In both cases the heroine is an outsider. Ruth is a Moabite. We are not told Tamar’s family background. The sages say she was descended from Shem; Philo says that she was the child of idolaters. Yet it is they who give birth to children “to maintain the name of the dead … so that his name will not disappear,” as Boaz says of Ruth. And it is they who are sensitive to the living – Tamar by not shaming Judah, Ruth by not letting Naomi return home alone.
The connection between the two women is stated explicitly at the end of the Book of Ruth. When the elders give permission to Boaz to buy Naomi’s field and marry Ruth, they pronounce this blessing: “May the Lord make the woman who is coming into your home like Rachel and Leah, who together built up the house of Israel … May your family be like that of Peretz, whom Tamar bore to Judah.” Why this reference to Tamar and Judah?
The answer lies in the genealogy with which the Book of Ruth ends. It lists the 10 generations from Peretz to King David. The beginning of David’s family tree is the son, Peretz, born to Judah and Tamar. The seventh generation is the son, Oved, born to Ruth and Boaz. The family tree of Israel’s great and future king includes Tamar and Ruth, two women whose virtue and loyalty, kindness and discretion, surely contributed to David’s greatness.
I find it exceptionally moving that the Bible should cast in these heroic roles two figures at the extreme margins of Israelite society: women, childless widows, outsiders. Tamar and Ruth, powerless except for their moral courage, wrote their names into Jewish history as role models who gave birth to royalty – to remind us, in case we ever forget, that true royalty lies in love and faithfulness, and that greatness often exists where we expect it least.