"An up-to-date resource valuable for intermediate students. Holmstedt provides a strong focus on the connection between syntax and nuance of meaning." --Katharine Doob Sakenfeld, William Albright Eisenberger Professor of Old Testament, Princeton Theological Seminary

Holmstedt's volume is a mine of information and insight... certainly a book that will repay investment. -- D. W. Rooke -- Journal for the Study of the Old Testament

This commentary on Ruth from the Hebrew text (phrase by phrase) is written with the awareness that Ruth or/and Jonah are usually the first Hebrew texts learners of biblical Hebrew read. Pages 1-50 summarize relevant aspects of Hebrew grammar, semantics, and pragmatics (how syntactic and semantic options are manipulated) that the student should be familiar with. Linguistic features show no clear needbased borrowing from Aramaic, so one thinks of the early Persian period as the time of writing. Holmstedt is attentive to nuances. For example, "due to the famine in Israel, someone from the town named 'House of Bread' [Bethlehem] had to leave to find provision as an alien in a foreign land" (p. 55). The comments in places explain the use of accents and the grammatical changes they induce in words/phrases.In short, the author has given students a valuable step-by-step introduction to reading the text of the Hebrew Bible. -- James Chukwuma Okoye, CSSp -- Bible Today, 2010