Blood and Water
And Naomi said to her two daughters-in-law, “Go, return 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 NASB
Mother’s house – Naomi’s exhortation is not only self-serving, it is completely out of character with societal protocol. How is this so? Well, first Naomi is not anxious to have these two women return with her to Bethlehem. They are Moabites. If they show up with Naomi, Naomi will have to explain the situation and that means admitting to allowing her sons to marry Moabite women in contradiction to the Torah commandment. Of course, she will also be subject to the almost certain view that God punished her family for this violation of Torah, allowing her sons to die. No, Naomi would just as soon not have to say anything about these last years. Better to implore the two daughters-in-law to go home.
But even her exhortation is a bit odd. Widowed women were not sent back to the house of the mother. They were taken back to the house of the father, who, in a patriarchal society, would offer them protection until they were remarried. Naomi’s suggestion is a breach of common Semitic custom. So why does she say this?
It could be that Moab was a matriarchal society, but there is no other evidence of this. It seems more likely that Naomi actually has something else in mind, that is, a hint at reprisal for the deaths of her sons. In fact, careful reading of the Hebrew text demonstrates that Naomi not only completely discounts the identity of these two women but also views her two sons not as grown, married men but as “my little boys.” Do you suppose that Naomi really disguises a deep resentment for her daughters-in-law? After all, from a grieving mother’s point of view, if they had not enticed her boys to marry, her two precious children would still be alive!
What is the impact of a suggestion to return to bet ‘immah? First, it suggests unprotected status. Remember the first thing Boaz asks when he sees Ruth in the field? “Who does she belong to?” Who is her protector? In a culture when the patriarch ruled, to be without male association was to be without status. Do you think Naomi might have this in mind?
Secondly, although Naomi purportedly desires the women to return in order to remarry, marriages were family contracts and no mother could negotiate such arrangements. If the women return to the bet ‘immah, they will undoubtedly remain widows the rest of their lives. They will not remarry. They will not have children. They will be in the same state as Naomi. Do you think revenge might be hidden behind the scene? Do you think Naomi’s ploy is really a way to get even with these two women?
Finally, there is the very unusual directive for the two women to return to their gods. Would a truly loving mother-in-law who knew the one true God really suggest that the devoted widowed wives of her sons go back to pagan practices, practices which included child sacrifice? No, something is amiss here.
What we realize is that Naomi is a lot more like us than she is like the usual purified picture we are routinely presented by teachers of this story. What we realize is that human emotions are really the heart of the story of Ruth, and it’s not a story about Ruth at all. It’s a story about a woman who believes God is punishing her, who sees her circumstances as tragic and undeserved, who can’t see the love of another right in front of her because she is preoccupied with the past. This is a story about a woman who needs to be rescued from herself. Just like you and me.
Topical Index: Naomi, mother’s house, bet ‘immah, Ruth 1:8
This reminds me of the Ruth study you have. Also today I was reading in Nehemiah that the Isrealites read that Torah said that no Moabites were allowed into the assembly of God so they removed all people of mixed ancestry. However, clearly Ruth is an exception to this rule, becoming an integral part of God’s story of the Messiah. Does God make exceptions? Is it because she chose to follow the Torah’s way of life? Or is there something else going on with this?
Just curious. 🙂
Shalom!
She could also have been testing their hearts. We don’t actually know why; it could have been mixed with a very human bitterness, and it is quite human to make a move to assign that bitterness to others who have also been affected by the tragedy, but it could also have been that she knew loyalty cannot be forced. Naomi’s religion was very different than the others, in that paganism is all about force and non-choice, but the Hebrews served a G-d, Who, though even MORE jealous than everybody else’s, if you think about it, still asked for only WILLING followers, which means that you could physically leave the religion of the Hebrew by physically removing yourself from the land, without repercussion: you could defect without incurring slaughter. If that were not true, than freely being able to choose to serve Him would not be possible, either. Naomi surely knew that if they showed back up in Israel, though, in the PHYSICAL place of obedience, that the only obedience acceptable was that of willing compliance, which no pagan religion cared about: as long as you did all that was required, who cared how you felt about it? This question of free choice (which paganism does not reward), looks harsh on the surface though, as certain aspects of it can only be ascertained in the negative. I have noticed that only after she was satisfied that there was NO OTHER REASON for them to go back with her other than a desire to belong, did Naomi allow the heartfelt plea of Ruth to prevail. Skip would certainly know better than I exactly WHAT those questions would have meant at the time (thank you!), but I suspect that it would have been hard enough for Ruth to be accepted. She was going to have to truly want to be. Naomi’s harsh negative questioning and commands were designed to reveal the intent of the heart, which she surely knew the G-d of Israel required.
I know the true worship of the G-d of the Bible has built in an allowance for all human reactions and emotional responses; none, in fact, are WRONG; the morality question only comes in to play when you get around to the question of what choices you are going to make about all that human stuff you are experiencing. The broken heart place can spawn bitterness, yes. The question is, what are you going to do with it? Abandonment hurts. These women had been abandoned by their beloveds, all of them. Now they had to choose to abandon each other. That had to have been hard. Skip is right, though, in that in the patriarchal societies they belonged to, there was no room for single widows; they had to go assign themselves back into other men-defined realities, but it was a loaded situation, in that that choice also entailed which GOD those men belonged to. The story of Ruth is unusual and revealing to me in that it exposes how people perceived the foundations of their world, but it also exposes how they perceived the foundations of their religions. The seduction of Boaz, to me, however, is pure Harlequin romance stuff. LOL!
Is it possible that Naomi told them to “return to the house of your mothers,” because their fathers were no longer living? There were no men to return to??
Unlikely, since even if the fathers were dead, in that culture the familial base would not be referred to as the mother’s household. Women did not have property rights and lineage priority.
I think I know that dismissing, cynical attitude well over my life. Fed up with my lot. Too arrogant, lazy or obstinate to do anything positive or productive about the situation. Too self indulged to give a glance toward others plights. “Yeah, whatever” has dominated my mind and slipped out of my lips too often.
Again, back to the paradigm. From which vantage point do I view things? The answer and my specific choice turns the motion of life quickly and strongly. The beast is always standing at the door ready to pounce.
Will I ever be so ready, continually, to keep the beast at bay?
Choose this day . . . do not fret of tomorrow. Tomorrow will, maybe, come soon enough for me.
Then it’s Ground Hog day. An opportunity to, again, choose this day . . . to what? Obey would work well, I think.
I found this on the internet which I thought interesting. The article doesn’t spell it out but the famous line My God will be your God, is just as easily translated My judge will be your judge.
If one will check, he will find that under the Joshua period, the Israelites killed and displaced the occupants of the entire land of Moab, and then reoccupied the land of Moab for themselves for 300 years. Please check the following scriptures: Num. 21:25, 29, 31; 33-35; Deut. 2:32-34; Deut. 3:12-16; 23:3; Judg. 11:12-26; Zeph. 2:9; Isa. 25:10. Ruth was an Israelite who merely dwelt in the land of Moab. Ruth was a Moabite only by geographic area rather than by genetics. Christ was of a pure bloodline all the way back to Adam!
At the time of Ruth, the Israelites had occupied the the land of Moab for approximately 300 years without interruption! I don’t believe there is any problem of understanding that at the time of Ruth all Israel was ruled by judges. That means that Israelite judges were assigned to half of the tribe of Manasseh, along with the tribes of Gad and Reuben, on the east side of the Jordan river in the land formerly known as Moab. In other words, when Elimelech and Naomi and their two sons left Bethlehem due to the famine, they left the jurisdiction of their judge at Bethlehem and came under the jurisdiction of the Israelite judge in the land of Moab for whatever particular tribe of Manasseh, Reuben or Gad who had settled there. Therefore, when the two sons of Elimelech and Naomi took women of Moab as wives, they had taken wives from one of the three tribes of Manasseh, Gad or Reuben. Then after Elimelech and their two sons had died, Naomi decided to return to Bethlehem, and Ruth her Israelite daughter-in-law (of Manasseh, Gad or Reuben) decided to return with her. Then both Naomi and Ruth left the jurisdiction of the Israelite judge in the land of Moab and came under the jurisdiction of the Israelite judge at Bethlehem.
As for Rahab being “a Canaanitish Gentile woman”, we are overlooking the fact that Rahab displayed her tribe’s symbol of the “scarlet-thread”, which definitely makes her of the tribe of Zerah-Judah. Neither was Rahab a harlot, as Josephus clearly shows in his account.
Dan – Can you provide the reference to the article? Quite frankly, I am reading it and seeing quite a few holes to poke my finger through. What does the author consider a “pure bloodline”? “Pure” in what respect? Why is purity of the bloodline required for the Messiah? Also, why would the tribe of Judah refer to members of another tribe as Moabites and not by their tribal name? If you can provide the source of the article, maybe we can determine if the author has an agenda. Would Naomi really have told the daughters to go back to her people and to her “judges”. And then Ruth tells Naomi that “your people shall be my people and your “judge” will be my “judge”. Right now I am not buying it, but maybe with more information it will make sense.
Jordan,
What is a “pure” bloodline? I would think, at first, it was a bloodline unadulterated with anyone outside the community of the Hebrews and then later by anyone outside the descendants of Jacob. The bloodline of the Messiah was even narrower as He had to have a continuous direct linage back to Judah as prophesied. Another example of purity were all the Levitical priests who had to have descended from Levi to qualify.
Such purity is not important to many today but it seems to have been an imperative to Abraham, Isaac, Ezra, Matthew, Luke and YHVH.
Abraham and Isaac went out of their way and back to their homeland to find a suitable Hebrew wife for their heir.
Just last week Skip wrote, “Ezra’s solution to the problem of the presence of foreign wives in the community of those who returned from Babylon is simple and radical. “Now therefore, make confession to YHVH your God and do His will; and separate yourselves from the peoples of the land and from the foreign wives.” In other words, abandon those wives and their children. Get rid of them. They are a threat to the community.”
If a pure bloodline was not important I don’t know why Matthew and Luke spent so much effort to list Yeshua’s linage all the way back to Abraham and even Adam. What else does it prove? If anyone could have been in the line, why bother?
And then we have the commands of YHWH in Deu 20:17, to completely wipe out the Hittites, the Amorites, the Canaanites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites.
Why? Because . . .
Deu 20:18 If you allow them to live, they will persuade you to worship their disgusting gods, and you will be unfaithful to the LORD.
Why would the tribe of Judah refer to members of another tribe as Moabites?
I would say for the say reason modern Jews refer to other Jews as New Yorkers, or, Russians, or, Mexicans, etc. Just because of where they live. Yeshua was from the tribe of Judah and born in Bethlehem but He was known as a Nazarene and a Galilean.
Note also 1Sa 17:12, Now David was the son of that Ephrathite of Bethlehem-Judah whose name was Jesse.
We believe that Jesse was from the tribe of Judah but yet he was called an Ephrathite because the term applies to a descendant of Ephraim but also to any inhabitant of Ephrath.
At the time of the Judges, I don’t see any problem with Ruth and Naomi referring to themselves as people of separate tribes and with separate judges ruling over them. That was the simple fact of the matter and it is no less different today. A Yankee and a Texan are both American but they are culturally different and their state’s laws and judges also differ substantially and apply to them according to where they reside.
Just a quick note. Josephus’ comment on Rahab has been pretty thoroughly discredited by scholars and it is definitely self-serving. I would discount that one completely. As for the scarlet thread, I don’t know where the tribal association came from, but I don’t find any scholarly evidence to support it.
In Genesis 38 the widower Judah was tricked into impregnating his widowed daughter-in-law Tamar.
Gen 38:27 And it came to pass at the time of her delivery, that behold, twins were in her womb.
Gen 38:28 And it came to pass when she brought forth, that one stretched out his hand, and the midwife took it and bound round his hand a scarlet thread, saying, This came out first.
Gen 38:29 And it came to pass as he drew back his hand, that behold, his brother came out; and she said, How hast thou broken forth! on thee be the breach! And they called his name Pherez.
Gen 38:30 And afterwards came out his brother, round whose hand was the scarlet thread; and they called his name Zerah.
The story of Rahab holds together as it is but, to me, it’s even more believable if I think of her as an Israelite of the tribe of Judah-Zerah. How they came to live in Jericho is not detailed but it is not hard to believe that some or even many Israelites left Egypt when they became a vast population and their enslavement was looming.
It readily explains why she was so quick to risk her life to help the spies instead of her “own” countrymen and why the spies risked putting their own trust and life in the hands of a ‘foreigner” she knew they were otherwise out to destroy.
It seems the scarlet thread was the perfect secret symbol to protect her. The Israelite invaders would easily recognize that this was a symbol for the tribe of Zerah-Judah and to protect that house. This association with Judah also continues to confirm the linage of Yeshua through that tribe.
And doesn’t it seem more likely that Joshua’s spies would spend the night at an inn rather than a brothel? Wasn’t it YHVH’s command to stone prostitutes rather than seek them out? Are prostitutes the type of people one would trust their life with? Wouldn’t you be afraid they would sell you out for a shekel? And how would a prostitute have later got married into the royal line of Judah? Doesn’t all this go contrary to YHVH’s instructions? Might not this lead the common people to think that YHVH’s laws are only suggestions and that grace prevails over all?
Interesting topic you have brought up, Dan.
Adding to your comment……
“Many have derived greater significance from the object. L. Daniel Hawk (b. 1955) notes:
The “crimson cord” constitutes a double pun…The cord (Tikvah
תִּקְוָה) marks the “hope” which the pact has given Rahab, while its crimson color (haššānî) beckons the two (šnēy) spies. On a deeper level, the reddish color at the window recalls the Israelite deliverance from death in Egypt (Exodus 12:1-31). The instructions which the spies give to Rahab parallel those which YHWH gives to Israel in preparation for the first Passover (Exodus 12:21-28). Like Israel in Egypt, Rahab is told to mark a portal with red (lamb’s blood on the doorway in Egypt, the crimson cord at the window in Jericho), to gather her family within her home, and to keep them within the house when destruction comes. The instructions are followed, in Exodus, by the promise that the Israelites will be spared from the destroyer. The spies also follow directives with promises…By including this information, the narrator discloses that Rahab and her family participate in one of the constitutive events in Israel’s story. Rahab’s family will experience its own Passover, and later generations will (but for a change of particulars) be able to recite the story of national deliverance with the rest of the people. The incorporation of Rahab into Israel is now virtually complete.” (Hawk, Joshua (Berit Olam, Studies in Hebrew Narrative & Poetry), 49-50)
And, Skip’s very own on Cord-
https://skipmoen.com/tag/cord/
TW on Noami could be probable, but there again Ruth has come forth as a tremendous overcomer! She has passed her tests! HalleluYAH!
Ester, thanks for the information and finding that link from 5 years ago.
It never ceases to amaze me what fascinating connections are buried beneath obscure and puzzling passages in the Scriptures. Thank you Skip and everyone for helping to reveal them.
Yes, Dan, we are on an exciting journey of digging and discovery into the texts, like hunting for treasures. :- ) Shalom!