Judah’s Famine and Elimelech’s Death: The story of Ruth has a specific historical context, the days when the judges ruled (lit. when the judges judged). The act of repeating a seminal Hebrew root twice (shepot hashopetim), however, immediately implies that Ruth’s opening line attempts to do more than just situate the book historically. Hebrew, like English, repeats words for emphasis (GKC 117p). Ruth, in other words, is very much a story about mishpat (“justice,” from shapat, “to judge, rule”).
1:1 The crisis pressuring Elimelech is famine in the land, a terrifyingly common reality in the ancient Near East. Not only does it drive people from their land (Gen. 12:10; 26:1; 46:1; Exod. 16:3), but also it forces them to mortgage it away (Neh. 5:3). Precisely how long one can retain ownership while absent is an oftdebated question among the rabbis (e.g., b. B. Qam. 60b). Famine can be personified as a terrifying demon, as in Job 5:20, where famine is the first of seven evils, much like the Sibitti, the “gang of seven” in Mesopotamian myth.
Elimelech, like the Levitical priest (Judg. 17:7) and the doomed concubine (Judg. 19:1) in the immediate context, is from Bethlehem in Judah. “Beth-lehem” is actually two words (bet lekhem) and means “house of bread,” an ironic name for a city plagued by famine. NIV translates the keyword gur as to live for a while, but a better choice would be “to wander” or “to sojourn.” Elimelech is no weekend tourist but a ger, a “resident alien,” a wanderer dependent upon the hospitality of homeborn Moabites for protection and privilege. As such, he follows in a long line of resident Israelite aliens, including Abraham (Gen. 12:10), Lot (19:9), and Joseph’s brothers (47:4).
The place of this wandering is the country of Moab (lit. the fields of Moab). MT reads “fields”; 4QRutha, LXX, Syr, and Tg read “field.” Israel and Moab sustain a love-hate relationship over many years, a fact attested by biblical and inscriptional sources. David, for example, both protects and attacks Moab, depending on his situation (see 1 Sam. 22:3–4 vs. 2 Sam. 8:12). The Moabite stone celebrates a number of military victories over Israel by Mesha, king of Moab, during the time of Omri (KAI 181.5–20; see 2 Kgs. 3:1–27).
1:2 Elimelech (“my God is king”) is a name pregnant with irony in light of the focus on human kingship preoccupying the end of Judges (17:6; 18:1; 19:1; 21:25; see Introduction). Cognate names are found on second-millenium texts from Egypt and Canaan. Naomi means “pleasant, sweet,” and is related to a word meaning “ardent desire” (e.g., “to gaze on the no’am of Yahweh,” Ps. 27:4) or “mysterious grace” (Zech. 11:7, 10). Here at the story’s outset, life is indeed pleasant for Naomi. Only her children’s names foreshadow trouble. Mahlon is related either to a Hebrew word for “sickness” (khalah) or perhaps an Arabic word for “sterile” (makhil). Kilion probably means “failing” (Deut. 28:65). Some rabbis called these men “the leaders of [their] generation” (prnsy hdwr, b. B. Bat. 91a). That they are here called Ephrathites from Bethlehem may refer to their genealogy, their geographical origin, or both.
1:3a Elimelech . . . died. In ancient Near Eastern societies patriarchal death always triggers socioreligious crisis. Thus the death of Elimelech, Naomi’s husband, is difficult to overemphasize. One could even argue that in many ways it is the book’s primary conflict. Like other patriarchal stories, everything that follows is a reaction to it, directly or indirectly. Jacob’s competition with Esau, for example, remains muted and embryonic until Isaac dies (Gen. 27:1–39). The concern underlying Joseph’s revelation to his brothers is summed up in a single question, “My father . . . is he still alive?” (Gen. 45:3, my translation).
Patriarchal death is also one of the major themes of Canaanite myth. In the legend of the patriarch Kirta, for example, Kirta’s illness triggers a series of desperate responses. The lords of ubur, his neighbors, offer sacrifice. Ilhu and Titmanat, his children, perform the requisite appeasement rituals. El, the father of the gods, convenes a divine council and even sends an angelic messenger to cure Kirta. Naomi’s husband’s death is just as devastating as any other patriarchal death in the ancient Near East.
Naomi’s Survival
1:3b In response to the trauma of his death, Elimelech’s family has more to do than just grieve over him. In a real sense the survivors have to grieve their own death. The text underlines this not once but twice. Twice Naomi is left alone (tisha’er, 1:3, 5), and the narrator uses a word for “survival” (sha’ar) that is designed to transmit the depth of Naomi’s devastation.
The Canaanite myth of Aqhat uses a word, cognate to Hebrew sha’ar, that similarly describes the pain of bereavement. In this contemporary story, Aqhat is the son of Danil, a patriarchal character like Elimelech. Anat, the divine sister/wife of Baal, complains bitterly to El that Aqhat will not give her his magical bow and arrows (probably a coded symbol for the secret of eternal life). She becomes so enraged at him that she plots his doom, striking when Aqhat is “left alone (shar) in the mountains” (Gibson, Canaanite Myths and Legends, p. 112, line 15). Afterward, Danil reacts to his son’s death by cursing the divine world (very much like Naomi’s reaction in 1:20–21).
The canonical context helps us to contrast Naomi’s bereavement with that of other Israelites. Israel, for example, grieves over the Benjamites who survive (notarim, Judg. 21:7) the tribal war after the rape of the Levite’s concubine. Having survived, they now find themselves desperately needing new wives. Two elements are carefully repeated here in Ruth: survival and wives. Note also that Benjamin’s crisis occurs because he has refused to hand over a pack of murderers. The war that ensues, though brutal and vicious, is at least explainable (perhaps even justifiable—“eye for an eye,” Lev. 24:20). Naomi’s loss, however, is patently unexplainable. No one ever tries to explain to this widow what has happened to her.
Some commentators later argue that Naomi is “left alone” because of her “sin” of fraternizing with “foreign peoples” (Tg. Ruth 1:5). Others argue, with regard to the story in Judges 20–21, that Benjamin suffers because he has foolishly listened to “the counsel of the serpent” (b’tyw shl nkhsh, b. B. Bat. 17a—referring to the serpent who tempts Eve). In other words, the ancients try to explain these losses via legal and mythological means. No explanation, however, is ever provided for Naomi. This widow never learns why her fate is to be the same as that of her criminal cousins in Gibeah.
1:4 After Elimelech’s death, Naomi’s first survival plan is to start where she is, in Moab, and arrange marriages for her sons to Moabite women, one named Orpah and the other Ruth. The Judean famine makes it difficult, if not impossible, for her to arrange marriages that are endogamous, or within the same clan. Elimelech’s family now lives in Moab, not Judah.
“Orpah” may be related to a Canaanite word for “neck” (’arap, as in the famous expression “stiff-necked,” Exod. 32:9; Deut. 9:6). “Ruth” likely comes from the verb rawah (“replenish/restore”) as in the stock phrase gan raweh (“replenished/well-watered garden,” Isa. 58:11; Jer. 31:12). A few scribes connect it with the verb “to see” (r’th, Ruth Rab. 2.9), but Rabbi Johanan, in a wonderful turn of phrase, suggests that Ruth receives her name “because there issued from her David, who replenished (rywhw) the Holy One with hymns and praises” (b. B. Bat. 14b). Naomi’s plan, however, fails. Mahlon and Kilion both die without producing a single male heir, even after ten years of marriage.
1:5 The text discreetly refrains from lingering over the pain of this childlessness, but this is doubtless the final blow for Naomi. Childlessness takes as huge a toll on Naomi as it does on Abraham (Gen. 15:2), Sarah (16:2), and Hannah (1 Sam. 1:10), other childless progenitors. The narrator is saying that Naomi is trying, under incredibly difficult circumstances, to preserve the fading memory of her dying family. Hurdle after hurdle gets in her way. Blow after blow strikes her down. That she continues to try again and again to resurrect Elimelech’s name, despite such harsh and unforgiving circumstances, is nothing less than remarkable.
Naomi’s Decision
1:6 Having failed in her first attempt to salvage Elimelech’s heritage, Naomi decides to leave Moab. Verses 6–13 give us three reasons for this decision: the lifting of the famine in Judah, her desire to deal honestly with her widowed daughters-in-law, and her feeling that she is too old to be of further use.
First, Naomi hears that Yahweh has come to the aid of his people. The word translated “come to the aid” is paqad (lit. to visit). In the Talmud, this word denotes the peculiarities of marital life (b. Yeb. 62b), which, as every spouse knows, is not a pleasant visit all the time. Yahweh’s visit can be compassionate and merciful, but paqad does not always have such connotations, particularly in Ruth’s canonical-historical context. In Judges 21:3, for example, Yahweh’s visit to Benjamin is hostile:
“O LORD, the God of Israel,” they cried, “why has this happened to Israel? Why should one tribe be so visited (lehippaqed) in Israel today?” (my translation)
The same word appears in both Ruth and Judges, yet the contrasts are striking. One visit ends a protracted period of suffering (Ruth); the other begins a painful period of questioning (Judg.). One visit cripples an entire tribe (Judg.); the other begins a process of national rejuvenation (via David, Ruth 4:22). Nowhere is Yahweh’s mysterious sovereignty more evident than in these two passages. Yahweh’s visits, in other words, come totally at Yahweh’s discretion. Yahweh and Yahweh alone decides whether they are to be peaceful or hostile, beneficent or malevolent.
1:7 She left the place where she had been living and set out on the road. Unlike the Danites (Judg. 18:5) and the Mizpah council (20:18), Naomi conspicuously refrains from going to diviners to find out whether her newly chosen “road” (derek) is correct or not. Naomi is not one to spend time on psychics. Her decisions do not depend on the whims of ’elohim-diviners.
1:8 Naomi’s concern for her daughters-in-law is too deep to watch them suffer (see 1 Tim. 5:11). Go back, each of you, to your mother’s home, she urges. Some scholars imagine an anthropological counterpart to the father’s house (bet ’ab, Judg. 6:15, 27). Yet “mother’s home” may imply no more than that the fathers of these women may have had multiple wives. Resolving this question (see Additional Notes) is not nearly so important as the fact that Naomi tells them to go home. The concubine in Judges 19:2, for example, returns to her father’s house after the collapse of her marriage, yet parental gender has nothing to do with the point of the story. So it is here as well. In fact, Boaz later commends Ruth for leaving her mother and father (2:11).
Naomi underlines her concern via two hope-filled statements. The first is, May the LORD show kindness to you, as you have shown to your dead and to me. Evidently she is impressed with these Moabite women. Out of deep concern for their welfare she pronounces the first of several statements that, taken together, articulate a marvelous theology of hope in Ruth. To Naomi’s grace under pressure (1:9), Boaz later adds a hope-filled blessing (2:12), followed by the blessings of the Bethlehem council (4:11) and the Bethlehem women (4:14).
1:9 Naomi’s second wish is for Yahweh to grant that each of you will find rest in the home of another husband. Here we come to the core of her concern. Naomi wants her widowed daughters-in-law to find “rest” (menukhah). Her feelings about this are so strong, she repeats them again in 3:1, “My daughter, should I not try to find a home (‘rest,’ manoakh) for you?”
One need look only at the story of the Levite and his concubine (Judg. 19:25–28) to realize how rare rest was “in the days when the judges ruled” (1:1). To most people who suffer, rest is an “eager longing”:
There came over me an eager longing for the blessings of calm and retirement . . . so that I could not submit to be thrust into the midst of a life of turmoil. . . . If any of you has been possessed by this longing, you know what I mean, and will sympathize with my feelings. (Gregory Nazianzus, Oration 2)
Naomi wants her loved ones, her remnant, to experience rest. The possibility that they might wind up as abused concubines somewhere is very real.
She kissed them and they wept aloud. These are tears of anguish, not only for the dead but also for the impending pain of separation. These women have gone through a lot together. Their weeping parallels that of the Israelites who weep before Yahweh after the demise of Benjamin (Judg. 20:26; 21:2).
1:10 The first response of the daughters-in-law is swift: We will go back with you to your people. The ease with which they propose leaving their home is unsettling, particularly since they live in a world where many believe that “whoever lives outside the land” (lit. is attracted to foreignness) is like “one who has no God . . . (and) worships the stars” (b. Ketub. 110b). Xenophobia, however, is not a peculiarly Israelite sin. Doubtless there are Moabites who feel just as much antipathy toward Naomi as later Bethlehemites do toward Ruth.
1:11 At any rate, Naomi confronts their resistance: Return home, my daughters. Why would you come with me? Am I going to have any more sons, who could become your husbands? Most commentators see this as simple exaggeration. C. H. Spurgeon, however, sees Naomi’s words as setting before Orpah and Ruth “the trials which [await]” (Morning by Morning: Daily Readings for the Family or the Closet [New York: Sheldon and Co., 1866], Dec 15 a.m.). Jerome sees Naomi as a “lonely woman . . . deprived of her protectors” (Letter to Paula, #39, 5). Perhaps the most we can say is that Naomi no longer envisions a relationship with them beyond that of mother-in-law/daughter-in-law.
1:12 Naomi voices her most insurmountable problem: I am too old to have another husband. Apparently she feels that apart from a maternal role in their lives she has nothing to offer them. Naomi does what a lot of despairing older people do. She defines herself more by what she does than by who she is. Role reversal is always upsetting, but particularly for elderly people. Even if I thought there was still hope for me is a telling line, an unguarded glimpse into the soul of someone rapidly succumbing to the quicksands of depression. “Hope” (tiqvah) grows out of a term for patient waiting (note the rare synonym “wait,” sabar, in the next verse) and should probably be imagined less as brighteyed optimism than determined anticipation.
1:13 Would you remain unmarried for them? (lit. would you bind yourselves to not having a man?). This is the only place in the Bible where this root occurs (’agan). In rabbinic literature, the ’agunah is the forsaken wife. Legally forbidden to remarry, she is a problem for the rabbis because they generally do not permit divorce, even in cases where the husband is mentally ill and/or death cannot be established. Some rabbis try to ease this situation (mitigating, for example, the strict laws of evidence and accepting hearsay testimony), yet the plight of an ‘agûnâ is always a desperate one (b. Git. 3a; b. Yeb. 122b). There is no way of knowing whether Naomi has all this in mind, yet the fact that she raises the specter of ‘agûnâ-life at all seems calculated to convince these widows to stay in Moab and rebuild their lives.
No, my daughters. It is more bitter for me than for you. The versions disagree significantly on how to read this sentence. LXX, followed by RSV, ignores the comparison, reading “it is bitter to me for your sake.” Syriac concurs, adding, “I am more bitter than you.” Targum embellishes the opposite way: “my soul is not bitter.” Vulgate reads the comparison as internal rather than external: “Why would you have your distress press down on me any more?” NIV and NJPS follow the MT, while NRSV moves the comparison into the past tense. Obviously the earliest interpreters of Ruth significantly disagree over how to interpret this statement.
In the canonical-historical context, Micah’s friends overtake the Danite brigands who kidnap his priest (Judg. 18). Defensive and angry, the Danites warn, “Don’t argue with us, or some hottempered men will attack, and you and your family will lose your lives” (18:25). In other words, the Danites seem to be saying, “If you think things are bad now, just wait . . . things could get a lot worse!”
The Hebrew phrase “hot-tempered” employs the same word Naomi uses here for “bitter” (mare nepesh, lit. bitter-souled), so a comparison of the two does not seem unwarranted. Both Naomi’s and the Danites’ warnings speak of dire consequences. Both come from the lips of persons emotionally upset. The Danites, however, warn Micah about the corrosive power of bitterness on a warrior’s soul; Naomi warns Orpah and Ruth about the power of bitterness on a widow’s soul.
Naomi then traces the cause of her bitterness to a single, inexorable source: “the LORD’s hand has gone out against me!” Targum immediately euphemizes this to “a plague before Yahweh has gone out against me”—Tg gags at the very thought that Yahweh might be personally responsible for human suffering. “The LORD’s hand” (yad yhwh) is found, however, forty times in the Hebrew Bible, usually in reference to a mysterious, unpredictable power:
Whenever Israel went out to fight, the hand of the LORD was against them to defeat them, just as he had sworn to them. (Judg. 2:15)
In other words, while Naomi is left alone as a widow, in no way is she alone in her feelings about Yahweh. Like many other Israelites, Naomi believes—or at least part of her believes—that Yahweh is just as responsible for disaster as he is for salvation (see, e.g., Isa. 45:7). As a good Yahwist, she refuses to look for an easy way out by, say, blaming her predicament on one of the ’elohim.
In verses 8–13 Naomi repeats the same command three times: Return (shobenah). This contrasts visibly with the threefold plea of the concubine’s father (“Stay!” Judg. 19:5–9). The irony is almost palpable between these two passages. Here a Bethlehemite mother-in-law pleads with her foreign daughters-in-law to return home. There a Bethlehemite father-in-law pleads with an out-of-town son-in-law not to return home. Both parent figures fear for the safety of those in their care. One tries to reason with a son-in-law who is sorely lacking in common sense. The other tries to persuade a loyal daughter-in-law to become something she will not.
Orpah’s Decision and Ruth’s Decision
1:14a Then Orpah kissed her mother-in-law good-by. By deciding to follow Naomi’s advice, Orpah does nothing immoral or unethical; she merely demonstrates that she has a “weaker nature” (Gunkel, Ruth, p. 68). Some commentators, however, find this explanation itself weak and condemn her for “turn[ing] her back on her mother-in-law” (Ruth Rab. 2.9). J. Wesley, for example, sees in her a type of spiritual lukewarmness:
She loved Naomi, but she did not love her so well as to quit her country for her sake. Thus many have a value for Christ, and yet come short of salvation by him, because they cannot find in their hearts to forsake other things for him (Notes on the Bible: Ruth [Albany, Ore.: Ages Software, 1996], p. 829).
From a literary perspective, however, Orpah’s character is merely a foil for Ruth’s character. This is as common a literary technique as the juxtaposition of a text like Ruth alongside a text like Judges 17–21 is a common canonical technique.
1:14b But Ruth clung to her. Ruth’s loyalty to Naomi contrasts more sharply with the unfaithfulness of the Levite’s concubine (Judg. 19:2) than with any unfaithfulness on Orpah’s part. Both the Levite’s concubine and Ruth listen to practical advice from older parent figures. Both refuse that advice. Yet death comes to one and not the other. Why? Is it appropriate to argue that Ruth acts solely out of love while the concubine acts solely out of ignorance? The text is conspicuously silent. Probably there is as much anxiety in Ruth as there is loyalty in the concubine, regardless of the narrators’ attempts to portray these characters unidimensionally.
1:15 Your sister-in-law is going back to her people. C. Jung argues for an organic link between ethnic identity and individual personality, that what we are as individuals is organically connected to who our ancestors were. A Jungian reading of this text might therefore suggest that Naomi is challenging Ruth to rediscover herself by rediscovering her people, to forget the last ten years of her life and start over again. Perhaps. What we can say is that every people defines its identity by focusing on its idiosyncrasies, focusing on a particular form of societal organization, and focusing on a common enemy. As a general rule, the relationship between individual and group is more complex in eastern than it is in western cultures, though this should not be overstated. Naomi seems to be pleading with Ruth to give in to the cultural status quo and follow the path of least resistance: “Go back to your own people.”
Many commentators blanch at the inclusion of the comment and her gods, but Naomi is probably not referring here to the tribal-national deities of Transjordan. Instead she may mean the household gods or the icons representing the ancestral dead (the mysterious ’elohim). The majority of Hebrews, like their Canaanite neighbors, always revered such icons. The story of Micah clearly illustrates this (Judg. 18:24).
1:16 In short, neither mother’s house, nor native people, nor ancestral ’elohim can lure Ruth away from Naomi’s side. Even Naomi cannot. Ruth is amazingly ready to walk away from everything important and meaningful in her world. Her response to Naomi is one of Scripture’s greatest declarations of interdependence. It consists of three parts: a negative refusal, a poetic comparison, and an oath.
The negative refusal, Don’t urge me to leave you, is translated in the LXX with a probably ingressive aorist infinitive, “Stop urging me” (this is not the same word translated “leave” by NIV in 1:3, 5). The word for “urge” appears to be a pun on the Hebrew root paga’. At root it means “encounter” and can refer to several kinds of “encounter,” good and bad. In Judges 18:25, for example, the Danites warn Micah of possible “attack” (paga’). In Ruth 2:22, Naomi warns Ruth not to leave Boaz’s property, lest she suffer possible attack (paga’). Here Ruth warns Naomi not to encounter her too severely.
Next is the poetic comparison, Where you go I will go, and where you stay I will stay. Male-female intimacy is obviously not the context, yet these couplets continue to be a perennial favorite at weddings. “Stay” here means “stay the night” (lun) and ironically parallels the plea of the old man from Gibeah, “Don’t stay the night (lun) in the square!” (Judg. 19:20, my translation). Lun appears in several stories to signal fearful apprehension before chaotic powers (Gen. 19; Judg. 19). Your people will be my people and your God my God. There is no way of knowing what Ruth means precisely by God (’elohim). While many translations (including NIV) singularize and capitalize ’elohim as “God,” it is just as likely that Ruth speaks to Naomi as Naomi earlier spoke to her, as one Syro-Palestinian to another, using theological language more at home in the polytheistic world of Mesha, Balaam, and Micah (Judg. 17–18) than in the monotheistic world of the Mishnah or the NT. As a general rule, the interpreters who insist on associating ’elohim with Yahweh here tend to be the same interpreters who insist on positing a conversion from polytheism to monotheism in Ruth.
1:17 Where you die I will die, and there I will be buried. Recent research on ancient Near Eastern beliefs about the afterlife significantly heightens our appreciation for Ruth’s faith. Choosing to be buried outside of one’s ancestral estate (nakhalat ’elohim, 2 Sam. 14:16) is highly unusual for Syro-Palestinians because such decisions are believed to impose grave danger to the everlasting security of one’s extended family, living as well as dead.
Finally Ruth takes an oath, May the LORD deal with me, be it ever so severely, if anything but death separates you and me. In Judges 21:1, many Israelites take an oath not to give their daughters in marriage to surviving Benjamites. Here a Moabite swears allegiance to a Hebrew in the very name of Yahweh. The Judges narrative illustrates the complete inadequacy of ethnic and racial categories for determining the parameters of covenant loyalty. The story of Ruth, however, quietly demonstrates the power of love to transcend these boundaries. The first vision is preservative; the second is transformative. The first looks inward; the second looks outward. D. Senior says it well: “At its best moments [Israel] recognized signs of deep solidarity with the non-elect nations . . . outside the bounds of its covenant” (D. Senior and C. Stuhlmueller, The Biblical Foundations for Mission [Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis, 1983], p. 213).
1:18 Like Job, Ruth suffers innocently, unjustly, and unfairly. Unlike Job, however, Ruth does not become bitter (see Job 17:6–9). Augustine would agree that human determination can be powerful but would also insist that it pales in comparison with God’s grace (Treatise on Perfection in Righteousness, 10).
1:19 When they arrived in Bethlehem, the whole town was stirred. The Hebrew root for “stirred” (hom/hamam) denotes significant social upheaval (1 Sam. 4:5; 1 Kgs. 1:45). Some lexicographers think that the Hebrew word for “the deep” (tehom, Gen. 1:2) derives from this same root. “Upheaval,” at any rate, sums up well not only this incident but also the incidents that precede it. In Judges 18, for example, the Danites throw the hamlet of Laish into such traumatic upheaval that it never fully recovers. In Judges 19–21, the rape of the Levite’s concubine throws all Israel into civil war. Bethlehem’s upheaval here is similar, yet Naomi and Ruth come to heal, not to conquer; to replenish, not to destroy.
1:20–21 Naomi’s response to her old friends’ astonishment (Can this be Naomi?) makes two proposals: that she be allowed to change her name and that God be held responsible for her suffering.
Don’t call me Naomi . . . call me Mara. It is not uncommon, at moments of great stress, for Hebrews to change their names. Joseph, for example, signifies his increasing Egyptianization by becoming Zaphenath-Paneah (Egyptian for “the god speaks and lives,” Gen. 41:45). Saul signifies his awareness of God’s international love by changing his name to Paul (Acts 13:9). Though her friends seem not to take her seriously (2:1; 3:1; 4:17), Naomi (“sweet”) becomes Mara (“bitter”).
After this dramatic declaration, Naomi bravely homes in, by means of parallel couplets, on what she thinks is the source of her suffering.
Couplet 1 reads:
The Almighty has made my life very bitter.
I went away full, but the LORD has brought me back empty.
Couplet 2 reads:
The LORD has testified against me (NIV: afflicted);
The Almighty has brought misfortune upon me.
Each couplet parallels the personal name of Israel’s deity, Yahweh (“the LORD”), with a more generic Syro-Palestinian divine name, Shadday (shdy, “the Almighty”). Yahweh is Israel’s revealed deity (Exod. 3:15). Shadday, however, is more like a mysterious Force, sometimes benevolent (Eliphaz’s position), sometimes malevolent (Job’s position). Shadday may well be, as Gunkel argues, “the divine name in an older religion, (later) subsumed to Yahweh in Israel” (Ruth, p. 70).
The second couplet reverses the order of the first (scholars call this a chiasm because, when diagrammed, this reversal looks like the Greek letter chi [X]). I am in basic agreement with the NIV translation of couplet 1 but would argue that the first verb in couplet 2 (Hb. ’anah) is deliberately polysemantic. The Hebrew ’anah can mean either “to afflict” (Tg, Rashi, KJV, ASV, RSV, NASV) or “to testify” (LXX, Syr, Vg, NIV, NJPS, NRSV). I think the author uses a polysemantic term to convey the multidimensional depth of Naomi’s pain. Thus we feel not only her sense of legal impotence (testimony) but also her sense of theological abandonment (affliction).
1:22 Ruth the Moabitess is the oft-repeated title of the heroine who helps to replenish Elimelech’s family. If, according to Deuteronomy 23:4, Moabites are to be excluded from the assembly of Yahweh, some rabbis ask, how can David be allowed to enter Yahweh’s assembly when he descends from a Moabitess (b. Yeb. 76–77)?
Additional Notes
1:1 The days when the judges ruled: B. Porten (“Historiosophic Background of the Scroll of Ruth,” Gratz College Annual of Jewish Studies 6 [1977], pp. 69–78) suggests that the book of Ruth is a microcosm of Genesis: both books emphasize famine; both employ the divine epithet Shadday; and both speak of marriages where the survival of posterity is in doubt.
Famine in the land: On the Sibitti, the “gang of seven” demons in ancient Mesopotamia, see L. Cagni, ed., L’epopea di Erra (Roma: Istituto di Studi del Vicino Oriente, Universita di Roma, 1969), tablet 1, lines 32–38. On Jewish attitudes about fraternizing with Moabites and other foreigners, see D. R. G. Beattie, “The Targum of Ruth—A Sectarian Composition?” JJS 26 (1985), pp. 228–29.
To live for a while: For a discussion of gur, see C. Bultmann, Der Fremde im antiken Juda. Eine Untersuchung zum sozialen Typengriff ger und seinem Bedeutungswandel in der alttestamentlichen Gesetzgebung (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck und Ruprecht, 1992), pp. 9–22. For a recent translation of the Mesha inscription (Moabite stone), see J. A. Dearman, ed., Studies in the Mesha Inscription and Moab (Atlanta: Scholars, 1989), pp. 93–95.
1:2 Elimelech: The name Ilimilku appears in the Amarna correspondence from Egypt (Die El-Amarna Tafeln [repr.; ed. J. Knudtzon; Aalen: Zeller, 1964] letter #286, line 36). Ilmlk is also the name of a scribe at Ugarit (J. C. L. Gibson, Canaanite Myths and Legends [Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1977], p. 102, line 60). On Kilion, the proper name Ki-li-ya-nu is attested at Ugarit and listed in the glossary of C. H. Gordon, Ugaritic Textbook (Roma: Pontificium Institum Biblicum, 1965) no. 1238. On the Ephrathites, H. Cazelles argues (“Bethlehem,” ABD 1:712) for an origin in an Ephraimite clan who eventually settled in Judah. Should this be so, this perhaps would illuminate why so much of the activity in the context takes place in or around Ephraim.
1:3a Elimelech . . . died: J. Sasson downplays the impact of Elimelech’s death in Ruth: A New Translation with a Philological Commentary and a Formalist-Folklorist Interpretation (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1989), p. 201. But the father’s house (bet ’ab) is the basic unit of Israelite society (C. J. H. Wright, “Family,” ABD 2:763–66), and Sasson downplays this as well. On the legend of Kirta, see Gibson (Canaanite Myths and Legends, pp. 97–102).
1:3b She was left: C. Barth discusses death’s ability to intimidate the living in Die Erretung vom Tode in den individuellen Klage-und Dankliedern des alten Testaments (Basel: Zollikon, 1947), pp. 87–94. D. N. Fewell and D. M. Gunn (“ ‘A Son is Born to Naomi!’ ” JSOT 40 [1988], pp. 99–108) see Naomi as a scheming manipulator whose only goal is power and position.
B. Batto (Slaying the Dragon: Mythmaking in the Biblical Tradition [Louisville, Ky.: Westminster John Knox, 1992], p. 11) points out that bereavement and grief are central to the human dilemma, regardless of religion, economics, ethnicity, or any other distinguishing characteristic.
1:4 They married Moabite women: On endogamous versus exogamous marriage, see the discussions in N. Steinberg, Kinship and Marriage in Genesis, pp. 12–17; and S. Kunin, The Logic of Incest: A Structuralist Analysis of Hebrew Mythology (Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1995), pp. 56–61.
1:8 Mother’s home: C. Meyers thinks there is some anthropological significance to this phrase in “ ‘To Her Mother’s House’: Considering a Counterpart to the Israelite bet ’ab” (in The Bible and the Politics of Exegesis; ed. D. Jobling et al.; [Cleveland: Pilgrim, 1991], pp. 42–44). Steinberg, however (Kinship and Marriage in Genesis, p. 14), thinks this is an example of overinterpretation. In a thorough study of the Genesis genealogies, I. Fischer argues for the “complete insignificance” of the “female descendants” mentioned in Gen., in spite of the “great significance attributed to (individual) mothers” (Die Erzeltern Israels: Feministischtheologische Studien zu Genesis 12–36 [Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1994], p. 71).
1:12 I am too old: L. Jarvik and G. Small discuss geriatric role reversal in Parentcare: A Commonsense Guide for Adult Children (New York: Crown, 1988), p. 6.
1:13 The LORD’s hand: On the significance of this biblical phrase, see J. J. M. Roberts, “The Hand of Yahweh,” VT 21 (1971), pp. 250–51.
1:14a Orpah kissed her mother-in-law good-by: M. Sternberg discusses the use of foils in The Poetics of Biblical Narrative (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1987), p. 479. M. Fishbane discusses canonical intertextuality in Biblical Interpretation in Ancient Israel (Oxford: Clarendon, 1985), pp. 322–26.
B. Miller-McLemore (“Returning to the ‘Mother’s House’: A Feminist Look at Orpah,” Christian Century 108 [1991], pp. 428–30) imagines Orpah as a type of the “woman caught in the middle.” Whereas Ruth and Naomi are types of women in culture and against culture, Orpah is a type of the woman caught between cultures, a woman on the threshold between progressive and traditional female roles.
1:15 Back to her people: C. Jung advances his theories in Memories, Dreams, Reflections (New York: Random House, 1961), pp. 26–98. B. Morris dismisses Jung as a “mystagogue” in Anthropological Studies of Religion (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), p. 174. H. Lewis discusses the irresistability of tribal morality in A Question of Values (San Francisco: HarperCollins, 1990) 87–88. J. Rogerson discusses the temptation to overstate the distinctions between eastern and western cultures in “Corporate Personality,” ABD 1:1156. T. Lewis carefully researches the use of il? (“gods”) for “the deceased” in a number of ancient Near Eastern texts, then proposes that such is the case in 2 Sam. 14:16; see “The Ancestral Estate (nakhalat ‘elohim) in 2 Samuel 14:16,” JBL 110 (1991), pp. 602–3.
1:16 Where you stay I will stay: D. Penchansky discusses the parallels between Judg. 19 and Gen. 19 in “Staying the Night: Intertextuality in Genesis and Judges,” in Reading Between Texts: Intertextuality and the Hebrew Bible (ed. D. N. Fewell; Louisville, Ky.: Westminster John Knox, 1992), pp. 77–88.
Your God my God: Mesha, king of Moab, refers to the god Chemosh on line 3 of the Moabite stone, then to the goddess ‘Ishtar-Chemosh on line 17 (KAI 181.3, 17). Balaam is introduced on the plaster texts from Tell Deir ’Alla (J. Hackett, The Balaam Text from Deir ’Alla [Chico, Calif.: Scholars, 1984], p. 25) as a “seer of the gods” (hzh ’lhn). A. G. Hunter (“How Many Gods Had Ruth?” SJT 34 [1981], pp. 427–36) wonders whether Ruth’s loyalty to Chemosh continues in Judah. A. Steinsaltz, however, follows Tg. Ruth to argue that Ruth converts to Yahwism (On Being Free [Northvale, N.J.: Aronson, 1995], p. 123).
1:17 Where you die I will die: On the Israelite belief in a connection between land and afterlife, see H. Brichto, “Kin, Cult, Land and Afterlife—A Biblical Complex,” HUCA 44 (1973), pp. 1–54. On the relationship between the ’elohim and the teraphim, see K. van der Toorn, “The Nature of the Biblical Teraphim in the Light of the Cuneiform Evidence,” CBQ 52 (1990), pp. 203–22.
1:20–21 The Lord has testified against/afflicted: On the rancorous debate between Eliphaz and Job, see Moore, “Job’s Texts of Terror,” pp. 662–75.
My argument for polysemanticism is more thoroughly presented in M. Moore, “Two Textual Anomalies in Ruth,” CBQ 59 (1997), pp. 234–43.
