammon"--and I suggested to my companions that the figures before us might represent these false and exploded divinities.
11:24), like their
Moabite brethren, in addition to their god Milcom.
Taking the books in turn, they consider such topics as the poetic presentation of the
Moabite catastrophe in Isaiah 15-16, common and different phrases for Babylon's fall and its aftermath in Isaiah 13-14 and Jeremiah 50-51, the figuring of Moab in Jeremiah 48 as reinscription of the Judean body, Jeremiah's oracles against the nations as revenge fantasies, royal polemic in Ezekiel's oracles against the nations, and Egypt in the Book of Ezekiel.
120-22), as evidenced in the roughly contemporary monumental inscriptions in
Moabite, Ammonite, and Aramaic, not to mention later Hebrew inscriptions.
This book carried a protest message: God's grace transcends and defies racial, religious, and national exclusiveness." (14) It serves to remind the people of Israel that if Ruth had been rejected because she was a
Moabite, David and Solomon would never have existed, for their lineage was traced directly to Ruth.
He said the sanctuary and its artifacts -- hewn from limestone and basalt or molded from clay and bronze -- show the complex religious rituals of Jordan's biblical
Moabite kingdom.
Forty years later, however, the Israelites were exposed to the allure of the
Moabite women.
Moreover, in the Gospels, Matthew and Luke cite Ruth, a
Moabite woman, in the genealogical line of Jesus; Luke's story of the Good Shepherd portrays Jesus as eating with anyone, whatever their faith; and John depicts Jesus claiming to be "the way, the truth, and the life," as a Jew to other Jews, assuring his followers that his way of love is an authentic path to the Father.
This is indeed a very insightful commentary, although the biblical book could also be read against the background of the Davidic era, turning David's problematic
Moabite great-grandmother into a considerable political advantage.
Living in the land of Moab, she and another
Moabite woman, Orpah, marry into an Israelite family that fled Israel because of famine.
This is a heart-warming story of a young
Moabite woman who stood by her mother in law, Naomi, when she lost her two sons.