Naomi Heads Home

Part three on the Book of Ruth. Not sure how many parts there will be. Time will tell.

Photo by Matt Howard on Unsplash

Ten years after her husband dies in Moab, Naomi, learning that there is now food in Israel, decides to return home.

The years there in the foreign land started with a funeral followed by two marriages and ended with two funerals. Her husband and sons are gone and what is left are three widows. So Naomi begins her journey west accompanied by her two daughters-in-law.

To our more modern eyes, this is very strange indeed. We have a hard time relating to becoming the traveling companion of an in-law especially after the spouse is no longer in the picture.

Then she arose with her daughters-in-law to return from the country of Moab, for she had heard in the fields of Moab that the LORD had visited his people and given them food.

Ruth 1:6 (ESV)

We learn here that the result of the death of the men in the family the women have become migrant field workers to survive. And even this isn’t going well because they learn that the harvest is better back in Israel.

In addition God is mentioned as being behind the circumstances pulling the strings. It implies God’s involvement and power but not necessarily his goodness. Troubled times commonly affect our opinions about God. No difference then as now. As this story unfolds we will see this perspective change significantly, but understand, ten years have already passed and nothing particularly good seems to have happened.

Naomi speaks to her two daughters-in-law, Orpah and Ruth, as they are starting to accompany her away from their own land and families and into a foreign-land experience of their own.

But 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. The LORD grant that you may find rest, each of you in the house of her husband!”

Then she kissed them, and they lifted up their voices and wept.

Ruth 1:8-9 (ESV)

All it seems they had remaining in this world was each other. And they cried loudly — no, actually, they wailed, because, should they part, the odds are, they will never see each other again. There would be no face time, no phone calls, no letters. This is hard for us to comprehend.

Our society’s focus, it seems to me, and correct me if I’m wrong, is to live comfortably and sheltered through a focus on distractions, whether it is a better smart phone, or internet streaming service, or interactive game. It is coming to the belief that God doesn’t give and take, that’s too superstitious, but instead it’s governments that were created to do that.

We, as a society for the most part, laugh at mothers-in-law or people not of our own generation. We think there is more wisdom in our peers than our elders or younger generations. So much in our culture works to separate us all from others. Back then, I think the needs to survive required more reliance on close family ties than they do now. Danger pushed people together.

So here we have a little family of three women who are not related through a shared bloodline and the reason I believe this happened was Naomi. She opened her home and heart to the two young ladies.

Tomorrow we will get into why she might have done this.