Ruth as Post Traumatic Covenant: Ḥesed, Kinship Repair and the Relational Resilience in the Narrative Theology of Grief

This article argues that the Book of Ruth presents a narrative theology of post-traumatic covenantal repair, in which ḥesed — steadfast, embodied loyalty enacted through vulnerability, boundary-crossing migration, and daily labour — reconfigures kinship and belonging after profound loss. The question is pastorally urgent: trauma-informed pastoral theology has increasingly engaged psychology and grief theory, yet the quieter scriptural resources that communities instinctively reach for in ordinary grief remain under-explored. Situating Ruth within its literary and theological context and engaging it through interdisciplinary dialogue between trauma psychology, feminist and womanist hermeneutics, migration theory, and pastoral phenomenology, the study demonstrates how Ruth's narrative arc — from famine, bereavement, and displacement to fullness, belonging, and generativity — models relational resilience for communities metabolising loss. The article introduces ḥesed as anti-spectacular pastoral practice: covenantal repair achieved not through symbolic vision or cosmic intervention but through grounded, daily fidelity enacted in fields, households, and ordinary human encounter. By centering the Moabite outsider as agent of covenantal continuity, Ruth offers implications for migration theology, refugee ecclesiology, and faith-integrated care with communities navigating collective rupture. The book functions as scriptural ground for the kind of quiet, vulnerability-based, relational repair that pastoral caregivers most urgently need to model and sustain.