Verses 3-5
But Elimelech, the husband of Naomi, died, and she was left with her two sons. These took Moabite wives; the name of the one was Orpah and the name of the other Ruth. They lived there about ten years, and both Mahlon and Chilion died, so that the woman was left without her two sons and her husband.
Very quickly this short story experiences a tragedy. We are introduced to a man and then the man dies. And if we are reading this story for the first time it can feel very unexpected and shocking.
What is ironic about the death of Elimelech is that he left the promised land in order to find life and instead he found what he feared: an early death.
In his own wisdom, he thought, “I can’t stay in Bethlehem or we will die” and on the surface that might seem wise. He was wanting to provide for his family and protect his family. If there is famine in his land and there is no food, shouldn’t he go and find food?
The problem was he was seeking provision outside of the provision of God. The land of Israel was the designated and promised land God gave to them. God was going to bless them through this land. And if they were disobedient, he would use things like a famine in the land as a wake up call. As a call to repentance. The famine was God’s instrument to bring God’s people back to God and not for God’s people to leave the land.
And so if one chose to leave the land, outside of God’s instructions, they were choosing to seek provision and blessing outside of God. Therefore, it would have been a statement that they were 1) unwilling to examine their hearts before God and 2) unwilling to trust God.
And so the man who decided I can’t remain here or I will die still ends up dying.
It is interesting that we can make decisions in our own wisdom based on good intentions to avoid a certain outcome and yet find ourselves still experiencing that same outcome. Which should remind us that our hope or lack of hope, our joy or lack of joy or our peace or lack of peace, or future or lack of future is not rooted in our circumstances.
In other words, whatever is going on in my life (good or bad) I can still have hope and future. Because what determines my hope and future is not my circumstances but rather my trust and obedience to God.
This past week I was meeting with a friend who is a pastor and he was sharing with me some incredibly difficult things that he is going through in his ministry and in his life. And after he finished sharing I said: “How are you persevering through those things.” Because he was not sharing this as a man who was defeated. I asked because I always enjoy hearing how godly men and women persevere through challenging situation. He said, “I learned a long time ago not to put my hope in man or in the things of man but I know what God has called me to do and that is what I will continue to do.”
For my friend, the goal was not necessarily to remove himself from those situations that was challenging but to fully trust God while he was in those situations..
I think that is such a good reminder for us. May we not be quick to change our circumstances but to be quick to examine what or who our hope is in those circumstances.
This is why we are called to live not by what we see in the physical world but we are called to walk by faith.
What is interesting about Elimelech’s decision and ultimate outcome is that we are going to see at the end of chapter 1 that Elimelech’s wife returns to Bethlehem and her relatives and friends are still there. They didn’t perish in the famine. God did provide for them.
This is why Proverbs 3:5 says trust in the Lord without all of your heart and lean not on your own understandings. Sometimes we can be so quick to run that we never give God the opportunity to show his faithfulness in our lives. We can be so quick to take things into our own hands because we think the situation is out of control that we never get to be reminded that in fact God is in control.
He may be allowing things in our lives for our benefit. The benefit of the famine for Elimelech and the nation of Israel was repentance.
When we run or we take things in our own hands, we miss the blessing of perseverance, we miss the blessing of walking by faith, we miss the blessing of maturity. There are certainly times God is calling us to run from certain circumstances, that is our place of obedience. But too often we run because we are simply trusting in ourselves.
Elimelech was trying to avoid death and he encountered death. Whether in famine or harvest, joy or pain the best place to be (regardless of our circumstances) is in a place where we are walking by faith.
After Elimelech died, Naomi, his widow, is left with their two sons. And the two sons take wives from the land they are living in–from the land of Moab.
Elimelech may have first thought we are going to be here temporarily just to get some food. The man whose name means “my God is King” might have been thinking, “we are not going to take on the customs of these foreigners, we are not going to worship their God because our God is the one true King” but we are going to move over here momentarily to meet a need that we have in life.
He may have thought, “I am not abandoning God but I need to take care of some things.”
Do you think before the famine Elimelech would have considered having his sons marry women outside of Israel? I imagine as an Israelite he would have been appalled at that idea. He would have been appalled at his sons marrying women who worshipped a false god. He knew that His God was King. But when we walk a path of disobedience, we will find ourselves doing things we never imagined we would be doing.
Sometimes when we run away from God’s will (or in our mind temporarily step away) we can find ourselves moving from one bad decision to another bad decision. And we may not even recognize it. We are just trying to survive. We are just trying to stay alive. But the natural path of disobedience is more disobedience no matter how we justify it.
This is why every decision we make must be made by asking, “what is my place of obedience before God?” Even if I have made 20 foolish decisions that have led me away from God, we have the opportunity to make a decision of obedience and once again walk by faith before God.
Sometimes we can think, “let me get out of this trial and then I will walk back in obedience to God.’ But the best path through the trial is in obedience to God. Even if may cause things to get harder.
Naomi should have known it was not God’s desire for men of Israel to marry foreign women.
Abraham first modeled this by making sure his son Isaac did not marry a local Caananite woman and went to his relatives to find a wife for Isaac. Moses warned against marry foreigners because they will turn the men’s hearts away from God.
In the book of Nehemiah, Nehemiah is grieving the fact that the men of Judah were marrying women outside of Israel. He says in Nehemiah 13:23, “in those days I saw men of Judah who had married women from Ashdod, Ammon and Moab…” He goes on to say in verse 25, “You are not to give your daughters in marriage to their sons, nor are you to take their daughters in marriage for your sons or for yourselves.”
And the reason was the foreign spouse will lead you away from worshipping the one true God. This was the judgment on Solomon. He allowed women who served other gods to lead his heart away from God.
Naomi is already in this circumstance but she may feel like she has to make a decision within the circumstance. I am a widow in a foreign land. What do I do? My sons need wives, so that they have children to carry on my husband’s name and also so that the next generation can provide for her and her sons in their older age.
Naomi might have not been in agreement with her husband to leave Israel (we don’t know) but it does appear that Naomi feels like she can’t go back to Bethlehem because there is still famine and she needs to figure out how to provide. She might have been thinking, “I don’t necessarily want to be here, I don’t necessarily want them to marry Moabite woman, but I have no other choice.”
Have you ever been in that place? God, I don’t necessarily think this is what you want me to do. But in a perfect situation I wouldn’t be doing this. But I don’t think I have any other option. And so we continue to make wrong choices hoping that can lead us back to a place where we can once again make right choices.
But the problem is we can’t disobey our way back to God.
Our first decision must always be a place of obedience before God regardless of the outcome. Regardless if it brings more pain. Regardless if it feel like it will lead to more challenges. Because as we know from Elimelech, changing our circumstances doesn’t necessarily change the outcome.
When Elimelech died this was an opportunity once again to obey. What do we do now? They should have returned to Judah. When the sons were looking for wives, they should have sought wives that worshipped the God of Israel.
Instead of returning to Judah, they remained in Moab and took Moabite wives. Verse 5 says they lived in the land of Moab for ten years and then tragedy strikes again for Naomi and both of her sons died.
That reference to “10 years” is significant because for 10 years her sons were were married and they had no children. This would have been a decade of experiencing the heartache of not being able to have kids. And now the pain of this family is impacting these Moabite women. These women have married into a family where it appears that God’s hand of judgment and discipline is on this family. We are not told if Elimelech’s death or the death of these two sons was God’s judgment. But we certainly see God is allowing great pain in Naomi’s life and now He is allowing this pain to come into the daughter-in-laws’ life.
One writer observed, “To be a childless widow was to be among the lowest, most disadvantaged classes in the ancient world. There was no one to support you, and you had to live on the generosity of strangers. Naomi had no natural family in Moab, and no one else to help her. Clearly the narrative is sketching the picture of an utterly hopeless, desperate situation!
And Naomi was again in a place of asking: what do I do?
In the first five verses of this short story, the tragedy of this story has been established. And I think a lot of times in Ruth we are eager to get to verse 6 and beyond. But before we move past the tragedy, I think we should take a moment and sit with Naomi in this pain. Because this woman is in a place of great pain. These are circumstances that feel like they are hopeless and desperate. And right now it feels like there is no light at the end of this tunnel.
For these three woman there would not be a lot of reason to believe there is help on the way. They are in a place culturally where they have no power, no wealth, no influence. They would have been considered incredibly insignificant leaving them to ask the question: Why would anyone care about us.
But God is going to bring comfort to Naomi’s pain. And even if this is God’s hand of discipline, it is not pointless discipline but discipline that is attached to God’s plan and purpose not only for Naomi and not only for the entire nation of Israel but God’s plan and purpose for Naomi will impact the entire world.
One of the things that this short story reminds us is that even when we remain in circumstances that we should not be in God continues to be faithful to His people.
And where Naomi may feel like she is forgotten, where she may feel like she is insignificant, where she may feel incredibly ordinary – God is going to use her circumstances to accomplish His extraordinary plan of redemption for the entire world.