Ruth 1:1–22
Based on an idea by Steve Zeisler
Perhaps you know that old joke about the optimist and the pessimist who were sitting at the same table, looking at a bottle that was filled halfway. The pessimist was sad that the bottle was already half empty, while the optimist tried to cheer him up, telling him not to look at the bottle as half empty but as half full. According to the dictionary, pessimism is “a philosophical outlook that involves disillusionment with reality and distrust of a good or successful future; a gloomy attitude toward the world, in which a person always sees the bad.” Optimism, on the other hand, is “a cheerful and joyful way of perceiving the world, characterized by faith in success and in the future.”
The facts surrounding any given event can be interpreted in different ways. Understanding and arriving at the truth is a process that involves making sense of the data and uncovering its meaning. Very often, however, when we do not have enough information, we are inclined to arrange things in a way that fits our own views and defends our own interests.
The book of Job is an example of this. The facts in his story were that he lost all his property, all ten of his children, and his health. But what was the truth? Job’s own view was that he was more righteous than God, because he had been faithful to Him and yet God had wronged him. The understanding of his friends Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar was that his misfortune had overtaken him because of his sin, and that he was reaping what he had sown.
The first and second chapters of the book of Job, however, reveal to us what was actually happening behind the scenes while these troubles were befalling Job, and what the real reason for his suffering was. God had handed him over to Satan, to a certain degree and for a certain time, in order to prove to our adversary that Job did not honor God for the benefits he received from Him, but because he himself chose to be faithful to Him. So Job and his friends held their positions, which were based on their own interpretation of the facts. But they did not have all the information, and that is why they were mistaken. Very often we do the same thing. That is why we must be very careful when we decide what our view of things will be.
Let us look, then, at what the facts are in the first chapter of the book of Ruth, and then trace out what Naomi’s position was, what Ruth’s attitude was, and what the truth actually was.
THE FACTS
The facts are tragic. The book of Ruth opens with famine, crisis, hardship, the loss of loved ones, death, and suffering (verses 1–5).
1 In the days when the judges ruled, there was a famine in the land. So a man from Bethlehem in Judah, together with his wife and two sons, went to live for a while in the country of Moab. 2 The man’s name was Elimelek, his wife’s name was Naomi, and the names of his two sons were Mahlon and Kilion. They were Ephrathites from Bethlehem, Judah. And they went to Moab and lived there. 3 Now Elimelek, Naomi’s husband, died, and she was left with her two sons. 4 They married Moabite women, one named Orpah and the other Ruth. After they had lived there about ten years, 5 both Mahlon and Kilion also died, and Naomi was left without her two sons and her husband. (Ruth 1:1–5)
The very first sentence of the chapter tells us about the hardships on a macro level — in the broadest terms. Elimelek’s family lives in the days of the judges — one of the longest and darkest tunnels in Israel’s history — a time of moral and spiritual chaos. To this we must add the prolonged famine that was draining the land in those days — ten years pass before the crisis begins to fade.
Alongside the difficulties in the general state of affairs, we can also see the problems on a personal level. This is the account of an emigration. When someone goes off to a foreign country, he is regarded there as a stranger, placed in a disadvantaged position, and quite often wronged. He collides with a new culture, experiences homesickness, and all of this places him under additional pressure.
The man in this family is named Elimelek, which means “My God is King,” and his wife is named Naomi, which means “Pleasant” or “Delightful.” We may assume, from such godly names, that they were good people. Pressed by their circumstances, however, Elimelek and Naomi decide to leave their home in Bethlehem and emigrate to Moab in order to escape the crisis. But in Moab, instead of preserving their lives, they lose them.
First Naomi loses her husband. The loss of a loved one is a terrible thing. But Naomi’s tragedy is even greater, because besides her husband she also loses both of her sons. And they are still very young. At that point Mahlon and Kilion had not yet had children of their own, so they must have been in the prime of their youth when death cut them down.
Naomi’s situation was made even harder by the fact that, in losing the men around her, she was also losing the social and financial security she would have had if they had remained alive. This stripped away any prospect for her life. Without a husband, without an heir, without property, without any social safety net, Naomi’s future would be full of threats, fear, and unpredictable hardships.
INTERPRETING THE FACTS
Those were the facts. But what is the truth? In the rest of the first chapter we will hear two voices — the voice of Naomi and the voice of Ruth. Their words reveal their outlooks — how they interpret the facts and what their attitude toward life is. Their two voices are very different from each other.
One of the literary devices the author of the book uses to convey his message to us more fully is the contrast between Ruth and Naomi. They pass through the same, parallel circumstances, yet they react in different ways.
Naomi is not the only one in a wretched condition. Ruth too is a widow, childless, and poor. Ruth too begins to live the life of an emigrant in a foreign land. And yet Ruth reacts to her circumstances in a fundamentally different way. She interprets the facts differently. Her view of life is different.
By seeing Naomi and Ruth side by side and comparing their outlooks, we can understand how God wants us to react to the hardships of life.
Our view of life, our personal philosophy, must not be built on our circumstances and shift according to them, but must be determined by our faith in God and His unchanging nature.
How would you describe yourself? What is your understanding of the situation you are in? What are the place and the role of God within it?
There are many ways in which we can perceive the facts of our lives and try to give them meaning. For example, when trouble or illness overtakes us, we may say, like Job’s friends, “I must have done something to deserve all this.” Or we may remind ourselves that God has His own purpose, and that “all things work together for good for those who love God.”
But let us see how Ruth and Naomi perceive the things of life. Let us hear what they say, given the facts. More than half of the verses in the book of Ruth contain dialogue. This is a book full of conversations, and we will do well if we learn to listen to what the biblical characters are saying.
THE GAP BETWEEN NAOMI’S BLESSING AND HER ADVICE
After some time the famine in Israel passes, and the three widows decide to return to Bethlehem. So they set out for Judah. Along the way, however, Naomi begins to urge her two daughters-in-law to go back to Moab, to their parents. Twice, in verses eight and nine, Naomi blesses her daughters-in-law. She calls upon God to deal kindly with them and to grant them rest (verses 6–9).
6 When Naomi heard in Moab that the Lord had come to the aid of his people by providing food for them, she and her daughters-in-law prepared to return home from there. 7 With her two daughters-in-law she left the place where she had been living and set out on the road that would take them back to the land of Judah. 8 Then Naomi said to her two daughters-in-law, “Go back, each of you, to your mother’s home. May the Lord show you kindness, as you have shown kindness to your dead husbands and to me. 9 May the Lord grant that each of you will find rest in the home of another husband.” Then she kissed them goodbye and they wept aloud. (Ruth 1:6–9)
From Naomi’s words we might conclude that she is a woman of prayer. She knows that nothing happens outside of God’s will. She understands that He is responsible for everything that happens. He is powerful and strong enough to do whatever He pleases.
Naomi had probably prayed that the famine would pass more quickly and that they could return home. She had surely prayed when the troubles first with her husband and then with her sons began to fall upon her. Again and again she had received no visible answer to her prayer, and yet she had not stopped praying.
Now she blesses her daughters-in-law. She knows that without God’s blessing they could not be happy.
In blessing her daughters-in-law, Naomi also gives them advice. But although it is well-meaning, her advice does not at all correspond to the blessings she pronounces over them. In verses 8, 9, 11, and 12, she repeats the same words to them four or five times: “Go back!”
8 Then Naomi said to her two daughters-in-law, “Go back, each of you, to your mother’s home. May the Lord show you kindness, as you have shown kindness to your dead husbands and to me. 9 May the Lord grant that each of you will find rest in the home of another husband.” Then she kissed them goodbye and they wept aloud 10 and said to her, “We will go back with you to your people.” 11 But Naomi said, “Return home, my daughters. Why would you come with me? Am I going to have any more sons, who could become your husbands? 12 Return home, my daughters; I am too old to have another husband. Even if I thought there was still hope for me—even if I had a husband tonight and then gave birth to sons— 13 would you wait until they grew up? Would you remain unmarried for them? No, my daughters. It is more bitter for me than for you, because the Lord’s hand has turned against me!” (Ruth 1:8–13)
Naomi’s advice is very telling of her outlook on life. She is far too much of a realist. In her view, it would be foolish not to seek God’s blessing and not to pray. But once you have prayed, she thinks, you must begin to arrange your life as though you can rely on no one but yourself. You must look at the facts as they are, weigh the risks, assess the pros and cons, and make the most of your opportunities. This, she believes, is the only way sensible people survive in this world.
Her daughters-in-law insist on returning with her to Bethlehem and becoming part of her people (verse 10):
10 And said to her, “We will go back with you to your people.” (Ruth 1:10)
Naomi’s people are the covenant people of God, the ones to whom the promises and the Law had been given, the ones through whom God had chosen to work in a special way throughout all of human history. Ruth and Orpah want to come and join the community of those who know the Lord. They say, “The three of us love one another. Let us stay together and go to Bethlehem together.”
But Naomi sends them away. She seems to tell them, “There is no hope of finding husbands for yourselves if you come back with me to Israel. According to the Law, the Israelites must not marry foreign women, and besides, you are no longer in your first youth. If you go back to your mothers’ homes, your chances of marrying are far greater than if you come with me, a poor widow (verses 8–9). Yes, perhaps… if I had other sons… but I am too old to have any more children. Even if I were to marry tonight and give birth to sons…” Here she even descends into sarcasm and mockery, making the whole thing seem downright absurd (verses 12–13).
12 “…Even if I thought there was still hope for me—even if I had a husband tonight and then gave birth to sons— 13 would you wait until they grew up? Would you remain unmarried for them?” (Ruth 1:12–13)
In essence, Naomi’s advice sounds like this: “We have prayed to God. Good. Now forget about that. Let us see how we ourselves can help ourselves — what we can do about the matter on our own. If I were rich, I would help you. If I had other sons, I would help you. But I do not. And I can do nothing for you. So you will have to help yourselves. And that will happen best if you go back to your fathers’ homes.”
If one looks at things from a human point of view, it really is so — yes, perhaps in Moab it would be easier for Orpah and Ruth to marry. But if one looks at things from a spiritual point of view — in Moab they could not worship the living God or be part of God’s people. And besides, God’s plan was different.
Naomi’s advice is in complete contradiction to her prayers. She asks for God’s blessing upon her daughters-in-law, and at the same time she keeps them from coming to live in God’s presence.
Sadly, Orpah accepts her advice and returns to her people and to her gods. In verse 15 Naomi even holds her up as an example to Ruth. But in fact this is one of the saddest sentences in the whole book:
15 “Look,” said Naomi, “your sister-in-law is going back to her people and her gods. Go back with her.” (Ruth 1:15)
Naomi sent this young woman back to Moab to bow down to Chemosh. Chemosh is a demon. The Moabites worshiped him by placing living children in the fire that burned in the gaping mouth of his image (2 Kings 3:26–27).
How discouraged, disheartened, and hopeless Naomi was. As a result of her despair and the state of her spirit, the advice she gave her daughters-in-law did not correspond to her blessing, and it was completely wrong.
NAOMI’S CONVICTION ABOUT HERSELF
From the second half of the chapter we can understand what Naomi thought about herself (verses 13, 20, 21). In verse 13 she says to her daughters-in-law:
13 “…It is more bitter for me than for you, because the Lord’s hand has turned against me!” (Ruth 1:13)
Naomi was convinced that God had something against her. If that were not so, things would look different, and perhaps there would be some hope.
Returning to Bethlehem in her self-pity, Naomi changed her name. She had decided that God did not love her. This was the picture she had built up for herself by looking at and interpreting the facts (verses 19–21).
19 So the two women went on until they came to Bethlehem. When they arrived in Bethlehem, the whole town was stirred because of them, and the women exclaimed, “Can this be Naomi?” 20 “Don’t call me Naomi,” she told them. “Call me Mara, because the Almighty has made my life very bitter. 21 I went away full, but the Lord has brought me back empty. Why call me Naomi? The Lord has afflicted me; the Almighty has brought misfortune upon me.” (Ruth 1:19–21)
From “Pleasant” to “Bitter.” In verse 20 Naomi says, “The Almighty has made my life very bitter.” And in verse 21 she declares that God has brought her back “empty.”
THE TRUTH
But was Naomi really returning empty? Was she alone when she came back to Bethlehem? No. Verse 19 tells us that she returned with Ruth. She had her. And yet, as far as Naomi was concerned, Ruth was as good as no one.
But in God’s eyes Naomi was fuller than ever — she was holding the future of the whole human race in her hand. The young Moabite woman, whom Naomi in her bitterness did not even count as a person, was to become the mother of Obed, the great-grandmother of David, and the great-great-grandmother of the Messiah of Israel, the Lamb of God who would bear the sins of the world. This is the one with whom God brought Naomi back. Not empty, but fuller than she had ever been (Ruth 4:14–15).
Naomi kept thinking, “God is against me. He does not love me. He loves some people, but not me.” But was what Naomi kept thinking really true? The following chapters of the book reveal to us that it was not so. In the end, having witnessed the wedding and the birth of Obed, the women of Bethlehem tell Naomi that to her Ruth is “better than seven sons”:
15 He will renew your life and sustain you in your old age. For your daughter-in-law, who loves you and who is better to you than seven sons, has given him birth. (Ruth 4:15)
In one respect Naomi is like many of the people in our churches today. She is not a bad woman. She is not wicked or evil, but she has lost her faith. And that is why her view of life was negative. In that moment Naomi was an utter pessimist.
RUTH’S OUTLOOK
We have seen what Naomi’s truth was — what her view of the facts of life was. But what did the other widow think? What was Ruth’s outlook? Here is what she answered her mother-in-law when Naomi was sending her off to follow after her sister-in-law. Her words sound like a marriage vow (verses 16–17):
16 But Ruth replied, “Don’t urge me to leave you or to turn back from you. Where you go I will go, and where you stay I will stay. Your people will be my people and your God my God. 17 Where you die I will die, and there I will be buried. May the Lord deal with me, be it ever so severely, if even death separates you and me.” (Ruth 1:16–17)
It is interesting to notice what Ruth did not say. She did not say, “I am going back with you to Bethlehem because there God will surely give me a husband.” She had heard Naomi’s arguments for why this would not happen, and in essence she agreed with them. Ruth did not set out for Bethlehem with the thought of marrying there. Nothing in her words suggests that she hoped to marry ever again at all. We do not know how many of the ten years in the land of Moab she spent with Mahlon, but they had no children, and perhaps this gave her reason to wonder whether she could have children at all. Besides, Ruth was surely aware that she was not a Jew and had no money or property.
But Ruth was glad that God had given her Naomi. What she believed, and what Naomi could not bring herself to believe, was that they loved one another, and that this is something worth having.
So when they were at the border and Naomi was sending her away, Ruth said to her, “Look, I may never find anyone else. But I have you, and you are enough for me. The fact that, even though we are daughter-in-law and mother-in-law, we can be friends is entirely enough for me” (verses 16–17).
16 “Don’t urge me to leave you or to turn back from you. Where you go I will go, and where you stay I will stay. Your people will be my people and your God my God. 17 Where you die I will die, and there I will be buried. May the Lord deal with me, be it ever so severely, if even death separates you and me.” (Ruth 1:16–17)
Naomi had chosen to focus on what she did not have, and she was bitter. Ruth, by contrast, looked at what she did have, and she was thankful for it.
She had Naomi. Beyond that, she was thankful for the privilege of knowing God. She had grown up in a country where there was no knowledge of the true God, and she had been raised to worship the idol Chemosh. She had been born in a country with no future, and now she could join the people of God, the heirs of the promises, those from whom the Messiah would come. She had the chance to gain something she would otherwise never have had: the standing of a citizen of Israel, closeness to the true God, and an irreplaceable friend.
She looked at the facts of life from a perspective exactly opposite to Naomi’s.
OPTIMISTS OR PESSIMISTS?
When we are confronted with certain facts, then, just as Ruth and Naomi were, we too have the opportunity to choose what our reaction will be, what our view of life will be. I believe that, as Christians, we ought to be more optimists than pessimists. In Proverbs chapter 31, where the excellent woman is described, it says of her that she looks cheerfully toward the future (verse 25):
25 She is clothed with strength and dignity; she can laugh at the days to come. (Proverbs 31:25)
I think that if there were a chapter about the perfect man, it might say the same thing about him. We must not forget that we are God’s children, and that the Holy Spirit dwells within us. Because of who we are in Christ, and because of God’s promises, we can keep in our hearts an attitude of thankfulness and look to the future with optimism, because of the hope God gives us.
We also have another option — to conclude that the tragic facts mean we have probably sinned, and that God no longer loves us and may even be against us. To decide that one way or another we are doomed to hardship, that God has rejected us, and that we will never see anything good again.
But the question is not what the circumstances of our life are. The question is how we look at them. What is our view of life? And is it in step with God’s?
One of the most wonderful things in the book of Ruth is that God did not abandon Naomi. He changed her. Sometimes, when we are confused and angered by the facts of our life, we too begin to be angry with God, to shout at the people around us, to start asking the question “Why?” and we become like a hurricane that leaves nothing standing behind it. Or else we sink into self-pity and depression. But is it not better, even now, to begin living with the thought that God loves us and has a plan for us, even if the tragic circumstances of our life point to the opposite?
Be an optimist!