4. Dialect
4. Dialect
It is beyond doubt that there is something strange about the language of this book. While on the whole it is good classical Hebrew, there are some very unusual forms, as noted above. Myers refers to ‘archaisms’ and one wonders why such forms should be preserved in a book of this sort and why they should be located as precisely as they are in speeches. D. B. Macdonald thinks of Ruth as ‘the first “dialect story” ’, and he points out that ‘Boaz, the wealthy and elderly farmer of Bethlehem, talks countrified dialect as contrasted with the more literary Hebrew of Ruth’.48 There seems little doubt but that the book faithfully records certain dialectical peculiarities. It thus provides us with a valuable addition to our knowledge of the richness and variety of the Hebrew language.