Just in case you are interested, we began a new study with the Winter Garden group on Sunday. It is a short (maybe) study of Ruth. We will be recording it each week and posting the audio files.
You can start following along by clicking here.
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I probably won’t be posting weekly reminders as I did with Matthew, so keep the link so that you can stay up with the lectures. When we are done, I’ll make it all available on a disc along with the study questions.
But Naomi said to her two daughters-in-law, “Turn back, each of you to her mother’s house. May the LORD deal kindly with you, as you have dealt with the dead and with me.” Ruth 1:8 JPS
The dead – Why should God express hesed toward Ruth and Orpah? Naomi’s answer demonstrates that she isn’t an evangelical. She does not suggest that God showers His benevolence on foreigners simply because He loves them. She doesn’t even suggest that God’s benevolence is unconditional. She says that God will show hesed toward these two Moabite women because they have shown hesed toward the dead and the living. In other words, their actions create reciprocal obligation. They did something first. God’s grace follows.
But what exactly did they do? Answering this question places us squarely in the Semitic culture of the Middle East. They showed proper care and respect for the dead. This action demonstrated kindness as no other action could – because the dead cannot repay. There can be no ulterior motive for caring for the dead, and that is precisely why such actions are the epitome of hesed – benevolence shown without any prior moral or social obligation; benevolence that comes purely from the heart.
Now you know why Naomi puts this act first, before the subsequent act of hesed toward her. Even if Naomi receives pure-hearted kindness, there is always the possibility of expected reciprocity. This is obviously never the case with the dead. If Ruth and Orpah are willing to show such kindness toward those who can never repay, then their true character is revealed. We can expect them to continue since we have seen that this is truly who they are.
This raises a very interesting question for our contemporary “stay young forever” culture. What do we discover about our own hearts when it comes to the dead? Oh, I don’t mean, “Do we place flowers on the grave sites of those we loved?” Yes, maybe that is also revealing. Perhaps it is more revealing to ask if we even visit those graves, or are we caught up in the “let go of the past” frenzy to deny our own mortality? But let me ask another question, perhaps a bit more personal. What are your behaviors around those who are dying? How do you act toward those who are ready to pass from this life? Most likely, they also cannot repay. How do you show kindness and respect toward them?
My daughter told me once that she made friends with an elderly woman who is a distant relative. This woman suffers from several diseases of the aged. She is difficult to be around. She often loses track of conversations and forgets who people are. Most of her other family members just don’t want to be with her. It is too difficult. But Rachel engages this woman simply because Rachel’s heart tells her that comfort and care are important even if you don’t know who you’re talking to. Naomi would agree. The dead reveal the true hearts of the living.
Topical Index: dead, hesed, Ruth 1:8
Now we begin the verse-by-verse exegesis.
Here is the audio file for Ruth 1:1 (yes, it’s only the first verse – there is a lot going on in this first verse).
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We begin our study of Ruth. Here is the audio of the discussion of the background of Ruth. This cultural, linguistic and historical background helps us understand what Ruth is about and why Ruth is important. Enjoy.
The first Ruth session.
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But Naomi said to her two daughters-in-law, “Turn back, each of you to her mother’s house. May the LORD deal kindly with you, as you have dealt with the dead and with me.” Ruth 1:8 JPS
Mother’s house – There are only two other places where the mother’s house appears in Scripture. One is in Genesis 24:28, the other in Song of Songs 3:4 and 8:2. “Turn back to your mother’s house” isn’t the kind of advice we would expect. If these widowed women are to find new husbands, they would be expected to return to their family homes, the homes of their fathers. So why does Naomi make such an unusual suggestion?
As we discover from the ensuing blessing, Naomi wants what she perceives is the best for her two daughters-in-law. In other words, she wants them to remarry. She wants them to find security, to have children, to become integrated in community. And, from her perspective, this means returning to the oversight of their mothers who will prepare them once again for suitable husbands. This unusual statement is nothing more than Naomi’s heartfelt desire that these women will find comfort and fulfillment through their original families.
But maybe there’s just a bit more. Maybe we need to look harder at the connections to the only other places where beit ‘immah (house of mother) is used. The Genesis account is about Rebekah who runs to the beit ‘immah to report the arrival of Abraham’s servant. It has often been noted that the father doesn’t appear in this story. The mother and the brother of Rebekah are the other players in the drama. Most suggest that Rebekah’s father was dead. Some suggest that the family units of that culture were matriarchal. Regardless of the actual history, what is certainly true is the close connection between daughter and mother, but a connection that is not so tight it prevents Rebekah from deciding to follow the direction of the Lord and accompany Eliezer. Rebekah’s story is also a story of going out and “returning” to a foreign land. Perhaps there are more parallels here than we initially thought.
That leaves us with the “mother’s house” references in Song of Songs. Of course, these verses were written after the story of Ruth, so in one sense the use of the term in Song of Songs doesn’t offer proper exegetical background. But it does tell us about the framework of the “mother’s house” in later Scriptural context. What we find is that “mother’s house” is a place of sexual intimacy; in fact, in verse 4, it is the place of conception. What Naomi is missing is posterity. What she anticipates is the end of her line. Perhaps the reference to “mother’s house” is a disguised hope for children and the continuation of the lines of her daughters-in-law, even if she is at the end of her own name.
The story of Ruth culminates in a new line, a line that includes foreigners and the healing of generational factions. Naomi foreshadows this grand conclusion in the first words she utters. “Turn back” so that you might live again through those to come. Little does she know what God has in mind for her perceived barrenness. Only in this context does the proclamation of the women of Bethlehem make sense, for they do not rejoice over the child of Ruth but over the “child” of Naomi.
Topical Index: mother’s house, beit ‘immah, Genesis 24:28, Rebekah, Song of Songs 3:4, Ruth 1:8
So she departed 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. Ruth 1:7 NASB
Departed from/ to return – Doesn’t this verse seem redundant? Doesn’t it say the same thing too many times? You’ve probably never asked why the author bothered with these two verbs in the same sentence. If we were grading his short story in Creative Writing class today, we would probably point out this stylistic error and suggest he delete one of the words. But this is Scripture and things work a little differently in God’s Word.
The first verb is yatsa’. It is just a bit strange. Yes, it means “to go out, to come out or to come in,” but its use in Scripture is often modified by the context, rendering meanings such as the birth of the child, the fruitfulness of vegetation, to descend (in death), to escape free and to take away. Perhaps some of those meanings, including the ironic ones, find their way into this story. Naomi doesn’t just pack up and leave. She departs. Ironically, her actions are motivated by the opposite of birth and fruitfulness. Furthermore, there is a sense in which she is escaping the grip of death on her life (although she in not aware of it at the time). In fact, in its noun form (yotse’t) the word means “captivity.” With this linguistically nuanced background, perhaps the author wishes us to ask, “How is Naomi leaving captivity behind?”
But that isn’t the end of the verbal story. The redundant verb isn’t yatsa’. It is lashuv. As Eskenazi and Frymer-Kensky point out, “Technically, only Naomi is ‘returning,’ whereas the other women are actually leaving their homeland. Yet, the narrator paints all three as setting out to return, showing their unity of purpose.”[1] While shuv is a major theme in Ruth (the idea of return), it is perhaps most poignantly used here to distinguish between going out (of captivity) and returning to (security). Doesn’t Naomi have to leave behind the land of her trials, the place of her pain, in order to find the peace and security she seeks? Doesn’t she actually have to be rescued, even if she is the one walking the path, from the place of the dead in order to encounter the God of the living? Maybe the two verbs aren’t really redundant after all. Maybe they express a necessary transition. Maybe we all must leave the dead past and go out to a place God will show us if we are to return to Him and to His people. Ten years in the wilderness was enough for Naomi. Ten years in a place where she and her husband and sons sought to provide for themselves. Ten years that disintegrated into nothing but graves.
And now she must go out in order to return.
What about you? How long will you stay by the graveside instead of returning to the land you left?
Topical Index: return, depart, yatsa’, shuv, Ruth 1:7
. . . she heard that the LORD had taken note of His people and given them food. Ruth 1:6 JPS
Had taken note – Once or twice in life it’s nice to hear something from the Lord. Two times is the extent of direct mention of God in the story of Ruth. Yes, the Lord is active in the lives of these people, but it is quite unusual that there is so little direct mention of Him. For the most part, life in and around Bethlehem goes on just as usual. People deal with one form of crisis or another. Circumstances change. Things happen. There is no spiritualized awareness of the consequences of God’s hand. Life just happens.
That’s the way it is for almost all of us. And perhaps that’s the way God prefers it. He moves invisibly among the lives of men to accomplish His purposes. Try to imagine what it would be like if He didn’t disguise what He is doing. Would Naomi have gone to Moab if she knew that her husband and sons would die there? Would she have elicited a paradigm case of hesed from Ruth if she knew it would take the death of a son to bring about these circumstances? Would Ruth have gone to Bethlehem if she knew in advance what life would be like as an outsider at risk? Go even further back. Would Lot and Abraham have separated if they both knew all the ins and outs of God’s purposes over the course of generations to bring about the story of Ruth and the eventual birth of David? No, my guess is that no human being would sign up for the plan if he or she knew all the details in advance (with perhaps one exception). Maybe there’s a very good reason why we feel we are left in the dark so many times. Maybe it’s because if we knew, we would choose not to cooperate.
This verse doesn’t really say that God noticed the plight of His people. The verb is paqad. It means “to visit, to exercise oversight or to attend to.” It isn’t that God somehow forgot about the record book for Bethlehem and then one day suddenly noticed what was happening. God had oversight responsibility all along. But God’s oversight doesn’t always line up with the way men would like things to happen. The people of Bethlehem didn’t want to experience a famine, but that doesn’t mean the famine wasn’t part of God’s oversight. The famine created the circumstances that led Elimelech and Naomi to Moab – and to Ruth. That’s oversight. The death of her two sons lead Naomi and Ruth back to Bethlehem. That’s oversight. But before you object, “How can God’s oversight include the death of these three men?” let me remind you that in Hebrew thought whatever God does is good. We don’t set the standard. He does. And what He does is the definition of good. So God’s oversight, no matter what that might entail, is good.
Naomi doesn’t think so. She is bitter. She is discouraged. She is disconsolate. But there is this tiny ray of hope in her words. God has oversight. He has visited His people. Maybe all isn’t lost yet. Maybe.
I suspect that most of the time we are like Naomi. We can’t see beyond our own pain. We don’t think tomorrow will be better. We only imagine what we know now will continue forever. But we have this tiny ray of hope. Maybe somehow God will visit us. It’s not a life-altering rock-solid statement of faith. It’s just a miniscule desire to have a peek at what He is really doing. But most of the time, what He is really doing is invisible – and for good reason. We are left with this. What God does is good. Period.
How’s Naomi doing in your life today?
Topical Index: Ruth 1:6, take note, visit, oversight, paqad, good
Then those two – Mahlon and Chilion – also died; so the woman was left without her two sons and without her husband. Ruth 1:5 JPS
Without – What Naomi lost completely overshadows what Naomi gained. In her mind, the loss of husband and sons means the loss of everything important to her. In fact, a careful reading reveals the even greater depth of her perceived loss. Did you notice that the text places the sons before the husband? It is bad enough to lose a husband, but the real tipping point in Naomi’s life comes when she loses her two sons. She even refers to the two “sons” with the Hebrew yeladeha which means “children,” not grown men. This is the point where she feels as if life no longer has purpose. This is the place where the future is entirely dark.
You might well empathize with Naomi. The loss of children is one of life’s most excruciating blows. But step back for just a moment, not diminishing her tragedy, and notice that she gives no value at all to her two daughters-in-law. In the midst of this tragedy, she has gained two other relationships, one which becomes the healing relationship of generations. But in Naomi’s mind, her daughters by marriage don’t qualify as her children. In fact, they don’t qualify as anything but a burden – a burden which she is ready to relinquish. Naomi is fixated on her loss, not on what God might bring out of this tragedy. Naomi sees nothing but the grave. She is blind to the deepest commitment she will eventually experience – the hesed of Ruth. Naomi is trapped in the moment.
The Hebrew text doesn’t actually read, “without her sons.” Its unusual actual reading is “she was left from her sons.” There is an intentional contrast with verse 3. She left Bethlehem with her sons. Now she leaves Moab from her sons. The preposition (from) shifts the focus of our attention. The spotlight is not on the sons but rather on Naomi. “From” tells us where this journey starts, not where it ends. Naomi believes that this is the end of her life, but the truth is rather the opposite. This is the beginning point of her life, the point where God intervenes to bring about His purposes. She must leave from her dead sons in order to create the circumstances that will bring King David into the world. Once again we see that Naomi’s horizon is far too limited. Like Hagar, she sees only her pain, not the purposes of El Roi (the God who sees). By the way, the allusion to the story of Hagar is not so hidden. How many years was Naomi in Moab before she started her journey into God’s purposes? How many years was Hagar in the camp of Abraham before she obeyed the direction of El Roi?
Life is often “without.” But when it is, it is up to us to convert the “without” to “from.” “From this point forward” is the direction of the God who sees.
Topical Index: Ruth 1:5, without, from, Hagar, Genesis 16:13
Then the LORD God formed man of dust from the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living being. Genesis 2:7 NASB
From the ground – Why does the text use the word ha-adamah (the ground)? Once more we are confronted with the first occurrence of a word. We might have expected erets (earth) to be used here. After all, erets has been part of the creation story since the opening verse. Why does the account now shift to adamah? The first answer is the obvious word play. Adam comes from the adamah. The Man is intimately connected to the ground. Just like adam, adamah is a derivative of ‘dm. There is no scholarly consensus on the origin of the root word. Similar words in other ancient languages seemed to be connected to the idea of blood (red) and soil. Ancient cosmologies portray men created from the blood of a dead god or the blood of a god mixed with clay. In these pagan cosmologies, “blood” is the source of life, not the “breath of God.” If adamah has connections of these other ancient myths, then its use in the Hebrew account offers another polemic. In Hebrew, blood is not the source. It might be the carrier of life, but the source of life is God. Blood is just one more created thing.
Now we need to investigate why the text uses adamah rather than erets. While the words show a wide variety of uses and sometimes even synonymous application in The Tanakh, in the creation account and the Genesis context there seems to be a distinction. Erets is a word that covers geographic applications. “The heavens and the earth” is a phrase used to designate the entire cosmos. The “land” of Canaan or the “holy land” are uses of erets that describe geographical physical boundaries. Even the use of erets for the “underworld” still designates a “place.” In this regard, the biblical account describes erets in ways that oppose the other ancient mythologies, for example, the “earth” is not the result of a divine war, it is not evil, it is under God’s total control and it arises by the divine word, not by some conflict or sexual action.
Adamah appears to be related to productivity, not necessarily geography. When the Genesis account uses the word adamah, it is often associated with what comes from the ground. The initial use of adamah is about the production of Man and the animals. Subsequently, adamah is the fruitful soil or the soil that no longer responds to men because of sin. This distinction suggests that while men occupy the erets (which belongs to God), they work and serve the adamah as the source of their being and the partner in their fruitfulness. Only men and animals (animate life) have this relationship to adamah.
What conclusions can we draw from this brief examination? First, we recognize that our purpose as men and women is not the same as the Greek idea of destiny. Destiny is what I make of myself. Purpose is what I do with the relationships God gives me. Secondly, we see that even my fruitfulness and the source of my being is within the context of relationship. The fact that adamah can be both cooperative or uncooperative means that there are no fixed and determined factors in my existence. I am all relationship. We are quick to recognize this when it comes to the “breath of life,” but now we see that even our physical being is a relationship concept. It is just as impermanent as God’s animating breath. The earth (erets) is the permanent territory of God’s creative expression, but the adamah depends on the interaction between God-granted life and purpose. In other words, in this context adamah contains the idea of partnership.
Why is this so important? Because once again we learn that the biblical view of what it means to be human is thoroughly dynamic. To be human is to become in partnership, in relationship, with even the physical source of my being. Animation (the breath of life) is a partnership with God. So is my physical existence. And furthermore, my purpose of being is the extension of both of these partnership relations. I am to work/worship/serve the relationship that constitutes who I am. In the biblical worldview, I am not a “what.” I am a “who.” And who I am depends entirely on how I am related to God’s actions.
Topical Index: man, adamah, ground, erets, earth, apar, dust, Genesis 2:7
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