We are continuing the series on Ordinary Women. Women
through whom God acted. Women like you and me. Today we go back 4 millennia to
a time not long after the Exodus ended and the Children of Israel entered the
Promised Land.
Ruth and Naomi are an amazing pair of women. The Bible book
is named for the younger woman, but without her mother-in-law, she would not be
known. It was the older woman, Naomi, who bore the brunt of the loss of husband
and sons in a foreign country. It was Naomi who decided to return to her
hometown of Bethlehem hoping that the Mosaic tenet to care for widows and
orphans would apply to her. It was Naomi who allowed Ruth to return to Israel,
even though she was a foreigner. It was Naomi who encouraged her to seek out
Boaz and force his hand. It is Naomi at the end of the Book of Ruth who names
the child Obed. Naomi, despite her grief clung to some dim hope that God would help her.
Most people know the story-or think they do. They know that
Ruth told someone “where you go, I will
go…your people will be my people…” If you did a poll many would respond
that she was talking to a man because that citation is often used at marriages.
They may not know that she was speaking to Naomi, her mother-in-law, or the
circumstances that led to the conversation.
In the Biblical Book of Ruth, we hear that “in the days of the Judges” there is a “famine in the land”. It was then that Elimelech, “a certain man of Bethlehem…went to sojourn
in the country of Moab [with] his wife and his two sons.” (Ruth 1:1)
Elimelech and Naomi go back across the Jordan and settle somewhere in Moab.
Elimelech dies and “she was left with her
two sons”. (Ruth 1:3) The the sons meet and marry women of Moab but after
10 years they, too, die.
Naomi then hears that “the Lord had visited his people and
given them food” (Ruth 1:6). She sets out for Bethlehem. She tells her
daughters-in-law, Orpah and Ruth, to go back to their families. Orpah does
eventually turn back, but Ruth ‘clung to her’ and recites her famous lines. “Do not press me to leave you or to turn back
from following you! Where you go, I will go; where you lodge, I will lodge;
your people shall be my people, and your God my God. Where you die, I will
die—there will I be buried. May the Lord do thus and so to me, and more as
well, if even death parts me from you!” (Ruth 1:16-18)
Naomi gives in, and the pair travel to Bethlehem. It would
not have been an easy journey for two women alone, and likely they joined some
caravan going in the right direction. Upon arriving in Bethlehem Naomi bewails
her fate, saying “Call me Mara, for the
Almighty has dealt very bitterly with me.” (Ruth 1:20)
In chapter 2 of the Book of Ruth we learn how Ruth goes to
the fields around Bethlehem to glean (gather the leftover bits of grain at the
edges of the fields) and encounters Boaz. Boaz, it turns out, is actually a distant
kinsman of Elimelech (and son of Rahab of Jericho). He takes an interest in the
stranger. This prompts Naomi to send Ruth to ‘lay at his feet’ during the
threshing. Obediently, the young woman does so and Boaz says, “I will do for you all that you ask…I will
do the part of the next of kin for you.” (Ruth 3:10-13).
Sure enough, in the morning, at a meeting of the town
elders, Boaz offers a fellow kinsman “a
parcel of land which belonged to our kinsman Elimelech…if you buy it you are
also buying Ruth the Moabitess, the widow of the dead, in order to restore the
name of his inheritance.” (Ruth 4:3-5) The other man defers his right to
Boaz who then marries Ruth. Ruth then has a baby. Then “the [village] women said to Naomi, ‘Blessed be the Lord, who has not
left you this day without next of kin…he shall be to you a restorer of life and
a nourisher of your old age; for your daughter-in-law who loves you, who is
more to you than seven sons, has borne him.” (Ruth 4:14-15). “They named him Obed; he was the father of
Jesse, the father of David”… and subsequently the ancestor of Jesus.
What can these two women of faith teach us? Ruth remained
faithful to her mother-in-law and together they persevered through hardship.
Naomi trusted the word of God, spoken in the law given to Moses. She used that
law to her benefit to ensure the future for Ruth and for herself. By gaining a
son-in-law and then a grandson, she was assured of being cared for.
Naomi’s griefs from the deaths of her husband and sons were
healed in the new life of her grandson. She may have let herself feel despair
when returning to Bethlehem, but she didn’t let it stop her from acting to
secure Ruth’s future.
Have you ever persevered through hardship and seen good come
out of it?
Would you have had the strength to do as Naomi did and
journey back home, hoping that something good might happen?
