Ruth opens in the age of the judges, and for once the story is small and quiet. A famine drives an Israelite family out of Bethlehem — the “house of bread” — into Moab. Ten years later the father and both sons are dead, and three widows are left. Naomi turns for home; one daughter-in-law kisses her goodbye; the other will not let go. Thy people shall be my people, and thy God my God.
A study in Ruth 1 · Arthur Baldwin · StandUp4Jesus.Org · 7 min read
A Certain Man Went To Sojourn In Moab
“Now it came to pass in the days when the judges ruled, that there was a famine in the land. And a certain man of Beth-lehem-judah went to sojourn in the country of Moab, he, and his wife, and his two sons… And Elimelech Naomi’s husband died… And Mahlon and Chilion died also both of them.”
Ruth 1:1-5
Bethlehem means “house of bread,” and there is no bread in it. Elimelech takes his family to Moab — a nearer, easier country, and a people Israel was told to keep its distance from. It looks like prudence. Within ten years he and both his sons are in Moabite graves, and Naomi is a stranger in a foreign land with two foreign daughters-in-law and nothing else. The book begins with an emptying.
Turn Again, My Daughters
“And Naomi said unto her two daughters in law, Go, return each to her mother’s house: the LORD deal kindly with you… And Orpah kissed her mother in law; but Ruth clave unto her. And she said, Behold, thy sister in law is gone back unto her people, and unto her gods.”
Ruth 1:8, 14-15
Naomi does not sell the journey; she talks them out of it. She has nothing to offer — no more sons, no security, only her God and her grief. Orpah weeps, kisses her, and turns back — and the text does not call her wicked. She does the sensible thing: home, family, familiar gods. Ruth does the other thing. Both women stood at the same crossroads with the same information. Faith is often just which way you go when the reasonable choice is to turn back.
Thy People Shall Be My People, And Thy God My God
“Intreat me not to leave thee… for whither thou goest, I will go; and where thou lodgest, I will lodge: thy people shall be my people, and thy God my God: where thou diest, will I die, and there will I be buried.”
Ruth 1:16-17
It is one of the great confessions in Scripture, and every clause is total — where you go, where you sleep, your people, your God, your grave. Ruth is a Moabite, from a nation the law held at arm’s length (Deuteronomy 23:3), and she is walking away from her own people and her own gods to bind herself to the LORD with nothing promised in return. This is how outsiders have always come in: not by birth, but by casting themselves on Israel’s God. The New Testament calls it being brought “nigh” who once were “far off” (Ephesians 2:13).
“All who, like Rahab the Canaanite, and Ruth the Moabitess, turned from idolatry to the worship of the true God, were to unite themselves with His chosen people.”
Ellen G. White · Christ’s Object Lessons, p. 290
Call Me Not Naomi, Call Me Mara
“Call me not Naomi, call me Mara: for the Almighty hath dealt very bitterly with me. I went out full, and the LORD hath brought me home again empty… And they came to Beth-lehem in the beginning of barley harvest.”
Ruth 1:20-22
Naomi means “pleasant”; she asks to be called Mara, “bitter.” Her reading of her own life is honest and not quite complete: “the LORD hath brought me home again empty” — she cannot yet see that He has also brought her home with Ruth, and home at barley harvest. The last line of the chapter is a small door left open. God’s providence is already at work in the field before the grieving woman can feel it.
