Book of Ruth Trivia
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89 free Book of Ruth trivia questions with answers — trivia quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
The Book of Ruth is the Bible's quietest love story and one of its sharpest arguments. A widowed foreigner follows her mother-in-law home to Bethlehem with nothing, works the harvest fields of a wealthy relative, and ends up the great-grandmother of a king. No miracles, no battles: just loyalty, law and a very well-timed night at the threshing floor. These 89 questions follow the story chapter by chapter, from Moab to the kinsman-redeemer's deal, then look at what the book became: where it sits in the Hebrew and Christian canons, how the rabbis read it, and where it turns up in poetry, painting and Hollywood. Built for Bible study groups, Sunday school teachers, youth leaders and anyone who wants a quiz that rewards reading closely. Play it online or print it with the answers.
30 of 89 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01What disaster, named in the first verse of Ruth, drove Elimelech's family from Bethlehem into Moab?
A famine
A famine in a town whose name means 'house of bread' is the irony the book opens on, and it sends an Israelite family to live among a people the Torah viewed with suspicion.
Q 02Ruth's opening verse sets the story 'in the days when' which officials ruled, before Israel had a king?
The judges
The judges' era was the Bible's stretch of tribal chaos and local strongmen, which makes this quiet tale of decency in Bethlehem a pointed contrast; Christian Bibles shelve it right after Judges.
Q 03Sealing her pledge to Naomi, Ruth swore that only what would ever part the two of them?
Death
Death alone, she swore, 'if ought but death part thee and me', calling the Lord's punishment down on herself if she broke it, an oath formula Israel's kings use elsewhere in the Bible.
Q 04Elimelech's family came from Bethlehem in which tribe's territory, as distinct from a second Bethlehem up in Zebulun?
Judah
Judah is spelled out as 'Beth-lehem-judah' in the King James text, because Joshua's tribal lists also record a second Bethlehem far to the north in Zebulun.
Q 05Naomi and Ruth reached Bethlehem, the text notes, just as the harvest of which grain was beginning?
Barley
Barley ripens first, around April, which puts Ruth in the fields for the whole season, through the wheat harvest that followed, before the threshing-floor scene.
Q 06Following Naomi's plan, what did Ruth do once Boaz had lain down to sleep beside his heap of grain?
Uncovered his feet
Uncovered his feet and lay down is all the text says; Boaz woke to find her there, called her a virtuous woman and promised to settle her case by morning.
Q 07In Ruth 4, what did one man hand to another to seal the transfer of Elimelech's land?
His sandal
His sandal, a 'shoe' in the King James wording, changed hands because, the narrator explains, this was the custom 'in former time' in Israel, a hint that the book was written long after the events.
Q 08Who, in the book's final chapter, gave Ruth and Boaz's newborn son his name, announcing 'a son is born to Naomi'?
The neighbourhood women
The neighbourhood women credited the grandmother rather than the mother, and the boy they named grew up to be King David's grandfather.
Q 09Ruth left the threshing floor at dawn carrying six measures of grain from Boaz in what?
Her shawl
Her shawl, a 'vail' in the King James wording, took a load so heavy that Boaz laid it on her himself, and Naomi read the gift as a sign that he would settle the matter that very day.
Q 10The elders witnessing the deal likened Boaz's future house to that of which twin son of Tamar, born in Genesis 38?
Perez
Perez heads the genealogy that closes the book, and his own birth to Tamar came from another irregular union that kept a family line alive, a pattern the blessing seems to wink at.
Q 11The crowd witnessing Boaz's deal wished Ruth would be like which two women 'who together built up the house of Israel'?
Rachel and Leah
Rachel and Leah were Jacob's two wives and, with their maids, mothers of the twelve tribes, so the blessing wishes the Moabite widow a matriarch's place in Israel's story.
Q 12Announcing the marriage before the elders, Boaz names which of Elimelech's sons as Ruth's late husband?
Mahlon
Mahlon is identified as her husband only in the final chapter; the opening never says which brother married which Moabite bride.
Q 13The names of Naomi's two sons, who die within the first five verses, are often read as Hebrew puns meaning what?
Sickness and wasting
Q 21At mealtime in the field, Boaz invited Ruth to eat bread dipped in what?
Vinegar
Vinegar here was a sour wine used as a thirst-quenching dip; Boaz also passed her parched grain, and she ate until satisfied with some left over to take home.
Q 22What news, heard in Moab, persuaded the widowed Naomi to set out for Bethlehem again?
The Lord had visited his people
The Lord had visited his people 'in giving them bread', she heard, so the story's turn for home starts with a rumour of food reaching a foreign field, not with a vision or a summons.
Q 23Boaz blessed Ruth for sheltering under the Lord's what, an image she later turns back on him at the threshing floor?
Wings
Sickness and wasting suit two men whose only role is to die, leaving three widows and no heir, which is the whole problem the rest of the book sets out to solve.
Q 14Ruth Rabbah, the midrash on the book, reads Elimelech's name unflatteringly as meaning what?
One eager for royalty
One eager for royalty is the rabbis' jab at a leading man of Bethlehem who, they say, fled for fear that all his neighbours would turn up at his door, each holding out a basket.
Q 15Back in Bethlehem after about ten years in Moab, Naomi asked to be called by which name, meaning 'bitter'?
Mara
Mara was her retort to neighbours who greeted her as Naomi, a name meaning 'pleasant': the Almighty, she said, had dealt very bitterly with her, yet the narrator never once uses the new name.
Q 16Naomi, releasing the two widows in Moab, told each to go back to whose house?
Her mother's
Her mother's house is the surprise: elsewhere in the Bible a widow goes back to her father's house, as Tamar is told to in Genesis and as a law in Leviticus takes for granted.
Q 17When Naomi sent the two widows away, Orpah kissed her goodbye, while Ruth did what, in the King James wording?
Clave unto her
Clave unto her uses the Hebrew verb dabaq, the same word Genesis uses for a man cleaving to his wife, which is why Ruth's loyalty reads like a marriage vow.
Q 18Home again in Bethlehem, widowed and bereaved, Naomi said the Lord had brought her back how?
Empty
Empty is her verdict on a decade that cost her a husband and two sons, and she adds that the Almighty has 'testified against' her, all said with the loyal daughter-in-law standing right beside her.
Q 19What greeting did Boaz call out to his reapers on arriving at the field, a line Christian liturgy still uses?
The Lord be with you
The Lord be with you drew the reapers' reply 'The Lord bless thee', and the Latin Bible's wording of his greeting, 'Dominus vobiscum', became the priest's standard salutation at Mass.
Q 20What did Boaz quietly order his harvesters to do to boost Ruth's gleanings?
Drop handfuls on purpose
Drop handfuls on purpose went beyond the law, which only obliged a farmer to leave the field's edges and whatever the reapers missed, and he told them not to scold her either.
Wings in Hebrew is kanaf, which also means the corner of a garment, so when Ruth asks Boaz to spread his 'skirt' over her she is asking him to be the shelter he wished for her.
Q 24Why did the nearer kinsman withdraw once Boaz explained that buying Elimelech's field meant marrying Ruth too?
It would mar his inheritance
It would mar his inheritance, he said; on the usual reading, a son born to Ruth would count as her dead husband's heir and take the very land he had just paid for.
Q 25Which Hebrew placeholder name, used much like 'John Doe', comes from how Ruth 4 addresses the unnamed kinsman?
Ploni Almoni
Ploni Almoni, roughly 'so-and-so', is all the narrator calls him, so the man who declined to keep a dead relative's name alive ends up with no name of his own.
Q 26Where did Boaz go, first thing the next morning, to settle the question of Elimelech's land before witnesses?
The town gate
The town gate was where legal business was done in ancient Israel, and Boaz seated a panel of the city's elders there before so much as mentioning the field.
Q 27Naomi told Ruth not to make herself known at the threshing floor until Boaz had finished doing what?
Eating and drinking
Eating and drinking left Boaz's 'heart merry', the text says, before he bedded down at the end of the grain heap, as farmers did to guard a harvest overnight.
Q 28At what hour did Boaz wake with a start to find a woman lying beside him on the threshing floor?
Midnight
Midnight is when he 'was afraid, and turned himself', and rather than a scandal the scene ends with his promise to settle her case by morning.
Q 29Why, in his own words, did Boaz send Ruth home before it was light?
So none knew she had come
So none knew she had come, he said, guarding both reputations, and he sent her off with grain so that she would not arrive home to Naomi with nothing.
Q 30Ruth is one of the five heroines honoured by which Masonic-affiliated society open to women?
Order of the Eastern Star
The Order of the Eastern Star was devised in 1850 by the Freemason Rob Morris so that Masons' wives, daughters and other female relatives could share in the fraternity, with Ruth as one of its star's five heroines.