Where you go, I will go; Where you lodge, I will lodge;your people shall be my people,and your God my God.

This passage from Ruth 1, so often read at contemporary weddings, conjures up mental images of a winsome and warmhearted love story that explains how Ruth, a Moabite woman, became an ancestor of the revered King David and, later, of Jesus of Nazareth. It is a simple story that dates back to an early period in the history of Israel, the era of the Judges. But it is an early and simple story that became very important in a later and more complex time, the time of Ezra and Nehemiah. That was the age when conflicts arose between Jews returning to their homeland after the Babylonian exile and Jews who had remained behind, in many cases intermarrying with Canaanites and becoming assimilate…