Ruth: A Bitter Beginning

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By Nathan Harlan

Introduction

This morning we begin our study of the book of Ruth, and I trust that the Lord will bless us we hear from this encouraging narrative. As the first verse indicates, the events recorded in Ruth took place during the era of the judges of Israel – a period of roughly 350 years, lasting from approximately 1400 to 1050 B.C.

The judge who served as Israel’s deliverer during the time of Ruth is unknown to us, though most scholars place the events of Ruth sometime between the judgeship of Ehud and Jephthah (Jefftha).

The text does not name the author of the work, though Jewish tradition holds that Samuel composed Ruth sometime during the early years of David’s reign. While it cannot be proven as to whether or not Samuel is the author, there is good reason to believe that Ruth was indeed composed early-on during the kingship of David.

This is because the author seems to be especially concerned with demonstrating the legitimacy of David’s claim to the throne of Israel, which is evidenced in the closing genealogy of the book, in chapter 4, where David’s lineage is traced back to Judah through Perez.

There are many themes that may be gleaned from within the pages of Ruth, but none stand out so strikingly as the covenant faithfulness of the Lord God that is apparent throughout the narrative; it is the unfailing, loving-kindness of Yahweh toward His people that serves as the unifying principle of the book.

The age of the judges was a dark time of faithlessness and apostasy, as Israel turned away from the living God and served idols instead, time and time again. And yet, it was against this dark tapestry of Israel’s covenantal unfaithfulness that the unfailing covenantal loyalty of our Lord was so brightly displayed in Ruth. For even while His people Israel served other gods, the Lord, according to His great loving-kindness, was maintaining His covenant with them, establishing the line of the Messiah as His people bowed to idols.

This same loving-kindness would embrace even a Moabite woman, and bring her into covenant with the Living God, not by birth, nor by merit – but by a redeemer.

Thus, as the story of Ruth unfolds, we shall see how the unfailing loving-kindness of our Lord brought forth hope from hopelessness, fruitfulness from barrenness, faith from faithlessness, and redemption from judgment – the redemption not only of Ruth, but through her, eventually the Church as well in the Lord Jesus Christ.

Though Ruth is a bright example of our Lord’s covenant faithfulness, the story begins with an act of faithlessness that invokes God’s judgment, and brings devastating loss upon a family. And yet, even in this bitter beginning of Ruth, we will see the Lord begin to accomplish His gracious, redemptive purposes, according to His unfailing loving-kindness. Turn your attention now to the first 6 verses of chapter one as I read them. Hear the Word of the Lord.

A Famine In The Land

v. 1: “In the days when the judges ruled there was a famine in the land, and a man of Bethlehem in Judah went to sojourn in the country of Moab, he and his wife and his two sons.”

As the narrative begins, we see a father who must make an apparently desperate decision in regard to the needs of his family. There was a famine in Israel, and it is safe to assume that this famine was the result of God’s judgment for Israel’s apostasy.

Deut. 28:48 does include famine as a curse for unfaithfulness: “…therefore you shall serve your enemies whom the LORD will send against you, in hunger and thirst, in nakedness, and lacking everything.”

Even in Bethlehem, which in Hebrew literally means “House of Bread,” there was no food – a bitter irony for this family whose stomachs ached with the pangs of unrelenting hunger.

Most fathers, seeing that their family’s needs were not being met, would simply relocate to a more prosperous area.

This is a common occurrence in our world today; it indeed makes great sense to move one’s family to a place where they will prosper. If there’s a lack of work in one town, then one simply moves to another where work is available. If there’s famine in one region, then one simply relocates to a more bountiful area. This would seem to be the essence of common sense.

For us, relocating from one city to another is not necessarily a matter of religious significance; one can serve the Lord just as faithfully in Fort Wayne as he would in Warsaw.

However, the same was not true for Israelite fathers in the day of Ruth. Israel was the Promised Land, the country of covenant that the Lord God had given them in His great mercy. It was in Israel that God was to be worshipped and their families raised, not in the neighboring nations.

Consider the words of Dr. Iain Duguid, professor of Old Testament at Westminster Seminary, California:

Elimelech’s choices were not equal choices, theologically speaking, in the way that the choice of city in which to live might be for us. We can perhaps serve the Lord equally well in New York or New Orleans, in Atlanta or Acapulco or Amsterdam. However, God had delivered his people from Egypt and brought them to the land of Canaan as a special place for them to live. God had called Elimelech to live in Bethlehem. He therefore had no business leaving there to go anywhere, least of all Moab.

To be exiled from the Promised Land was a sign of judgment, and to leave it and settle in another country, a country which the Lord God had not given to Israel, a country that did not worship the One True God – was an act of covenantal unfaithfulness, for the Lord had made it clear that it was His purpose that Israel would “remain long in the land” that He had given them.

And yet, this is precisely what Elimelech did, faithlessly leaving from the Promised Land, for “greener pastures” in the land of Moab.

The Land Of Moab

It would seem that Elimelech intended only to “sojourn” in Moab, to essentially wait-out the famine plaguing Israel. Though he may have intended only a short stay in Moab, his visit there would bring devastation upon his household, for Moab was no place to raise a godly family.

Moab had oppressed Israel in the past, first in king Balak, who sought to curse Israel through Balaam in Num. 22-24. Then, shortly thereafter, Moab had led Israel into idolatry, as is seen in Num. 25. And, in the not-too-distant past, king Eglon had oppressed Israel until Ehud finally ended his life.

Along with this history of oppressing Israel was the idolatrous ways of the Moabites, who are also referred to within Scripture as the “People of Chemosh” (Kemosh), the name of their idol, the worship of which at times required the sacrifice of children according to 2 Ki. 3:27.

Undoubtedly, it must have seemed to Elimelech that the decision to move his family from the Promised Land into the midst of idolaters was the ‘sensible’ thing to do; a momentary compromise made in the interest of alleviating his family’s suffering.

However, such ‘small’ compromises have a way of leading to greater compromises, and eventually, apostasy. One can imagine that Israel’s repeated turning aside to idols began with small and seemingly insignificant compromises that in reality bore immense significance. As Doug Wilson has noted, there is no such thing as a “small decision.”

My God Is King

v. 2: “Then name of the man was Elimelech and the name of his wife Naomi, and the names of his two sons were Mahlon and Chilion. They were Ephrathites from Bethlehem in Judah. They went into the country of Moab and remained there.”

The final verse in the book of Judges states that “In those days there was no king in Israel. Everyone did what was right in his own eyes.”

Interestingly, the name Elimelech is translated as “My God is King,” and yet in moving his family to Moab, he, like Israel, did what was right in his own eyes as opposed to submitting to the will of the King of Heaven. In reality, Elimelech saw himself as king.

And as Elimelech did what was right in his own eyes, it apparently became easier for him to justify his decision to compromise, and to continue compromising.

It seems that upon arriving in Moab, Elimelech may have found his situation to be rather agreeable, and though he had set out with the full intent to one day return to Israel, the abundance of the fields of Moab beckoned him to remain.

Originally, according to verse 1, his plan was to merely ‘sojourn’ in Moab, a word that in the Hebrew (gur) suggests a temporary stay.

However, in verse 2, we are told that “they went into the country of Moab and remained there.” While this word in Hebrew (taken from the root verb hayah) does not imply that they had decided to settle in Moab, it does suggest that their temporary stay had then become an indefinite stay of time. They had not settled, and yet they had no intent to leave any time soon; this will become glaringly obvious in the following verses in the decisions made by his sons, Mahlon and Chilion.

And it would be his sons, and his wife, who would suffer for Elimelech’s faithlessness. He had sought to help them, but he had done so according what was right in his own eyes as opposed to the will of God. As we will see, Elimelech’s decision to move to Moab would bring ruin upon his household: first upon himself, then upon his sons, and finally upon his wife.

There is a lesson to be learned here for all Christian fathers, of the danger of compromise and the absolute necessity of conducting our households not according to what seems right in our own eyes at the moment, but according to the Word of God.

Listen to the application that Dr. Duguid draws out from the example of Elimelech:

The bottom line in our lives is rarely God’s will, as it is revealed in his Word, especially if it seems to cut directly across our best prospects for happiness and success. We rarely think seriously about the impact our choices will have on our ability to raise a Christian family in a world that is often less than ideal. Like Elimelech, we act as the sovereign of our own lives, making choices that seem best in our eyes, without reference to God and without serious thought about the long-term implications.

Christian fathers must train themselves to avoid the error of Elimelech; to not merely do what is right in their own eyes, but what is right in the eyes of God. A way seems right to a man, but in the end it leads only to death.

For Elimelech, it would have been better to remain in the Promised Land and starved, for the way to Moab, the temporary compromise made in the best interest of his family, led only to ruin.

v. 3: But Elimelech, the husband of Naomi, died, and she was left with her two sons.

Fleeing from famine and leaving the land given to him, Elimelech finds not bounty, but judgment in death.

Though the text does not explicitly state that Elimelech’s death was God’s judgment upon him, what follows next warrants this conclusion.

A warning is given to the family; their head, their provider, has been taken from them. Perhaps they would see the folly of his decision, and return to Israel. But this was not to be, and the sons would share in, and even add to the faithlessness of their father…

v. 4: These took Moabite wives; the name of the one was Orpah and the name of the other Ruth. They lived there about ten years…

One would think that upon the death of their father, perhaps Mahlon and Chilion would have realized his folly and returned to Israel. Instead, they added to his faithlessness by taking Moabite wives.

While marrying Moabite women was not expressly forbidden by God, doing so revealed that Mahlon and Chilion had no intention of returning to Israel, and decided to remain in Moab. This is evident in the fact that they remained for ten years! And for that ten year period, their wives were barren – a sign of judgment.

As Dr. K. Lawson Younger, professor of Old Testament at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, notes in regard to the barrenness of Ruth and Orpah: “The covenantal implications are clear: as Yahweh withheld the rain and thus produced the famine, so he withheld fertility, hence no children (Deut. 28:4, 18; cf. 1 Sam. 2:5-6).”

In Deut. 28:15, 18, the Lord does warn of barrenness as judgment for Israel’s unfaithfulness: “(15)But if you do not obey the voice of the LORD your God or be careful to do all His commandments and His statutes that I command you today, then all these curses shall come upon you and overtake you… (18) Cursed shall be the fruit of your womb and the fruit of your ground, the increase of your herds and the young of your flock.”

Their father died, and Mahlon and Chilion respond by marrying Moabite women. Their wives are barren, a clear sign of judgment, and yet they remain within Moab for ten years.

If Elimelech was misguided, then his sons were blinded. Do you see the generational implications born by Elimelech’s faithlessness? Do you see how the reverberations of his disobedience twisted his sons, so that they were even more disobedient than he?

How will your decisions reverberate through the generations that follow after you? Are you now, by your example, laying a foundation of faithfulness unto God? Or, like Elimelech, are you blazing a trail that will lead to death?

As Dr. Duguid writes: “Once entered upon, the road to continued and deepened disobedience is often smoothly paved and provides little resistance.”

v. 5: “…and both Mahlon and Chilion died, so that the woman was left without her two sons and her husband.”

The continued and deepened disobedience of the sons of Elimelech led to their deaths in judgment for their faithlessness.

Now the bitter consequences of Elimelech’s disobedience come to full-bear upon the frail shoulders of Naomi, who is left without a husband, without sons, and without grandchildren.

Elimelech brought her to Moab as a beloved wife and mother of vigorous sons, and left her as an impoverished widow in a foreign land. He took her from famine in disobedience, only to bring her to utter poverty in judgment.

Naomi’s estate was a truly desperate one, for due to her probable age and circumstance, she was veritably cut-off from any hope of restoration.

1.)She could not return to her father’s house, because her parents in all likelihood had long since passed away.

2.)Since she was probably beyond childbearing years, there was little to no chance of remarriage, either in Moab or Israel.

3.)As was the case with most women of the era, Naomi most likely did not possess the skills necessary for self-support.

Like the Israel Naomi had fled, she was empty and barren, having lost everything.

The Hand Of The Lord

It is no wonder that in v. 13 Naomi would claim that the hand of the Lord had gone out against her.

In the midst of such loss, of such ruin, it would be easy to doubt the unfailing loving-kindness of God, to assume that due to her family’s great sin, the Lord had turned His back upon her.

However, in meager hope, having heard that the Lord had restored Israel, Naomi arises to return to Israel – for there is nowhere left for her to go.

Conclusion

And Naomi will find that just as the Lord God, in His unfailing loving-kindness, restored Israel’s prosperity, so too shall He restore the joy of her heart.

Though the beginning of Ruth is a bitter one, and leaves a household in utter ruin, it is in the midst of this ruin that the unfailing loving-kindness of the Lord God shall be gloriously displayed. For it is from the ruin of the household of Elimelech that Lord will bring forth the redemption of Ruth, and not only of Ruth, but of the world through the Lord Jesus Christ, born in the line of David.

Take heart, saints, for even in the midst of seeming ruin, the unfailing loving-kindness of God endures forever.