When you think about it, and as explained below, the books of Ruth, Esther, Job, and Jonah can be grouped together. And it is intriguing to consider what, together, they teach.
I happened to be thinking about these books because my wife and I just finished Esther in her Bible study, and because Jonah is an important part of Yom Kippur and atonement this week, as discussed in this Wall Street Journal column (David Lehman, “The Book of Jonah: The Bible’s Eloquent Tale of Atonement,” September 26, 2025, print edition).
And, since we have here four books that span the Old Testament, and the beginning of October marks the conclusion of the Old Testament in many one-year Bible reading programs, this seemed like a good blogpost for today.
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Let me state succinctly why I think these four books can be grouped together. Each is a self-contained narrative that focuses from beginning to end on an individual’s story.
If we exclude the Gospels, as I think we can, I don’t think there is anything like them in the New Testament (Paul’s short letter to Philemon perhaps comes closest). In the Old Testament, there are certainly stories within books that are similar — for example, the account of Samson in Judges — but they are interwoven with other stories and/or embedded in a larger historical narrative. In the Old Testament, Daniel comes close, but half that book is given to prophecy rather than a conventional narrative, and much of what happens in the rest of the book is not about Daniel.
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Of course, each book is replete with its own messages and wisdom — but what, in addition, can we learn if we consider the four together since they are, as I argue, a distinct group?
Well, consider: The principals in the four books are two men and two women, and two Jews and two Gentiles, so that we have a Jewish man (Jonah), a Jewish woman (Esther), a Gentile man (Job), and a Gentile women (Ruth). If nothing else, the fact that the four stories like this that we have cover all the possibilities — well, this suggests that God is concerned with all humankind, does it not? And it’s rather interesting that the least admirable of the four principals (Jonah) belongs to the category that might have thought itself God’s favorite (the male Jew — which by the way describes the likely authors of all four books, of course). Consider, too, that with these four books we cover the entire timeline of the Old Testament — spread out rather evenly from the patriarchal period (Job) to the chaotic days between Moses and Saul (Ruth) to the divided kingdom (Jonah) to post-exile, at least for some (Esther) — as well as three major genres (historical narrative, prophecy, and a Wisdom book).
The four books also fit together well in their content. Jesus boiled down the law and the prophets to our having the right relationship with God and with other human beings. Well, in two of the books (Job and Jonah), the focus is on the principal’s relationship with God; and in two of the books (Ruth and Esther), the focus is on the principal’s relationship with other people.
As to loving one’s neighbor as one loves oneself, the takeaway lesson in both Ruth and Esther is loyalty and love — to one’s family and one’s people — through thick and thin, through hard times and even at the risk of one’s own life.
As to loving God, that love too and our obedience are to be unwavering — even when what He asks of us is not what we want, indeed even incomprehensible. That lesson is taught in Job and Jonah, both of whom need some convincing.
And what do the books show us about how God acts? He is powerful, certainly, present even when unmentioned, playing a very long game indeed. Unfathomable and yet, one concludes, loving to His children, whom any of us — queen or penniless migrant or wealthy landowner, Jew or Moabite or Ninevite — can be.
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P.S. By the way, I ended an earlier post on Jonah with this bullet point: “Jonah, Ruth, and Esther can be grouped together in their own special little category, can they not?” Clever fellow! Or not: I had forgotten about that bullet point when the idea of the current blogpost occurred to me five years later. And I’m not sure why it had not occurred to me back then to include Job in my list. Maybe it was just that it’s so much longer than the other three books.