Bible Quiz: Book of Ruth
Four short chapters, eighty-five verses, and one of the best-told stories ever written. A famine, three funerals in a foreign country, a widow who renames herself Bitter, a barley field she landed in by “hap,” a midnight surprise on a threshing floor, a shoe handed over at the city gate, and a baby whose grandson becomes a king. Fifteen questions drawn from a bank of 42, chapter by chapter, and every answer shows the verse behind it — built for quiz-team practice and for anyone who has only ever heard “whither thou goest.”
That round walked all four chapters of Ruth — the road out of Moab, the field at barley harvest, the threshing floor at midnight, the ten elders at the gate, and the short family tree that runs from a Moabite widow to King David.
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Common Questions About the Book of Ruth
What is the Book of Ruth about?
Ruth is a four-chapter story set “in the days when the judges ruled.” A famine drives a Bethlehem family, Elimelech, his wife Naomi and their two sons, east into Moab. Over about ten years the father and both sons die, leaving three widows. Naomi decides to go home, and one daughter-in-law, Orpah, turns back while the other, Ruth, refuses to leave her. In Bethlehem, Ruth gleans leftover barley in a field that happens to belong to Boaz, a wealthy relative of Naomi’s late husband. Naomi sends Ruth to the threshing floor at night to ask Boaz to act as the family’s kinsman. Boaz settles the matter publicly at the city gate, marries Ruth, and their son Obed becomes the grandfather of King David. It is a story of famine to harvest and empty to full, told in eighty-five verses.
Who was Ruth in the Bible, and why does she matter?
Ruth was a woman from Moab, a neighbouring nation that Israel often treated with suspicion, who married into an Israelite family living there. After her husband Mahlon died, she could have gone home to her own people, as her sister-in-law did. Instead she made the vow most people know even if they have never opened the book: “whither thou goest, I will go; and where thou lodgest, I will lodge: thy people shall be my people, and thy God my God.” She matters for three reasons. Her loyalty to Naomi is one of the plainest pictures of faithful love anywhere in the Bible. Boaz says the whole town knows her as “a virtuous woman,” the same phrase used in Proverbs 31. And she is the great-grandmother of King David, named in Matthew 1:5 in the family line of Jesus.
What is a kinsman-redeemer in the Book of Ruth?
The Hebrew word is go’el, and the King James Version usually renders it “kinsman.” In ancient Israel, the closest male relative had the right, and the responsibility, to buy back family land that had been sold, so that it stayed in the family, and in a case like Ruth’s, to carry on a dead relative’s name. That is why Boaz cannot simply marry Ruth. In Ruth 3:12 he tells her there is a kinsman nearer than he, and in chapter 4 he meets that man at the city gate in front of ten elders. The nearer kinsman is happy to buy Naomi’s field until he learns Ruth comes with it, and a son would carry Mahlon’s name rather than his own. He backs out, hands over his shoe as the sign of the deal, and Boaz redeems both the land and the family line.
What questions come up most in a Book of Ruth Bible quiz?
For quiz teams and Bible-quizzing practice, the same handful of details turn up again and again. Names are the first test: Elimelech, Naomi, Mahlon, Chilion, Orpah, Boaz and Obed, and which son Ruth was actually married to (Mahlon, Ruth 4:10). Next come the numbers: about ten years in Moab, about an ephah of barley on the first day, six measures of barley from the threshing floor, ten elders at the gate. Then the key words: Naomi renaming herself Mara, which means bitter, the word “hap” for how Ruth found the field, the hour of midnight, the shoe that sealed the deal. Finally, expect the genealogy at the end of chapter 4, from Pharez down to David, with Salmon as Boaz’s father. Every one of those is in the bank behind the quiz above, with the verse shown after each answer.
What is the best way to study the Book of Ruth?
Ruth is short enough to read in one sitting, usually about fifteen minutes, so start there: read all four chapters straight through before you study any of it. Then go back chapter by chapter, because each one has its own setting. Chapter 1 is the road from Moab, chapter 2 the barley field, chapter 3 the threshing floor at night, and chapter 4 the city gate. Watch for the words the writer repeats on purpose, like “empty” in 1:21 and again in 3:17, or the “wings” of 2:12 that come back as Boaz’s “skirt” in 3:9. Then test yourself instead of rereading, since recall is what makes details stick. Each round of the Ruth quiz above draws fifteen questions at random from a bank of forty-two, so play the Book of Ruth quiz again and see how many you can place by chapter and verse.