purity’.19 Hawk (like many others) fails to note references to the acceptance of proselytes in Ezra 6:21 and Nehemiah 10:28 (Heb. 29). We are in danger of turning one part of the Bible against another if we say, as Hawk does, that the author of Ruth is ‘writing in opposition to the cleansing programme of Ezra and Nehemiah’,20 for it is plain that the canonical book of Ezra-Nehemiah approves the reform efforts. There is no evidence, therefore, that the book of Ruth contradicts or implicitly condemns