Topographia · Sacra
A Geographical Edition

The Book of Ruth

World English Bible · with a gazetteer of place names

The Book of Ruth is the smallest of the Hebrew Bible’s narrative books, and one of the tightest geographically: its plot turns on the journey from Bethlehem in Judah east to the country of Moab and back — a distance of perhaps 50 km, but across the Dead Sea trough that separates Israel proper from the trans-Jordan plateau. The whole book unfolds in two places: the fields and threshing floors of Bethlehem, and (in flashback) the country of Moab.

This edition pairs the text of the World English Bible (public domain) with a map of the places named in each chapter. Identifications follow the Anchor Bible Dictionary.

Solid pins denote identified sites; lighter pins denote probable identifications; outlined pins denote conjectural ones.