Ruth 1

Ruth 1:1-22

Section 1. (Rth 1:1-22.)Left Alone. Israel in her faithlessness, her exile from her land, her widowed condition, is first presented to us in Naomi. All is in ruin with her: she is bereaved and desolate. To her, however, Ruth attaches herself, to share her fortunes. The meaning of this will be found in Micah (Micah 5:3). Israel’s travail-time of sorrow is there referred to, -the fruit, on the one hand, of the gathering of the nations against Zion (Micah 4:11, sq.); but, in a deeper sense, the fruit of the Judge of Israel having been smitten on the cheek (v. 1). Then we have, parenthetically, the glory of the insulted Judge: it is He who comes forth out of Bethlehem to be Ruler in Israel.

This is the passage that the scribes quoted to Herod in answer to the question of the wise men at the birth of Christ; but they did not go on to speak of the great glory that is revealed here as His: “whose goings forth have been of old, from everlasting.” He is Israel’s divine-human King, yet rejected: and being rejected, He rejects: “therefore doth He give them up.” Here is the secret of their condition as a nation since, -a secret still, to them, alas, though so plainly declared; and here is the reason of their final sorrows. But there is a limit: He cannot always give them up: His promises to the fathers must find their fulfillment; so it is added, “He shall give them up, until.” What is the limit? -“until she which travaileth has brought forth.” Their sorrows are the birth-throes of a people, to be born as in one day; and “then shall the remnant of His brethren return unto the children of Israel.” What this last statement means should not now be difficult. If we have but intelligently grasped the Scriptures that have been before us, it will be plain that those whom the Lord counts His brethren, that is, those who do the will of His Father which is in heaven (Matthew 12:50), have, during the time of His rejection of Israel, been outside of Israel. Even Jews by birth, when converted to Christ, and baptized of the Spirit into one body, necessarily give up Jewish hopes, although for better ones. When, however, the fullness of the Gentiles is come in, and this part of God’s purposes has found its consummation, then Israel will be again, and more really than ever, the people of God; and those who are brethren of the King (according to the standpoint of the prophet, Israelite-born) will return to Israelite hopes and heritage. Now if Naomi stand for Israel as connected with her sorrowful past, and yet with the land to which she is returning, we can easily see in Ruth’s clinging to her the return just spoken of, of the children of the King. Yet, at first, all seems wrecked and hopeless: the return is in bitterness and sorrow: then comes the gleaning in strange harvest-fields, where the Lord of the harvest is met and becomes known in His bounty; and finally, redemption, and marriage-songs: and by Ruth, through the grace of Boaz, Naomi is “built up.” (1) Fixing our eyes, then, upon Naomi as the central figure at the first, we find that her name is “pleasant,” -a terrible contrast, as she realizes it, to the Lord’s dealings with her. Her husband is Elimelech, “my God,” or, in the form here, “my Mighty One is King.” Another contrast: for a famine in the land makes him leave it for the heathen land adjoining, and there he dies. Thus Israel, self-exiled from her land through unbelief, -for the famine would not suffice for one who had heard the promise, “Dwell in the land, and verily thou shalt be fed,” -has lost her enjoyed faith as well as her land, and is in Moab, the place of mere profession. The names of the sons Mahlon and Chilion -have been quite differently, indeed oppositely, interpreted: generally, in accordance with their brief lives, Mahlon as “sick,” and Chilion as “pining.” But it has been urged against this that in this sense they would be unlikely names enough to be bestowed by their parents in their happier days; and it might be urged more conclusively that they are not in keeping with those of their father and mother, both of them in contrast with their after-lot. Cassel proposes, therefore, to derive Mahlon (properly, Machlon) from machol, a “circle-dance,” and Chilion from calal, to “crown,” -thus “crowned.” A third view is possible: that there may be a real ambiguity in the words, which we are intended to leave there, and which points the contrast between the beginning and the end in a way quite easy to be understood. The names of the wives Ruth and Orpah -are similarly in dispute. Orpah is taken by most to be the same Ophrah, a fawn," but this is merely conjectural. Without the transposition it could hardly mean anything in Hebrew but “her neck,” literally “the back of her neck”; and to give the back of the neck means to turn the back, either in stubbornness or in flight. Orpah’s desertion of her mother-in-law cannot but make us incline to such a connection. Ruth can only be understood as having a letter omitted by contraction. If this be an aleph, then it means “appearance,” which has been freely taken as “beauty.” If the letter dropped be ain, then it is taken as “friendship, female friend.” This seems to agree with the story, but certainly adds nothing to it; while with a similar derivation it may mean “tended,” as by a shepherd: this would seem every way appropriate. That in the generation of Israel, to which Ruth typically belongs, there will be a portion that will turn their back upon the true national hopes and heritage, becoming finally apostate followers of Antichrist, is plainly predicted in the prophets. Orpah would naturally stand for these, as Ruth for the true remnant. Both widowed, -their first hopes ended, in the time of their distress they turn their several ways, and are separated forever. (2) This is what we have in the next sub-section. Naomi, hopeless as to herself, yet drawn by her affections, sets her face to return to Bethlehem from the country of Moab. But she is unbelieving and bitter of soul, and manifests that strange self-contradiction which, in such states, is so common an experience. Herself on her way back to the land of which she had heard that Jehovah had visited His people to give them bread, she sees nothing for her daughters-in-law but that they must return to their people and to their gods, and prays Jehovah to give them rest, each in the house of a heathen husband! This is the confusion of a darkened soul; for in darkness all is confusion. All that she is clear about is the ruin in which she is, and she can give counsel of nothing but her despair.

Orpah, after a faint resistance, goes back; but with Ruth neither precept nor example can avail to turn her heart from the pursuit of what appeals to her with a power above all difficulties. It is truly with the heart that man believeth; and how manifest is the heart in that touching devotion of her’s! “Entreat me not to leave thee, or to return from following after thee: for whither thou goest, I will go; and where thou lodgest I will lodge: thy people shall be my people, and thy God my God.” This is not the language of natural affection simply: that stops short of this last. And where this can be said, though it may come in in a subsidiary way, yet it cannot be a secondary thing. The faith of Ruth is, indeed, a beautiful thing to contemplate; and a striking proof of how that which God has planted can flourish in the midst of contrary circumstances and oppositions of all kinds. How little does Naomi here commend her God of whom Ruth speaks! The famine in Bethlehem, mocking it as the “house of bread”; the withdrawal of Elimelech, denying what his name expressed; his death; the Moabitish marriages, one of them her own; then the quick widowhoods; now the mother-in-law’s appeal to go back, as Orpah had gone back, to her people and her gods: this is all we know of her surroundings, but which of them is favorable to faith? Ah, it is God that favors it and upholds it; and all the opposition only rouses it into a passion of longing and resolve.

There might be little encouragement: was there not all the more a deep and deepening necessity, which found only in Israel’s God the possibility of satisfaction, if not yet the satisfaction itself? Could such longing go without satisfaction, or could He who alone could meet it be a dream, or afar off from the need created? And thus will a remnant be drawn to the God of Israel in times now surely drawing nigh, when around them faith will have vanished from the earth, when darkness covers it, and gross darkness the peoples. (Isaiah 60:2.) Brethren of the King, though as yet little deeming themselves that, they will cleave to the nation in its sorrows and widowhood, and following it be drawn into the land. (3) So Naomi returns, and Ruth with her, at present only to feel the bitterness of this return. She owns that Jehovah has brought her back empty, and that in doing this He has testified against her. But there is no light beyond. No Father’s arms welcome her. No Father’s house opens to let her in. She comes back, as Israel will come back, to have the finger pointed at her, and the question uttered aloud, Is this Naomi? And yet the cry, “I have sinned.” is heard; and Bethlehem shall answer to its name. The fields are white, and the reapers ready: it is the beginning of barley-harvest.