enerosity compassion toward Naomi is completely consistent with the injunction to "love one another as I have loved you" (John 13:34; 15:12). Even so, the injunction to care (or anyway have compassion) for the other, though decisive in Christianity, is not entirely original to it. To be sure, in some parts of the Hebrew bible there are injunctions to and rationales for violence (e.g., Exodus 21:24). It has been noted that in the Christian canon, the book of Ruth follows Judges, the narrative of which "ends in a morass of savagery and self-indulgence" (Darr 58), with the various tribes of Israel slaughtering one another. Yet at Lev. 19.18 there is this: "Thou shalt not avenge, nor bear any grudge against the children of thy people, but thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself: I am the Lord." That theme is taken up (for example) at Matthew 7:12, when Jesus (re)articulates the golden rul
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