This volume, using multiple methods, seeks to bring together the best scholarship and insight-Jewish and Christian, past and present-that has contributed to our understanding and appreciation of the biblical book of Ruth. As a feminist commentary, it is particularly sensitive to issues of relationship and inclusion, power and agency. In addition to the voices of the primary co-authors, Alice Laffey and Mahri Leonard-Fleckman, the volume incorporates and integrates important contributing voices from diverse contemporary social contexts and geographical locations. In sum, the commentary seeks to allow Ruth, Naomi, and Boaz to speak again for the first time.

Alice Laffey's rereading of the major themes of the first five books of the Bible will enable readers to gain a firm grasp of the contents of this major literary corpus. Like other volumes in this series, it will also point the way to a different reading of Scripture, one that raises today's questions-power, liberation, justice, and preeminently connectedness. Laffey highlights neglected resources in the text in order "to approach these texts from the perspective of a respectfully interdependent worldview." In this work we witness a radical expansion and transformation of feminist biblical criticism to incorporate concern for all humans, all animals, all nature in a global, even cosmic way.