Senator Marco Rubio (or his staff) is in the habit of tweeting biblical verses on a near-daily basis; lately most of these have come from the book of Proverbs. In response, a Yale Divinity School professor of Hebrew Bible penned an essay explaining that this book of Solomonic aphorisms is “the most Republican part of the Bible” and reflects “an almost social-Darwinist worldview.” Charlotte Allen points out that, in fact, Proverbs is “not all diligence and righteousness—in Proverbs, faith in God, too, will keep you away from things like poverty and failure.” Then she proceeds to have some fun at the professor’s expense:

All of this set me to wondering: if the book of Proverbs is the most Republican book in the Bible, what’s the most Democratic book? So I scoured the Good Book and came up with some candidates: . . .

The book of Ruth: “And Naomi had a kinsman of her husband’s, a mighty man of wealth, of the family of Elimelech; and his name was Boaz. And Ruth the Moabitess said unto Naomi, Let me now go to the field, and glean ears of corn after him in whose sight I shall find grace. And she said unto her, Go, my daughter” (Ruth 2:1-2).

A whole congeries of Democratic party themes here, from grabbing what you can from the rich via sky-high taxes to the welfare state (free food!) to possibly illegal immigration (what is Ruth the Moabitess doing in the land of Israel?).

Early Friday morning, Israel attacked military installations near the Iranian cities of Isfahan and nearby Natanz, the latter being one of the hubs of the country’s nuclear program. Jerusalem is not taking credit for the attack, and none of the details are too certain, but it seems that the attack involved multiple drones, likely launched from within Iran, as well as one or more missiles fired from Syrian or Iraqi airspace. Strikes on Syrian radar systems shortly beforehand probably helped make the attack possible, and there were reportedly strikes on Iraq as well.

Iran itself is downplaying the attack, but the S-300 air-defense batteries in Isfahan appear to have been destroyed or damaged. This is a sophisticated Russian-made system positioned to protect the Natanz nuclear installation. In other words, Israel has demonstrated that Iran’s best technology can’t protect the country’s skies from the IDF. As Yossi Kuperwasser puts it, the attack, combined with the response to the assault on April 13,

clarified to the Iranians that whereas we [Israelis] are not as vulnerable as they thought, they are more vulnerable than they thought. They have difficulty hitting us, but we have no difficulty hitting them.

Nobody knows exactly how the operation was carried out. . . . It is good that a question mark hovers over . . . what exactly Israel did. Let’s keep them wondering. It is good for deniability and good for keeping the enemy uncertain.

The fact that we chose targets that were in the vicinity of a major nuclear facility but were linked to the Iranian missile and air forces was a good message. It communicated that we can reach other targets as well but, as we don’t want escalation, we chose targets nearby that were involved in the attack against Israel. I think it sends the message that if we want to, we can send a stronger message. Israel is not seeking escalation at the moment.