Ruth 1.19-22.
1.19 The two of them walked until they came to Bethlehem. Upon coming to Bethlehem, the city gossiped about them, saying, “Is this Naómi?” 20 Naómi told them, “Don’t call me na’ómi/pleasant; call me mará/bitter, because the Almighty has made me mighty bitter. 21 I left full, and Yahweh brought me back empty, so why are you calling me Naómi? Yahweh answered me; the Almighty’s done evil to me.”
22 Naomi returned to Bethlehem from the country of Mo’av with Ruth, her Mo’avi daughter-in-law, at the beginning of the barley harvest.
Picking up where we left off… Naomi’s husband and sons were dead; (vv1-5) she had just talked her one daughter-in-law Orpá into going back to Mo’av; (v14) and was now returning to her hometown, Bethlehem, (vv6-7) with just the one daughter-in-law, Ruth, in tow. And on getting there, rumor got around that Naomi had returned… giving her the opportunity to vent about her woes.
Naomi’s name means “pleasant,” but she did a little wordplay with her name, saying that she’d rather be known as Mará, “bitter,” because her life has been anything but pleasant, and at this time, she’s just bitter “because the Almighty has made me mighty bitter.” (v20) Incidentally that’s my wordplay:
From time to time, various preachers will treat Naomi’s complaint here as if it’s inspired prophecy. We know that God had forbidden the Hebrews to interact with the Mo’avis. (Dt 23.3-6) So we recognize that Naomi should be repentant of having done so, and from time to time we preach that Naomi here was recognizing that the loss of her husband and sons was a consequence of that sinful action: “Yes indeed, God had ‘answered’ Naomi for leaving her homeland during the famine, (v1) and going to Mo’av and living with pagans. She knows exactly why her husband and sons died.”
But that’s not what the text has. As Naomi herself says, was bitter, not repentant. She didn’t return to Judah in repentance; she returned because it’s her homeland. She didn’t ask her daughters to go back because she repented of intermarrying with them; she did so because Judah is not their homeland. (v8) Neither her attitude, nor her motives, is that of repentance.
Bitterness is what we feel when we think we deserve better, and haven’t got it. It’s what crime victims feel when they “haven’t received justice,” or more properly put, haven’t had their vengeance adequately satisfied, which is why they feel empty when justice has been done, yet they want the criminal to suffer more. In Naomi’s case, she felt God was the criminal—“the Almighty’s done evil to me” (v20)—because her husband and sons were dead, and she didn’t see any reason why this was so… and who can avenge people against God?
We recognize that Naomi’s family had no business living in Mo’av. She recognized no such thing. Judges makes it fairly obvious that the average Hebrew was unfamiliar with the Law, which is why they violated it regularly. And if you don’t know the Law, then what would be the harm in living with Mo’av? They were Hebrews. They were cousins. They were pagans, but they probably spoke the same language, or a near dialect of it; and the reason Naomi’s family had emigrated there was to find work and save their lives. So from Naomi’s point of view, she was an innocent victim of God’s indiscriminate wrath, or unnecessary cruelty: She had good reason to be bitter.
Now, as I said previously, we have no idea whether God had struck down Naomi’s family because they shouldn’t have been in Mo’av in the first place. We speculate so. On the basis of that, we might preach that Naomi had no call to be bitter; and on the basis of that, we speculate that nobody has the call to be bitter: No matter what disaster or misfortune we’ve experienced in our lives, chances are that we deserved it, ’cause we’re probably in violation of some command of God’s that we’ve overlooked. From time to time I joke that there must be some mistranslated command in the Torah that goes, “You shall not live in a house with wheels,” which explains why hurricanes do such a number on trailer parks: It’s God’s wrath, somehow. Yet that’s a joke, and certainly not a valid interpretation of God’s will—which is what makes it a joke. Disasters happen. They’re part of life. Assigning blame to non-obvious, sin-related causes, is not valid unless God makes them valid by saying, clearly and plainly, “Stop or you’ll die.” We have no business claiming that we know God’s will when He hasn’t revealed it. We don’t know Him so well.
I’m not justifying bitterness either. Naomi was bitter because she assumed, as so many people naïvely do, that we all deserve a disaster-free life. Husbands and children should never die, and we should never lose all of our stuff, or be forced to relocate out of poverty, or be saddled with foreign daughters-in-law with funny accents. Supposedly, if we’re Christians or God’s chosen people, we’re guaranteed a life of sunshine and rainbows. Not only is that unrealistic, but it’s contrary to what Jesus taught, (Jn 15.18-25) and contrary to what we should expect. Life is suffering. Blessings don’t come naturally; they come in spite of suffering. Bitterness is the fruit of assuming that blessings come naturally, and they’re what we’re owed. We’re owed death. We have no right to be bitter. If you have any bitterness in you, get rid of it before it destroys you.
Ru 1.19: וַתֵּלַכְנָה שְׁתֵּיהֶם עַד־בֹּאָנָה בֵּית לָחֶם & they walked, two [of] them, until coming them Beth Lekhem; וַיְהִי כְּבֹאָנָה בֵּית לֶחֶם & it was, like coming them, Beth Lekhem; וַתֵּהֹם כָּל־הָעִיר עֲלֵיהֶן & she murmured, all the city, over them; וַתֹּאמַרְנָה הֲזֹאת נָעֳמִי׃ & they said, this Na’omi? 1.20: וַתֹּאמֶר אֲלֵיהֶן אַל־תִּקְרֶאנָה לִי נָעֳמִי & she said to them, not! you’re calling to me Na’omi; קְרֶאןָ לִי מָרָא כִּי־הֵמַר שַׁדַּי לִי מְאֹד׃ call! to me Mara [bitter] that Shaddai’s made bitter to me very; 1.21: אֲנִי מְלֵאָה הָלַכְתִּי I, full, I’ve walked; וְרֵיקָם הֱשִׁיבַנִי יְהוָה & empty has returned me, Yahweh; לָמָּה תִקְרֶאנָה לִי נָעֳמִי to what you’re calling to me Na’omi? וַיהוָה עָנָה בִי & Yahweh’s answered in me וְשַׁדַּי הֵרַע לִי׃ & Shaddai’s done evil to me. 1.22: וַתָּשָׁב נָעֳמִי & she returned, Na’omi, וְרוּת הַמּוֹאֲבִיָּה כַלָּתָהּ עִמָּהּ & Ruth, the Mo’avi bride of her, with her, הַשָּׁבָה מִשְּׂדֵי מוֹאָב the returning [one] from fields of Mo’av, וְהֵמָּה בָּאוּ בֵּית לֶחֶם & they had come [to] Beth Lekhem בִּתְחִלַּת קְצִיר שְׂעֹרִים׃ at [the] beginning of harvest of barley.
