The question what the book was written for has received diverse answers. It has been thought that the author meant to protest against the narrowness of those who condemned all marriages with foreigners and put the Moabites under a special ban, by showing that David himself had Moabite blood in his veins; others see the point of the book in the commendation of the marriage of childless widows, not by brothers-in-law only as the levirate law required, but by remoter kinsmen. Others have conjectured otherwise. In this state of the case it is safe to say that if the author had an ulterior motive, he concealed it more successfully than is common to story-tellers who write with a purpose. There are no very definite signs in the book of the age in which it was written. The author is familiar with the Hebrew literature of the good period, and writes a better imitation of it than some. It is precisely this imitative character which stands in the way of putting the book in the days of the kingdom. But where, in the centuries of the Persian or Greek dominion it belongs, it is impossible to say. JONAH.--The third of the short stories, Jonah, is not found, like Esther and Ruth, in the Jewish Bible in the miscellaneous collection of "Scriptures" and in the Christian Bible among the Historical Books, but in the prophetic canon, as one of the Minor Prophets. The reason, doubtless, is that it is not only a story about a prophet and his mission, but was thought to be written by himself. The tale is too familiar to have to be retold at length. The Israelite prophet, Jonah the son of Amittai, is commissioned by God to go to Nineveh and announce its impending destruction; to escape this unwelcome errand he embarks on a Phoenician ship bound for Spain, at the other end of the world; a tempest threatens to engulf the ship; the seamen cast lots to discover against whom the gods are so angry; the lot falls on Jonah, and he is cast into the sea, which thereupon becomes calm; Jonah is swallowed by a monstrous fish, which after three days sets him ashore safe and sound. He goes to Nineveh and delivers his message; the people repent of their sins, and God repents of his purpose to destroy them, whereat the prophet is very indignant and upbraids God with his soft-heartedness; he expected this from the beginning, and therefore tried to flee to Tarshish. By his own grief for the death of the plant "which sprang up in a night and perished in a night," the prophet is taught the lesson of the divine compassion: "How should I not have compassion on this great city, Nineveh, in which are more than a hundred and twenty thousand human beings which do not know their right hand from their left, not to speak of cattle?" With this rebuke the book ends.