Scripture reading
Ruth 1
Questions
24 So he [YHWH] drove the man out, and placed cherubim east of the garden of Eden, and a flaming, turning sword to guard the way to the tree of life. Genesis 3:23–24
16 And Cain went out from the presence of YHWH, and he settled in the land of Nod, east of Eden.
Genesis 4:16.
And they went to the countryside of Moab [east of Judah] and remained there.
Ruth 1:2b
What does the “east of Eden” imagery reference?
What had happened in the “new Eden” [Judah/Israel]?1
Elimelech, from Bethlehem, is driven from the land because of famine, poverty and debt, God’s covenant curses on the land. The family’s land in Bethlehem had been sold due to debt [Ruth 4:3-5]. So we read…
1 And it happened in the days when the judges ruled, there was a famine in the land, and a man from Bethlehem [lit. “house of bread”] of Judah went to reside [lit. “dwell as an alien”] in the countryside of Moab [śĕdê môʾāb, “the field of Moab2] — he and his wife and his two sons. 2 And the name of the man was Elimelech, and the name of his wife was Naomi, and the names of his two sons were Mahlon and Kilion. They were Ephrathites from Bethlehem in Judah. And they went to the countryside of Moab [śĕdê môʾāb, “the field of Moab] [east of Judah] and remained there.
Ruth 1:1-2
How does “the field of Moab” [śĕdê môʾāb] rather than “land of Moab” [ʾereṣ môʾāb] reinforce the Edenic reference?3
Is this story just an appendix to the awful ending to Judges? Is it going to be yet another episode of sin and rebellion? Or are there still people of faith? A faithful remnant? What ethnicity is Ruth?4
But…
3 An Ammonite5 or a Moabite may not come into the assembly of YHWH; even to the tenth generation none of his descendants may come into the assembly of YHWH forever, 4 because they did not come to meet you with food and with water when you came out of Egypt, and also because they hired Balaam, son of Beor, from Pethor, in Aram Naharaim to act against you to curse you.
Deuteronomy 23:3–4
We’ll learn in this story how godly Jews such as a man called Boaz, who obeyed Torah, from the heart, in the fine detail, understood these sorts of verses. Ruth is extensively discussed in Second Temple literature6 as the Jews are by now in exile have all sorts of questions about foreigners and purity and Torah obedience. Matthew picks up on Ruth’s significance…
5 [A]nd Salmon became the father of Boaz by Rahab, and Boaz became the father of Obed by Ruth, and Obed became the father of Jesse, 6 and Jesse became the father of David the king.
Matthew 1:5-6
What is the significance of Ruth in the “story of redemption”?7
Continuing…
3 But Elimelech the husband of Naomi died and she was left behind [šāʾar niphal, “to be left over, to remain”8] with her two sons.
The male protector/provider is dead! Naomi is stranded.
4a And they [the sons] took for themselves Moabite wives [nāśāʾ ʾiššâ, literally “to lift/carry a woman”9]. The name of the one was Orpah and the name of the other was Ruth.
The verb nāśāʾ carries the idea of a forced or illegitimate marriage.10
Should the sons have taken foreign wives [Deuteronomy 7:3-4]? Is there any evidence that the Moabite women converted?11
4b And they lived there about ten years. 5 But both Mahlon and Kilion died, and the woman was left without her two sons and without her husband.
Death and death. The male providers gone. No progeny. No one to continue Elimelech’s name. The women face destitution and humiliation. But YHWH, the God of the land next door, cares for the widow and the orphan…
18 And he executes justice for the orphan and widow, and he is one who loves the alien, to give to them food and clothing. 19 And you shall love the alien, for you were aliens in the land of Egypt.
Deuteronomy 10:18 [see also Exodus 22:22-24; Psalm 68:5, 46:9; Isaiah 1:17, Jeremiah 22:3; James 1:27 etc.].
What “wins out”? God’s hatred of the Moabites’ sin or his love for the widow?
6 And she [Naomi] got up, she and her daughters-in-law, and returned from the countryside of Moab, because she had heard in the countryside of Moab that YHWH had come to the aid of his people to give food to them.
The period of the Judges was a cyclical pattern of disobedience to God, oppression by foreign powers, famines, cries for help, and deliverance by judges. But YHWH was faithful. There is blessing on the land…
7 So she set out from the place where she was and her two daughters-in-law with her, and they went on the way to return to the land of Judah. 8 But Naomi said to her two daughters-in-law, “Go, each of you return to her mother’s house12. May YHWH show ḥěʹ·sěḏ [lit. “loyal love”] to you just as you did with the dead and with me. 9 May YHWH grant that you find a resting place, each in the house of her husband.” And she kissed them, and they lifted up their voices and cried.
YHWH’s ḥěʹ·sěḏ is his “loyal love” to his covenant people, to Israel. Naomi also uses the covenant name YHWH. What does this begin to show about how God’s love can “trump” his incompatibility with sin?
10 And they said to her, “No, we want to return with you to your people.” 11 And Naomi said, “Return, my daughters. Why do you still want to go with me? Are there sons in my womb that may be husbands for you? 12 Turn back, my daughters! Go, for I am too old to have a husband. If I should think there is hope for me, even if I should have a husband this night, and even if I should bear sons, 13 would you therefore wait until they were grown? Would you therefore refrain from marrying [lit. “belonging to a man”]? No, my daughters, for it is far more bitter [mǎr] to me than to you. For the hand of YHWH has gone out against me.”
Naomi has no husband and is too old to remarry or bear more sons. Her daughters-in-law would have no prospect of finding a husband in Israel. Such a marriage was forbidden. They would be better off to return to their gods. She believes that “the hand of YHWH has gone out against” her. Is this a bitterness towards God? Or is it an acceptance that the suffering was brought on her by YHWH and, as Job learnt, she does not scrutinise his ways.
14 And they lifted up their voices and cried again. And Orpah kissed her mother-in-law goodbye, but Ruth clung to her. 15 And she said, “Look, your sister-in-law has returned to her people and to her gods. Return after your sister-in-law too.” 16 But Ruth said, “Do not urge me to leave you or to return from following you! For where you go, I will go, and where you lodge, I will lodge. Your people will be my people and your God will be my God13. 17 Where you die I will die, and there I will be buried. So may YHWH do to me, and even more, unless death separates you and me!” 18 When Naomi saw that she was determined to go with her, she said no more.
How does Ruth’s faith contrast with Naomi’s? Is there someone you need to “carry” at this time?
19 So the two of them went until they came to Bethlehem. And when they came to Bethlehem, all of the town was stirred because of them. And they said, “Is this Noʿŏmîy?” 20 And she said to them, “You should not call me Noʿŏmîy; call me Mǎr, for Shaddai has caused me to be very mrr. 21 I went away full, but YHWH brought me back empty-handed! Why call me Noʿŏmîy when YHWH has testified against me and Shaddai has brought rā·ʿǎʿ [≈evil] upon me?”
Instead of “testified against me” in the MT we have “humiliated” in the LXX and Syriac.
Does God really bring evil on people? What does rā·ʿǎʿ mean? How would you explain this sort of evil to a modern person?
22 So Naomi returned, and Ruth the Moabite her daughter-in-law with her, returning from the countryside of Moab. And they came to Bethlehem at the beginning of the harvest of barley.
What is the significance of Bethlehem?
More
Bible Project guide to the Book of Ruth.
Thousands of years later God has created a nation to be his own, Israel, to live in a land they would not plant, to restore Eden. The book of Judges begins with the people entering the land. The end of Judges [17–21], sadly, paints a very grim picture of the Ephaprathites and events in and around Bethlehem, e.g. the Levite killing and chopping up his concubine [Judges 17:1, 7; 19:1; etc.].
Daniel Isaac Block, Judges, Ruth, vol. 6, The New American Commentary (Nashville: Broadman & Holman Publishers, 1999), 626.
Like Greek, Hebrew has many words for “field”. “[Ś]ādeh refers to land as a field that has been wrested from an original wild state and brought under human occupation and cultivation…it may refer to unoccupied territory, in contrast to môšāb, “inhabited land”; the region surrounding a city…” [Daniel Isaac Block, Judges, Ruth, vol. 6, The New American Commentary (Nashville: Broadman & Holman Publishers, 1999), 626.]. They may, then, have just sneaked into Moabite territory and were cultivating a piece of unused land. Just as adam was given dominion over the land to rule over and subdue it perhaps Elimelech, because of the sin of others, finds himself outside Eden, as it were, an Eden destroyed by sin and under God’s judgment, and bringing order to scratch out an existence in the wilderness.
The hero, the protagonist, of the story is Ruth but living so far away in time [scholars put the story ca. 1030–1010 BC [R. Brian Rickett, “Ruth,” in The Lexham Bible Dictionary, ed. John D. Barry et al. (Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press, 2016)] something may not scream out at us. Ruth was a Moabitess!!
The Ammonites originated from the incestuous relationship between Lot and his younger daughter [Genesis 19:36–38].
For instance, the Talmud [Bava Batra 14b-15a] discusses the canonical status of Ruth, while Midrash Rabbah on Ruth provides detailed homiletical interpretations that reflect earlier traditions.
Ruth was the great grandmother of David and, therefore, an ancestor of Jesus. Jesus would be born in Bethlehem. Jesus will restore the creation. The Davidic line entered the land through Ruth.
Daniel Isaac Block, Judges, Ruth, vol. 6, The New American Commentary (Nashville: Broadman & Holman Publishers, 1999), 627.
Daniel Isaac Block, Judges, Ruth, vol. 6, The New American Commentary (Nashville: Broadman & Holman Publishers, 1999), 628.
Ditto.
Marrying foreign women was forbidden for the people of YHWH. This is not racism. The other nations served other gods [Deuteronomy 32; Psalm 82]. To join in marriage with the worshippers of other gods was to join with the worship of those gods. It is quite possible though that the Moabite women converted, in some sense, to enter the family of Elimelech.
“The phrase bêt ʾēm occurs elsewhere only three times. In Song 3:4; 8:2 it refers to the bedroom of a person’s mother, where lovers might find privacy. In Gen 24:28 Rebekah is said to have run home to her mother’s house to report her conversation with Abraham’s servant, who was sent to find a wife for Isaac. In each instance the phrase “house of a mother” is found in a context involving love and marriage. Accordingly, by sending each of her daughters-in-law home to her “mother’s house” Naomi is releasing them to remarry.46 Support for this interpretation may be found in v. 9, where Naomi prays that both of them would find security in the “house of her husband.”” Daniel Isaac Block, Judges, Ruth, vol. 6, The New American Commentary (Nashville: Broadman & Holman Publishers, 1999), 632–633.
This is not our world. This is the world of the ANE where YHWH was the God of Israel but had assigned the nations to other gods [Deuteronomy 32; Psalm 82]. If you served YHWH, you lived in his land and went up to his temple etc. Naomi’s oath sounds Deuteronomistic but this is how covenants with god-kings were sworn in the ANE. Recall the later story of Naaman. A respected and powerful Syrian military leader, is afflicted with leprosy. A young Israelite girl, who had been captured and served Naaman's wife, suggested that he seek healing from the prophet Elisha in Israel. Naaman went to Israel and was miraculously healed of his leprosy. Naaman then takes two mule-loads of earth from Israel back to his home in Aram, as a symbol of his recognition of the God of Israel [2 Kings 5:17]. To be a worshipper of YHWH, the God of the land of Israel, Naaman had to take some of the land back with him! Similarly, Ruth is formally transferring her allegiance from Moab/Chemosh to Israel/YHWH, calling down covenant curses for breaking her oath and invoking YHWH as a witness. Ruth will die with Naomi and be buried in the land. Naomi’s faith is exuberant and driving the restoration of the lowly family under YHWH, Israel’s God.