Ruth 1: In the days when the judges ruled...

Read: Ruth 1

Having fallen off the blogging habit for a bit (which I find so helpful for my own Bible engagement, regardless of whether anyone reads them!) I was wondering which book of the Bible to choose in order to get going and struggling for inspiration.  I asked my husband what he'd like me to write about: "Something short will help you get going again".  He said.  "What about Ruth?  I love Ruth.  People think it's all about marriage but that's really not the most important bit.  I just love the context and what it tells us about hope.  You read the last line of Judges, and everything is terrible, and then there's this wonderful story of hope".

So here we go with Ruth.

Ruth is no typical historical chronical, about kings and land and battles.  There's plenty of those in the books before and after it.  It's a book about ordinary women, with hopes, fears and faults.  We can draw inspiration from the acts of faith that are show, as well as experiencing solidarity with their weaknesses and failures.  But most of all, we can see the hand of God in this story - the way he works in unexpected ways and the way in which two ordinary women were a part of his plan.

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We start with a clear link to the context.   Ruth starts: in the days when the judges ruled (Ruth 1:1).  The book of Judges concludes with these words - a repeated motif that appears several times in the book: In those days Israel had no king; everyone did as they saw fit (Judges 21:25).  Things frequently went wrong for Israel, and in this story, we see this played out in a very personal tale.  Naomi and Elimelek go to Moab in order to escape the famine.  Their sons marry Moabite women.  The we're not told how they felt about the move, but the whole situation probably wouldn't have been seen as the life for the perfect Israelite.  Elimelek and Naomi may have felt a sense of shame that their sons didn't (or rather couldn't) marry 'nice Israelite girls' but instead those who were not only 'not one of us', but from an enemy country (e.g. Judges 3), with it's women probably tarred as seducers who have previously lead Israelite men into sexual immorality and religious idolatry (see Numbers 25).  Things then get worse for Naomi, as she loses both her husband and sons.  There's nothing said about these events being a direct act of judgement against sin (for example, God isn't recorded saying something like because you moved away from the promised land, I will give your sons over to Moabite women and then they will die).  To my view, this reads far more like individuals living and making decisions in the tangled mess of a fallen world and rebelled humanity in which they live (added to that is of course the hand of God working through this, but we'll get to that later!)

Our immediate impression of Naomi, particularly if we are holding her to some impossible standard of godly womanhood and faith in adversity, might be not all that positive.  Sure, she tries not to drag her daughters-in-law down into her misery, but instead encourages them to go and make lives for themselves, but she gives the impression of someone wallowing in misery: ‘Don’t call me Naomi...Call me Mara, because the Almighty has made my life very bitter. I went away full, but the Lord has brought me back empty. Why call me Naomi? The Lord has afflicted me; the Almighty has brought misfortune upon me.’  (Ruth 1:20-21).  It would be easy to sit and judge Naomi, decreeing that she should retain a joyful trust in the Lord despite her circumstances - until you think how you would feel if you moved to a foreign land and then you husband and both your sons died and you were left probably destitute and penniless.  The message of the Bible is not one that asks us to deny our natural feelings about such circumstances - the Psalms give us plenty of precedent to bring our 'complaints' to God.  God might work through bad things, but that doesn't stop them being bad things.  If there is any criticism to be levelled at Naomi, it could be that she complains about God but not to God.  But of course, we are not given an insight into Naomi's prayer life!  And so, here is a woman who represents the lives of so many - living in a tangled mess, feeling inevitably bitter and unable to live up to that cheery disposition expected of those of faith.  Let's leave her there in our minds, and see what happens in the following chapters.

Finally, we have the character of Ruth.  It is in meeting Ruth that we first start to see God's plot twist starting to unfold.  A Moabite woman - someone who has presumably not been brought up in the knowledge and worship of Yahweh, and yet she displays incredible faith.  What motivates her to want to stay with Naomi?  Is it affection for her mother-in-law or a sense of loyalty to her dead husband - wanting to provide his bereaved mother with company and security in whatever way she could?  These things may have certainly played a role.  But there is also something deeper going on.  Ruth wants to be part of the family (the references to being buried together and hence not separated by death show that this is the family she wants to be part of - families would be buried together, hence the Old Testament talking about being 'going to their ancestors' or 'being gathered to their people'.).  Deeper still, Ruth's loyalty is to Yahweh - the God of the family she's married into.  People can, of course, serve the Lord without leaving their country or ethnic group.  However, I get a sense that Ruth felt that God was calling her to leave her country, go with Naomi, and make her life amongst the Israelites.  Maybe she even heard something of God's call to Abraham: “Go from your country, your people and your father’s household to the land I will show you" (Genesis 12:1).  It was a huge leap of faith, to go to a place far from home where you might even risk being scorned as a foreigner and outsider.

A broken woman and an outsider make their way to Bethlehem...to be continued...

Next: Ruth 2: What kind of tribe?