This week my publisher for the Coffee Cup Bible Study series told me they definitely want two more. This time it's Premium Roast with Ruth and Cappuccino with the Colossians. That was nice news. The part that makes me gulp is that they want them, both of them, by January 3. And since my surgeon's office called today and gave me a November 8 date for surgery, that means I should probably have the studies finished by then, eh? Fortunately, I have written on both books in the past. And in Hebrew class I had to translate most of Ruth, so I have plenty of notes to go on.

I love that the Book of Ruth ends with a genealogy. As a novelist, I can tell you that it's not the most exciting way to end a book. In America, that is. But in an oral culture, a list of names is like a list of stories called to mind.

In Ruth's genealogy-ending, we read that she and Boaz were the parents of Obed, the father of Jesse. Remember him? Jesse of Bethlehem, who had eight sons? The youngest was a shrimp of a kid named David. And David went on to kill a God-defying Philistine giant named Goliath. Oh, and when he grew up, David impregnated Bethsheba, whom he then married...uh... after he had her husband knocked off. C'mon, let's be real, here. That makes the Lewinsky scandal look almost pristine in comparison!

Remember how I said a couple of entries ago that everybody's broken but everybody's redeemable? See what I mean? We're talking about King David here, the guy who wrote most of the psalms. That's the Hebrew prayer book in the middle of the Bible, right? Written by a repentant murderer. But then half of the New Testament was written by a converted terrorist. (Remember what Paul did to Stephen?)

Anyway, all this means Bathsheba was Ruth's granddaughter-in-law. I would love to have been a fly on the wall when David introduced those two. My, my. Nobody can tell me genealogies are boring.