Ruth 1.1-5.
1.1 In the time of the Judges there had been a recession. A man from Bethlehem, Judah, had left to stay in the country of Mo’av—he and his wife and two sons. 2 The man’s name was Elimelékh. His wife’s name was Naómi. His sons’ names were Makhlón and Khilyón. They were of the tribe of Efra’ím, from Bethlehem, Judah. They had gone to the country of Mo’av and lived there, 3 and Elimelékh, Naómi’s husband, had died, and she and her two sons had stayed. 4 They had taken Mo’avi wives: the first named Orpá, the second named Ruth. They had lived there about ten years. 5 Both Makhlón and Khilyón had also died, leaving only their mother without children or husband.
For Lent I decided to study Ruth; it’s about time I studied an Old Testament book.
The author of Ruth is unknown. Christian bibles stick Ruth after Judges, since its events are in the time of the Judges. (v1) Consequently I was taught, growing up, that the prophet Samuel ben Elkanah likely wrote it. But Ruth is in the third group of scriptures, the Writings. In Jewish bibles it comes after Proverbs. Plus it’s written in Late Biblical Hebrew, as opposed to the Early Biblical Hebrew of Judges and Samuel. So it was written after the the Babylonian Exile, probably in Ezra’s day; sometime after 520BC, and before Ruth was translated into Greek in the mid-200s.
A really popular theory is that Ruth was actually written to counter Ezra: Since Ezra had ordered the Jews to divorce their foreign wives, (Ez 10.10-11) Ruth supposedly points out that if the foreign wives were willing to abandon their pagan religions and follow God, what was wrong with intermarriage? I really doubt this interpretation, for this reason: In the Law, God has no problem with intermarriage, but He made an exception for the priests; they were only allowed to marry women from their own tribe. (Lv 21.13-15) And the only folks in Ezra who are listed as divorcing their wives were priests and Levites. (Ez 10.18-44) Everybody else: No problem.
Scholars aren’t sure whether to classify Ruth as a history or a folk tale. Christians nowadays tend to treat it as a romantic story, like Esther or Song of Songs. Since the book is, unlike most of the bible, focused primarily on women—namely, Naomi and Ruth—and written from their point of view, it’s quite likely a woman wrote it; or at least a man who uncharacteristically recognized that a woman’s perspective isn’t irrelevant to Hebrew history. And that’s probably the reason it was written: Not as a romance, nor a counterblast to Ezra, but a reminder that it wasn’t just Israel’s forefathers that were great; it was Israel’s foremothers too.
Here the author sets the story. Ruth takes place in the time of the Judges, which is some point between 1400 and 1000BC. (Since Ruth is King David’s great-grandmother, it’s probably within the 11th century BC.) It begins with a family from the tribe of Efraim who had previously lived in Bethlehem, a sheep-ranching community a few kilometers south of Jerusalem (then Yevús), and an economic recession—literally “a hunger in [the] earth,” usually translated “a famine.” The author doesn’t say whether Elimelekh and family were sheepherders or hired hands, but either way, they couldn’t afford to live in Bethlehem any more.
So they moved to Mo’av (usually “Moab”), which was on the opposite side of the Dead Sea from Judah—on the west coast. The Mo’avi people were also Hebrews, descended from Abraham’s nephew Lot, (Ge 19.36-37) but had alienated themselves from their distant cousins by being needlessly hostile to the Israelis when they were migrating from Sinai to Palestine, hiring Bala’am to curse them, (Nu 22.1-6) and enticing them into idolatry. (Nu 25.1-3) God had given the Mo’avis their land, and forbade the Israelis from conquering it, (Dt 2.9) but had banned any interaction with them. (Dt 23.3-6) Clearly Elimelekh didn’t feel he could afford to be so particular.
So the family moved to Mo’av, (v2) where Elimelekh died, leaving behind his wife Naomi and his sons Makhlon and Khilyon. The sons’ names respectively mean “sickly” and “complete destruction,” which has made more than one scholar wonder whether the names are fictitious, ’cause they certainly are ironic: Within a decade they too were dead. (v5) This left Naomi with no more men in her family; just two Mo’avi daughters-in-law, Orpa and Ruth. (v4)
The lack of men in a family was considered a disaster in that day. In most ancient cultures, women couldn’t own property. Usually they were property; their fathers or husbands essentially owned them. Israel was one of the few exceptions where women actually had inheritance and property rights. (Nu 27.8-11) In Judah, Naomi would have inherited her family property; in Mo’av, she likely got nothing. All she had left were her daughters-in-law, who were just as destitute as she.
So these are the horrible circumstances that Ruth begins with: Three poverty-stricken widows, in a foreign land, during a recession. Well, it can only get better from here.
Commentators tend to blame these circumstances on Elimelekh: If he hadn’t relocated the family to evil, pagan Mo’av, maybe he wouldn’t have died, and his sons wouldn’t have died, and Naomi wouldn’t have been saddled with these two foreigners. Of course, we can’t know that. The whole family could have starved to death in Bethlehem; or the men could’ve died there, leaving Naomi with two Israeli daughters-in-law… who would still be widows, and still poor. Interpreting this bit to say Elimelekh and the boys deserved to die for moving to Mo’av, is putting a spin on this story that ought not be there. God says no such thing, nor does Ruth’s author. The fact is that everybody dies, and most deaths are tragic, but death usually happens regardless of wisdom or stupidity, law-following or law-breaking. (Besides which, if Elimelekh deserved death, so would Naomi, for staying in Mo’av a decade after his death. She definitely wouldn’t merit Ruth’s happy ending.)
Nah. The circumstances sucked, but sucky circumstances happen to lots of people. The point of including them is not to assign blame or meaning. We like to do that, but God would much rather get past that and start redeeming things.
Ru 1.1: וַיְהִי בִּימֵי שְׁפֹט הַשֹּׁפְטִים & it had been, in day of [those] judging to judge, וַיְהִי רָעָב בָּאָרֶץ & it had been, hunger in earth, וַיֵּלֶךְ אִישׁ מִבֵּית לֶחֶם יְהוּדָה לָגוּר בִּשְׂדֵי מוֹאָב & he had walked, [a] man from Beth Lekhem, Yehuda, to sojourn in fields of Mo’av, הוּא וְאִשְׁתּוֹ וּשְׁנֵי בָנָיו׃ he and woman of him, and two of [the] sons of him; 1.2: וְשֵׁם הָאִישׁ אֱלִימֶלֶךְ & name of man, Elimelékh, וְשֵׁם אִשְׁתּוֹ נָעֳמִי & name of woman of him, Na’ómi, וְשֵׁם שְׁנֵי־בָנָיו מַחְלוֹן וְכִלְיוֹן & name of two of [the] sons of him, Makhlón & Khilyón; אֶפְרָתִים מִבֵּית לֶחֶם יְהוּדָה [they were] Efratím from Beth Lekhem, Yehuda; וַיָּבֹאוּ שְׂדֵי־מוֹאָב וַיִּהְיוּ־שָׁם׃ they had come to fields of Mo’av & they had been there; 1.3: וַיָּמָת אֱלִימֶלֶךְ אִישׁ נָעֳמִי & he had died, Elimelékh, man of Na’ómi, וַתִּשָּׁאֵר הִיא וּשְׁנֵי בָנֶיהָ׃ & she had remained, she and [the] two sons of her; 1.4: וַיִּשְׂאוּ לָהֶם נָשִׁים מֹאֲבִיּוֹת & they had taken to them wives, Mo’aviyót; שֵׁם הָאַחַת עָרְפָּה וְשֵׁם הַשֵּׁנִית רוּת name of the one, Orpá, & name of the second, Ruth; וַיֵּשְׁבוּ שָׁם כְּעֶשֶׂר שָׁנִים׃ & they had dwelt there like ten years. 1.5: וַיָּמוּתוּ גַם־שְׁנֵיהֶם מַחְלוֹן וְכִלְיוֹן & they had died, also [the] two of them, Makhlón & Khilyón; וַתִּשָּׁאֵר הָאִשָּׁה מִשְּׁנֵי יְלָדֶיהָ וּמֵאִישָׁהּ׃ & was left over, the woman, from [the] two of [the] offspring of her & from [the] man of her.
