There are many ways in which the story-tellers of the Bible ensure that their tellings are lively and engaging. One is through the way they report speech. There is usually more “direct speech” (where the words of a character are “quoted”) then “indirect speech” (where the teller tells us the gist of what the character said). This direct speech is often skillfully crafted to give a lively and rich portrayal of the person. The podcast begins with cases where a group of people speak (we already heard one of these in the post Humour in the Bible: Part 2: Still Introducing Saul). Another example of this is found in Jonah 1:8 though here different emotions are expressed. The book of Ruth uses skillfully differentiated speech to help portray the characters. In this podcast we’ll look at Boaz’ two speeches to Ruth from chapter 2 (Ruth 2:11-12; 8-9).

Tags: 1 sam, Jonah, Narrative, Ruth