Ruth — Executive Summary (Hmong Language Package, Baseline v1.0)

The bottom line: Ruth is a small, narrative book carrying an outsized theological load for a Hmong audience — its central oath (1:16-17) and its providence-irony hinge (2:3) sit directly on top of the two deepest fault lines in Hmong traditional religion: spirit-invoked oath-curses and impersonal fate (hmoov). Phase 1 is complete; every chapter has been reviewed; 11 Critical/High-risk terms and 5 of 6 doctrines require mandatory human theologian review before any Phase 2 content is published.

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Why it matters

Ruth is being layered onto an existing Hmong Romans baseline, which means every new term must be checked against Romans’ already-locked vocabulary before it ships — and Ruth turns out to be the first place in this pipeline where the same Greek word (χάρις/charis, via the Septuagint) must be rendered two different, non-interchangeable ways depending on context. Get that override wrong even once, and Ruth’s humble gleaning-field request to Boaz reads as a salvation event. Get the hmoov boundary wrong, and the book’s central providence claim reads as its exact opposite. This is a small book with a disproportionately high failure surface.

Key findings

• Full-book coverage confirmed: all 4 chapters of Ruth reviewed; no chapter or sub-section silently skipped (see analysis/11_doctrine_analysis.md Part B coverage log).
• 38 total TM terms locked for this Language Package: 13 inherited verbatim from the Romans baseline TM, 25 new Ruth-specific entries now promoted to permanent status.
• 11 Critical/High-risk terms require zero-tolerance enforcement in Phase 2: 5 Critical (grace guard-rail, hesed_covenant_loving_kindness, miqreh_chance_providence, chen_favor_ordinary_social, oath_formula_lord_do_so) and 6 High (idol, power, kinsman_redeemer_goel, shaddai_the_almighty, conversion_oath_god_clause, garment_corner_marriage_symbol).
• 5 of 6 assigned doctrines are Critical or High risk and route to mandatory human theologian review (Hesed and Providence = Critical; Kinsman-Redeemer, Gentile Inclusion, Loyalty and Faithfulness = High); only Genealogy Pointing to David and Christ is Medium, routing to native-speaker review with theologian escalation on ambiguity.
• One systemic cross-book risk identified and documented: any Phase 2 generation process trained on the Romans TM will reflexively default to txiaj ntsim for χάρις; Ruth is the one context in the corpus where that reflex must be overridden (2:2, 2:10, 2:13).
• A genuine positive cultural bridge exists for Doctrine 6: Hmong clan-genealogy practice (keeb kwm xeem) makes the closing genealogy (4:17-22) the single least doctrinally risky element in the book — provided the mandatory Matthew 1:1 cross-reference is never dropped.

Risks

• Hesed (Critical): no single Hmong word carries chesed’s full range; the fixed three-part compound is long and could be simplified under space pressure, which would flatten the book’s controlling theme.
• Providence (Critical): Ruth 2:3’s own surface “chance” language is a direct collision with hmoov (impersonal fate) — the inverse problem of Romans’ election doctrine, and just as dangerous if mishandled.
• Kinsman-Redeemer (High): the coined kinship-redemption compound must stay phonetically clear of txiv neeb (shaman) in both print and spoken delivery — a production risk, not just a lexical one.
• Gentile Inclusion / Loyalty (High): Ruth 1:16-17’s oath is the Core Passage and the single highest doctrinal-density unit in the book; splitting its two clauses or softening its self-imprecatory oath-form are both live, documented failure modes.
• Propriety risk (Medium-High): the threshing-floor scene and garment-corner proposal (ch. 3) require careful, non-euphemism-losing handling or risk reading as scandalous rather than a formal, textually-affirmed-proper marriage claim.

Opportunities

• Ruth’s agrarian harvest imagery (barley, threshing floor, gleaning) is more culturally accessible to a Hmong audience than Romans’ olive-tree metaphor was — a genuine translation-ease win.
• Hmong clan-adoption and clan-widow-remarriage customs offer real, usable positive bridges for both Gentile Inclusion and Kinsman-Redeemer teaching, provided the boundary notes (social-only flattening risk) are respected.
• Hmong clan-genealogy culture makes Doctrine 6 the easiest doctrine in the book to teach well, once the Matthew 1:1 link is built into the lesson template as a non-optional element.

Recommended actions

1. Lock the 5 Critical and 6 High-risk terms into Phase 2 generation tooling with the same “no re-gloss without TM-revision” enforcement already governing Romans.
2. Cross-train (or explicitly prompt-guard) any Phase 2 generation process specifically against the χάρις/txiaj ntsim reflex before producing chapter 2 content.
3. Route all content touching Doctrines 1-5 to mandatory human theologian review pre-publication; route Doctrine 6 content to native-speaker review with theologian escalation on ambiguity.
4. Resolve all outstanding [TRANSLATOR REVIEW NEEDED] flags (proper-name transliterations against the existing Hmong OT tradition; the “Rus” book-name confirmation; the oath-formula and threshing-floor phrasing checks) before Phase 2 lock-in — none of these should be silently resolved by an automated process.
5. Build the mandatory teaching-note checks (2:3→2:20 forward pointer; oath replacement-not-supplementation; conversion-oath indivisibility; threshing-floor/garment-corner propriety and wordplay; Matthew 1:1 cross-reference) into the Phase 2 validation checklist as automated presence-checks, since these are omission risks rather than lexical errors and will not otherwise be caught.