Ruth 1:1-18 (NRSV)
In the days when the judges ruled, there was a famine in the land, and a certain man of Bethlehem in Judah went to live in the country of Moab, he and his wife and two sons. 2 The name of the man was Elimelech and the name of his wife Naomi, and the names of his two sons were Mahlon and Chilion; they were Ephrathites from Bethlehem in Judah. They went into the country of Moab and remained there. 3 But Elimelech, the husband of Naomi, died, and she was left with her two sons. 4 These took Moabite wives; the name of the one was Orpah and the name of the other Ruth. When they had lived there about ten years, 5 both Mahlon and Chilion also died, so that the woman was left without her two sons and her husband.
My approach for this Sunday and the following Sunday for the Old Testament Lesson will be different in that the book of Ruth deserves careful attention. The two lectionary texts preserve important themes of the book, but also leave out some important themes. The rest of the book provides important context. Thus, I will share my reflections on the book in these two Sundays.
I would next like to consider the Book of Ruth in this context. Although set in the historical period of the judges (ca. 1200-1020 B.C.E.; Ruth 1:1), the book as we have it is difficult to date with precision. In its final form, it certainly dates from after the reign of David (ca. 1000-960 B.C.E.) and could be as late as the exilic or postexilic period, based on some late linguistic features, as well as the book’s concern with the continuation of family lines and the Davidic dynasty, both of which featured prominently in Israel’s exilic and post-exilic consciousness. In Jewish tradition, the story is among the Five Megillah, or Festival Scrolls. In the canonical order of the Jewish Bible, it follows Proverbs, suggesting it becomes an illustration of the noble woman commended in Proverbs 31:10-31.
I would like us to consider the possibility that the bulk of the story occurs toward the end of the judges period, in a period of relative calm in Israel, while the end of book, which comes after the time of David, makes it clear why the book is in the sacred text of Jews and Christians. The book could be much later. The symbolic nature of the names of the main characters leaves that possibility open. The way the writer weaves dramatic themes and dramatic twists could mean it is a short-story without reference to history. However, a person who wants to write a history needs the skills of the storyteller as well. The sharp opposition of the faithfulness of the Moabite Ruth with later writings like Ezra and Nehemiah that oppose marriage to non-Israelite women could mean a later date would present the book of Ruth as a polemic against that view. My suggestion of placing the final edition around the time of David and Solomon, but the story itself reflecting oral tradition within the family of David, fits the tone of the book better. It feels more like a story preserved because of its connection with David and giving support to the notion of a covenant with the family of David than it does a polemic against other books in the Bible.
The book assumes some familiarity with Genesis 19:30-38, the seduction of Israelite men by women from Moab in Numbers 25:1-3, and the exclusion of Moabites from the assembly of Israelite worship in Deuteronomy 23:3-6. The story invites listeners and readers to share in the life struggles of the characters. It becomes what we would call a short story. It has an earthy spirituality in that it deals with ordinary people coping with everyday life. Life is messy, making theology untidy at times. God helps those in trouble overcome their circumstances. The characters in the story are faithfully obedient to the life envisioned in the covenant Israel had with the Lord. Boaz becomes an example of an Israelite who has regard for the stranger or foreigner in the land. Given the history of contention between Israel and Moab, this graciousness on his part might be surprising. An Israelite is to offer welcome to the foreigner. This story values simple acts of kindness.
The story of Ruth connects an example of simple covenant faithfulness during the Tribal Federation period, a time understood as one of steady deterioration. The short story of Ruth has no murders and no villains. As the text of Judges says, “everyone did what was right in their own eyes.” They were not faithful to their covenant with the Lord and with each other. The tribes fought each other. Priests had done terrible things. The breaking apart of the covenant within the period of the Tribal Federation was necessary for kingship to arise. The story portrays life in a peaceable village setting among hardworking agrarian peasants. The Spirit of the Lord descends upon no one and the angel of the Lord visits no one. We see the Lord working behind the scenes, in the random happenings of life, accomplishing the divine purpose through ordinary people who overcome adversity by means of personal initiative, ingenuity, and acts of selfless devotion. The story is the gentle folk tale of two women — one Israelite, one Moabite — and the circumstances that brought them together, kept them together, and bequeathed their story to Israel’s national epic, to world literature, and to the liturgies of both synagogue and church. It is among the briefest in the Hebrew Bible (only four short chapters). It is peopled by only a small handful of characters, who, apart from Boaz, are not mentioned elsewhere in the Hebrew Bible. It focuses on the plight of a single imperiled family in a confined locale, with no sustained attention to national or international concerns. Its main characters are women. Its hero is (initially, at least) a non-Israelite. In fact, her gentile origins may also explain her general lack of reference to God. Naomi, Boaz, and the women of Bethlehem express belief in divine intervention. She does express fidelity. Yet, her confidence is primarily in herself. Whether this attribute is strength or a flaw remains debated.[1] Apart from passing references, the deity plays almost no direct role in the book.
The story of Ruth reveals itself as a quite simple, ordinary love story. Yet, to read the story of Ruth is to see God at work. The story occurs in a time when relationships within Israel were falling apart. In chapter eighteen of Judges, the tribe of Dan attacked the peaceful town of Laish. In chapter nineteen, a priest cuts up his wife into twelve parts. He sent one part to each tribe in Israel to deliver a message. In chapter twenty, the other eleven tribes attack the tribe of Benjamin. They almost destroy the entire tribe. They feel sorry about it afterwards. They give the few remaining men of the tribe of Benjamin the right to rape some of the women from another city. The book ends with the phrase: "In those days there was no king in Israel; all the people did what was right in their own eyes."
Something was happening in their society. Relationships of hospitality, of caring for one another, of being in connection with one another, were falling apart. In some ways, I am sure that last phrase represents sadness in the heart of God. People simply doing what they please. People acting with little sense of responsibility toward one another.
The story of Ruth takes place in this type of society. Just an ordinary family with ordinary people involved. Naomi and her husband moved to a foreign land. While there, her husband died, and her two sons died without having children through their wives. She determines to leave the country and return to Israel. She tells Orpah and Ruth to return to their own families. That is what would make sense. Orpah would do so. Ruth, on the other hand, was determined to stay with Naomi. There was no law that would force her to do this. She freely chose to remain in a committed relationship with Naomi. Could it be that in that kind of free choice, we will find God?
Despite the company of Ruth, Naomi is embittered at her many losses. Over the coming weeks, these losses are all reversed. This theme is important in our time, when the suspicion of so many is that all we have emptiness and all we have to look forward to is emptiness. Granted, we may inappropriately emphasize finding significance, meaning, and purpose. We may boast too quickly that we have found them. There is some freedom to be had in viewing our lives as a trace. Even world-historical figures fade with the centuries. Authors and politicians once commonly known are known no longer. You and I are traces, barely leaving a mark upon the lives of those we touch. Yet, we do leave a mark, no matter how small it may be. Such humility regarding our “self” is a good wisdom to learn. The short story of Ruth would remind us that a life of losing ourselves in faithful relationships is the path to whatever meaning we may find in this life. Leaving a mark of such qualities upon the lives of others may be the modest hope we carry with us. We may not be “full,” but we are not empty either, as we act faithfully in our daily relationships. We have learned to scale back our expectations from life and offer what we can. We may die without knowing what mark our the trace of our lives might leave.
The book of Ruth is an altogether remarkable addition to the biblical canon. It is simply a tale, parabolic in its presentation of the importance and role of divine and human chesed, traditionally translated as “loving-kindness,” but also as “kindness” (2:20), “loyalty” (3:10), and in its verbal form, “deal kindly with” (1:8). The word denotes willful, directed compassion and faithfulness arising out of a committed relationship. God's activity is bound up with the mundane affairs and interrelationship of human beings. The lofty concept of covenant is brought into contact with daily life. In 1:6, visited and in 1:8-9, hesed are strong covenant terms. Both God and human beings do hesed to one another, intertwining of divine and human activity. In this story, human beings do God's will for interrelationships. They do hesed. What makes Ruth an Israelite is that she behaves like one. There are no great miracles. The story relates only simple living out of the way of the Lord. The theology suggests the activity of God is in the shadows, in the way people act toward one another. Covenant love is a central theme. It contains affirmation of the covenant. The story commends a style of living that God can bless. We can only guess at the ties of implied responsibilities in a small village. In all these ties, there is a way in which God intends people to live out their lives. The commended style of living is a means to that end.
At the end of the book, we learn that Ruth and Boaz had Obed for a son, Obed would have a son named Jesse, and Jesse would have a son named David. Ruth, the non-Israelite, would be the great-grandmother of the great King David. Not bad for a young woman from Moab. Ruth would become the ancestor of Israel's greatest king, David.
The story of Ruth is not over with the birth of a child and eventually her death. In evolutionary theory, the role of chance or random occurrences is important in the ongoing process of creation. The story of Ruth raises the question that we call chance and random occurrence is, from a divine perspective, the working of providence.[2] Ruth bore a son in Bethlehem. She had been alone, vulnerable, at a dead end, with no future or hope. Yet, she had a child, who would be the grandfather of David, who would be the ancestor of Jesus. We begin to see how God works. Ruth, a foreign, Moabite woman, through the twistings and turnings of providence, becomes the means of salvation for Israel, for us. It becomes a story of the nations being a blessing to Israel. It is a story about the whole human family, about the way in which God can use your little, ordinary human family from (insert your geographical area here) in spectacularly wonderful ways. God saves through ordinary people like Ruth. Naomi, Joseph, Mary, and Jesus doing ordinary duties like having babies and putting up with daughters-in-law in ordinary families like yours and mine. If we will just stick together, through thick and thin, and trust God to use our ordinary fidelity to one another to bless the world in the extraordinary love of God. In fact, we might discover our happiness when we dissolve ourselves into something as complete and great as the love of God.[3]
We have the opening of the story in Ruth 1:1-18. It recounts in short order the death of Naomi’s husband, the marriage of her sons to Moabite women, he deaths of the sons ten years later, and Naomi’s decision to return to Bethlehem. One daughter-in-law, Orpah, returns to her Moabite family. The other, Ruth, declares allegiance to Naomi and to the God of Israel and returns with Nomi.
In the days when the judges ruled, establishing the story in the setting of the period of the judges, 1200-1050 BC. In that time, there was a famine in the land, remembering that famine drove Abraham into Egypt (Genesis 12:10), forced Isaac to seek aid from the Philistines (Genesis 26:1), and compelled the Jacob clan to seek relief in Egypt (Genesis 43:1, 47:4), and a certain man of Bethlehem (“House of Bread” a pun in that a famine occurs in the House of Bread) in Judah went to live in the country of Moab, he and his wife and two sons. Migration was common during a famine, as seen in the story of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. The struggle for physical survival during food shortages is one of the universal conflicts humanity faces in relationship to the natural environment. Introducing this element of suspense of plot conflict sets the stage for the interplay between the work of God, in this case the “test” of a famine, and the and the human response. Moving to a new land is risky. However, the security represented by staying did not compel them to stay. The struggle for sheer physical survival during food shortages is one of the universal conflicts humanity faces in relationship to the natural environment. 2 The name of the man was Elimelech (“my God is king”) and the name of his wife Naomi (“pleasant”), and the names of his two sons were Mahlon (“sickness) and Chilion (“consumptive”); they were Ephrathites (another name for Bethlehem) from Bethlehem in Judah. They went into the country of Moab and remained there. Genesis 19:30-38 offers the story of a drunk Lot having sex with his daughter, this being the origin of Moab and Ammon. Deuteronomy 23:3-7, which derives from 640-609, does not allow their admittance into the assembly of the Lord and Israel is not to care for their welfare. The reason is due to their lack of hospitality in the wilderness. We find this behavior reflected in the story of King Balak of Moab, as he tried to get the prophet Balaam to curse Israel, for which see Numbers 22-24 and Joshua 24:9-10. Israel had a history of animosity with their neighbor. Judges 3:12-30 is a story of Moab oppressing Israel from sometime around 1100 BC. They would persistently be at war during the reigns of Saul and David. Around 550-30, III Isaiah 56:4, 6 says foreigners who love the Lord will receive admittance to the assembly of the Lord. 3 However, Elimelech, the husband of Naomi, died, indicating that the hope with which they journeyed to a new land is starting to fade, which left her with her two sons. 4 These took Moabite wives; the name of the one was Orpah (“back of the neck”) and the name of the other Ruth (“friend” or “companion”). The narrator of the story does not comment on this, despite abundant material regarding this matter. They reflect the practice of Esau, who married two Hittite women, Joseph in marrying an Egyptian woman, Moses in marrying a Cushite woman. Yet, Numbers 25:1-18 shows the lengths to which Moses went to punish an Israelite who took a Moabite for his wife. Solomon famously had married foreign women, and specifically built an altar the Moabite god Chemosh in I Kings 11:1-2, 7-8. The Old Testament will connect such marriages to idolatry in Exodus 34:12-16, Deuteronomy 7:1-7, Joshua 23:11-16, and I Kings 16:29-33. When they had lived there about ten years, 5 both Mahlon and Chilion also died, so that the woman was left without her two sons and her husband. The lack of a man was significant for all of them. The hope that led Naomi to follow her husband to a new land is gone. The risk they had taken no longer seems worth it.
6 Then she started to return with her daughters-in-law from the country of Moab, for she had heard in the country of Moab that the Lord had considered his people, a strongly covenant term, the goodness of the Lord responding to those in need, and given them food. Here is a hint of a divine hand guiding these events. 7 Therefore, she set out from the place where she had been living, she and her two daughters-in-law, and they went on their way to go back to the land of Judah. 8 However, Naomi said to her two daughters-in-law, “Go back each of you to your mother’s house. This may mean their father has died. May the Lord deal kindly (hesed, a strong covenant term) with you, as you have dealt with the dead and with me. Naomi is formally releasing these two Moabites and daughters-in-law from any future responsibility toward her. She entrusts these women to the care of the Lord through her prayer, since she is unable to provide for them. 9 The Lordgrant that you may find security, each of you in the house of your husband.” The world is a fierce and hostile place. Among the important tasks of each one of us is to somehow keep the chaos at bay, to gain some measure of this security. Security is a good thing. Yet, security can become an obsession. Misers scrimp and save, doing without necessities, all to protect themselves from poverty, but who died leaving millions behind. Some are so insecure that they would do anything to earn the affection of others. As Teddy Roosevelt put it, “The things that will destroy America are prosperity-at-any-price, peace-at-any-price, safety-first instead of duty-first, the love of soft living, and the get-rich-quick theory of life.” Security is a good thing, but the desire for it must not inhibit us from taking the proper risks. “They who can give up essential Liberty to obtain a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.”[4] Then she kissed them, and they wept aloud. 10 They said to her, “No, we will return with you to your people.” 11 However, Naomi said, “Turn back, my daughters, why will you go with me? Do I still have sons in my womb that they may become your husbands? 12 Turn back, my daughters, go your way, for I am too old to have a husband. She is in her mid-40s, making Ruth 25-30. Even if I thought there was hope for me, even if I should have a husband tonight and bear sons, 13 would you then wait until they were grown? Would you then refrain from marrying? The situation Naomi presents suggests levirate marriage, the practice of a dead man’s brother marrying the wife of the brother for the purpose of father children considered the offspring of the dead man, as we find in Deuteronomy 25:5-10 and Genesis 38. However, the scenario Naomi presents would not be a true levirate marriage, for her sons would not be full brothers of the two dead sons. Such difficulties remind the reader that the story is a parabolic tale of the importance and role of divine and human chesed, traditionally translated as “lovingkindness” and “loyalty.” No, my daughters, it has been far more bitter for me than for you, because the hand of the Lord has turned against me.” In this brief statement, she puts herself on a par with the suffering of Job. She has a complaint against the Lord. Naomi is the center of this chapter. She has no husband. Her sons die. She has tried to inflict more pain on herself by her actions. The Lord is at fault for her misfortune. The implicit complaint becomes explicit in verse 21, as she pictures herself as a defendant in a legal battle in which God has brought charges against her, but she does not know what they are. Job has a similar complaint. 14 Then they wept aloud again. Orpah kissed her mother-in-law. We should not look negatively upon her for departing. She was a worthy woman, dismissed with the blessing of the Lord. However, Ruth clung to her. The verb “to cling” is the very same word used in Genesis 2:24 to describe the relationship of Adam and Eve: “a man leaves his father and his mother and clings to his wife.” Ruth will become even more worthy. 15 Then she said, “See, your sister-in-law has gone back to her people and to her gods; return after your sister-in-law.” 16 However, Ruth said, in poetic form, “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. This line is so memorable, in part, because it captures the entire story of the little book of Ruth. We remember these words because they reveal something essential about Ruth: She was a woman of deep love and faithfulness. I think it also memorable because, like most famous and memorable lines, it has a power to shape lives. It recalls the faithfulness of Ruth to her mother-in-law Naomi that, in turn, is a picture of God’s faithfulness to us. Her comment mirrors God’s faithfulness or hesed to us. She is willing to leave her family and religion and unite to another. For a woman from Moab to do this is remarkable. Did she see something in this Israelite family that attracted her not only to the family but to their God? She would be loyal to Naomi and to her God. She exchanges her ethnic and religious heritage for the people, culture, and religion of Naomi. An ironic twist is that after Naomi just lamented the impact of the cruel hand of the God, Ruth offers her allegiance to God. 17 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!” Looked at from her perspective, this Moabite woman marries an Israelite man living in her homeland. When he died, she walked away from her Moabite heritage, her parents, and the religious system she had learned from childhood. She gave up all she had known. She faced an unpromising future, which makes her resolve hall the more remarkable.
18 When Naomi saw that she was determined to go with her, she said no more to her. Like Abraham (Genesis 12:1-6), Ruth sets out for a new land, among a new people, trusting Yahweh as her God. And God will bring about remarkable things through her. Ruth becomes a Jewish proselyte in the sense that human loyalty, self-renouncing fidelity, and doing the kindness of covenant loyalty to each other, become part of her life. She behaves like an Israelite. Jewish sources affirm this shift in her religious loyalties. However, the focus is on human loyalty and self-renouncing fidelity. The story binds the activity of God with the mundane affairs and interrelationship of human beings. The story brings the lofty concept of covenant into contact with daily life (1:6, 8-9). Both God and human beings do hesed to one another, intertwining of divine and human activity. The question of whether she is a proselyte is deceptively simple. In this story, human beings do God's will for interrelationships. They do hesed. What makes Ruth an Israelite is that she behaves like one. There are no great miracles. The story relates only simple living out of the way of the Lord.
In I:19-22, Naomi and Ruth arrive in Bethlehem. The small town buzzed with excitement over their arrival. Naomi speaks openly of her bitterness. She has blamed this on the "hand of the LORD" (v. 13). Here, she asks the women of Bethlehem to change her name from Naomi (which means "pleasant") to Mara ("bitter"), "for the Almighty [Hebrew: Shaddai] has dealt bitterly with me" (the Hebrew causative verb for "to make [life] bitter" is marar). Again, she puts the blame on God, who, she says, has changed her fullness to emptiness, by bringing harsh distress upon her. She went away from Bethlehem full, and she has returned empty. In these few words, we have the complaint of the long book of Job. Here is the theme of the book, the movement from emptiness to fulfillment. At the same time, we must not be quick to judge the response of a person to the adversities of life, which may fall heavily upon us. The faith and hope that God will bring good out of evil (Genesis 50:20) is wisdom easily read and affirmed intellectually, but not so easily lived when we are going through such adversities. We have seen this in the famine that precedes the bereavement of Naomi and the return to harvest in 1:22. In addition, the fidelity and love between Naomi and Ruth is the most positive portrayal of relationships between women in biblical literature. They have arrived in Bethlehem at the time of the harvest, reversing the famine that opens the chapter.
First, this story strikes me as one of profound assurance even when we are empty.
At this point in the story, we do not know that Ruth, through her faithfulness, will save Naomi from her bitterness and emptiness. They do not know there will be a new family or plentiful food. All Naomi has is her emptiness.
We often find ourselves in such empty places. A scary diagnosis, a relationship crumbling, the loss of a job, or the death of a loved one becomes such an empty place. Living in such empty places, we are uncertain of the end of the story. We do not know how, or if, our fortunes, security, confidence, or hope will find restoration.
In the 2001 movie A Beautiful Mind, a brilliant mathematician named John Nash suffers from terrible hallucinations. After a particularly threatening episode, his wife Alicia comes to him and asks, “You want to know what’s real?” Putting his hand on her heart, she says, “This is real.” She remains faithful to him in the face of an uncertain future, and near the end of his life, he wins the Nobel Prize.
“This is real,” says Alicia Nash — you are not alone. “This is real,” says Ruth to Naomi — I will be with you. In our empty places, we have the promise that we are not alone. Much plater, Paul will say that nothing will separate us from the love of God (Romans 8). “Where you go, I will go; where you lodge, I will lodge.” This promise from Ruth to Naomi is also God’s promise to each of us. “You want to know what’s real?” This is real — the love and faithfulness of the one true God, in every time and place, in the face of any hardship, loss or failure. Yes, that line, if we mediate upon it and let it become part of our lives can shape our lives.
Second, this story encourages us to take risks.
Yes, I am a baby-boomer. In my young and middle adult years, all I heard was how mobile Americans had become. We gain our identity as we leave home and explore. This is a large country, and we take advantage of it. We move away from home. “Go West, young man,” was the mantra. That was true for the history of the Plasterer family, as we moved from Lancaster County, PA, to Huntington, IN, to northern IA, to southern MN, and eventually some moved to CA. In my immediate family, the five of us children, born in MN, now live in MO, WI, FL, SD, and VA.
However, now I learn that Americans are not as mobile as in generations past. According to one study in 2012, "the likelihood of 20-somethings moving to another state has dropped over 40 percent since the 1980s, and the proportion of young adults living at home doubled between 1980 and 2008."
Given the economic stresses that many young adults must face, one can understand this. I have known people for whom the Great Depression was formative in their teen years, and they tended to be risk-averse. Have we as a people become risk averse?
From Tolkien's Fellowship of the Ring comes this commentary on following the road:
Frodo was silent. He too was gazing eastward along the road, as if he had never seen it before. Suddenly he spoke, aloud but as if to himself, saying slowly:
The Road goes ever on and on
Down from the door where it began.
Now far ahead the Road has gone,
And I must follow, if I can,
Pursuing it with eager feet,
Until it joins some larger way
Where many paths and errands meet.
And whither then? I cannot say.
"That sounds like a bit of old Bilbo's rhyming," said Pippin. "Or is it one of your imitations? It doesn't sound at all encouraging."
"I don't know," said Frodo.
"It came to me then, as if I was making it up, but I may have heard it long ago. Certainly it reminds me very much of Bilbo, in the last years, before he went away. He used often to say there was only one Road; that it was like a great river: its springs were at every doorstep, and every path was its tributary. 'It's a dangerous business, Frodo, going out your door,' he used to say. 'You step onto the road, and if you don't keep your feet, there's no telling where you might be swept off to.'"
Yes, even taking a step out the door of your home is a risk.
"Go West, young man, go West. There is health in the country, and room away from our crowds of idlers and imbeciles." Horace Greeley gave this advice in 1833. It has summarized the idea of westward expansion and the ideal of taking the risk of getting up and moving ever since.
For generations, people did this. However, today, thinking of the millennial generation and after, people are staying put. A nation built upon explorers is slowly become a nation where people stick closer to their places of birth.
My larger concern is that of risk. Are we as a nation becoming risk-averse? Are we becoming sedentary? Something in me thinks this is not good.
Although many things in the story of Ruth impress me, let me share with you a few things that I hope will help our church and you as an individual.
Are we willing to walk into an unknown future? Only those who will risk going too far can find out how far one can go.[5] A bit of common wisdom is that we will have more disappointment in the things we did not do than in the things we did. Sailing away from the safe harbor, catching the trade winds in our sails, is the way to explore, dream, and discover. [6]
Ruth reminds us of the importance of taking risks and following the Lord into an unknown future. They show us that forward movement needs to receive the reward rather than slouching.
So, what might it mean for us to take risks and follow the Lord today?
We take our first step when we realize that God is sovereign.
The book of Ruth opens with a famine in Bethlehem, one that causes Naomi and her husband to immigrate to Moab. The husband's name is Elimelech, which means, "My God is king." The story of Ruth reveals this truth without dramatic actions from God, without prophetic visions, and without angelic visit. Elimelech suffers a premature death, and his wife Naomi has to return to Bethlehem after the deaths of her sons. Yet, the Lord works through all the characters in the story, including a foreigner named Ruth, to advance the loving and gracious will of the Lord. The story sees the hand of God in every situation, in times of grief as well as joy, working to set up the birth of David.
What I want to stress is that you may find in your life that underneath the struggles and sorrows of life, you will find hope only when you discover the truth that God is king.
We take our second step when we venture into new territory.
For Naomi and Elimelech to travel to Moab was a risky move. Israel and Moab were mostly unfriendly neighbors, so this was risky. Further, the sons of Naomi marry wonderful wives from among the people of Moab. In fact, amid the moral degeneration of the period of judges, the non-Israelite Ruth is the one who is a model of loyalty and kindness.
We can find our way forward when we enter unfamiliar territory with open hearts and minds. This means innovative approaches to worship, new ways of showing to our community our love for it, new career possibilities, new relationships with people of different races and religions. Frankly, becoming the true, authentic, full self that God intended is costly. It seems as if few people have the enlightenment or the courage to pay the price. To do so will mean abandoning the myth of complete security and reach out to the risk of living with both arms. We need to embrace the world like a lover. We would need to accept pain as a condition of human existence. We will come close to doubt and darkness as part of the cost a full human life.[7]
Our third step comes from a willingness to deal kindly with one another.
The Hebrew term is hesed, and the English word "kindly" is really a weak translation. When Naomi asks the Lord to deal kindly with Ruth and Orpah, she is asking the LORD to show them hesed because they have shown her hesed. To show hesed is to demonstrate loving-kindness and loyalty beyond what the commandments of God require. Hesed is part of the very nature of God and thinking of the Old Testament attaches it to acts of unconditional love, grace and mercy.
Now, it seems to me that when things get tough, when we are facing changing circumstances, we reflect the nature of God when we show loving-kindness and loyalty. In such situations, we need to dig into the spiritual resources we have available to demonstrate loyalty and loving-kindness to family, friends, colleagues, and fellow church members. Our challenge is to demonstrate loving-kindness and loyalty to this community.
Finally, we take a fourth step when we honor our commitments.
"Where you go, I will go" (v. 16), said Ruth. She is just honoring the commitment she has made to her husband, Naomi's son. It may not seem like much, but it is. In this case, honoring commitments meant Ruth needed to leave her biological family and becoming part of a new family. This meant leaving behind the gods of Moab and worshipping Yahweh, the God of Israel. Naomi and Elimelech had worshipped the Lord in a foreign land, and Ruth saw this. She trusted that God would be good to her if she were good to Naomi, so she walked into an uncertain future with faith and with hope.
You and I can learn today that we can move forward with confidence when we honor our commitments -- as spouses, parents, children, neighbors, church members, citizens of this community, this state, this nation, and this world.
The past has important lessons to teach us, whether we are young adults or senior citizens. Ruth's steps should be everyone's steps: Realize that God is king. Venture into new territory. Show loving-kindness and loyalty. Honor commitments. These actions will enable us to move forward with God.
[1] The Women's Bible Commentary, Amy-Jill Levine.
[2] Elizabeth Achtemeier, Nature, God and Pulpit, 1992.
[3] Willa Cather, My Antonia.
[4] —Benjamin Franklin, “Objections to Barclay’s Draft Articles of February 16,” from Contributions to the Massachusetts Conference, February 17, 1775.
[5] --T. S. Eliot, Preface to Transit of Venus: Poems by Harry Crosby (Black Sun Press, 1931).
[6] Quote Investigator has located no evidence of this saying before 1990 and believes that it is not connected to Mark Twain. The writer H. Jackson Brown, Jr. published it and credited his mother. QI has found no reason to doubt this attribution. Thanks for your engaging question.
[7] Morris West, The Shoes of the Fisherman.
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