Elimelech, Who Left the Promised Land
6Then she arose with her daughters-in-law, that she might return from the country of Moab; for she had heard in the country of Moab how Yahweh had visited his people in giving them bread. 7She went out of the place where she was, and her two daughters-in-law with her. They went on the way to return to the land of Judah. 8Naomi said to her two daughters-in-law, “Go, return each of you to her mother’s house. May Yahweh deal kindly with you, as you have dealt with the dead, and with me. 9May Yahweh grant you that you may find rest, each of you in the house of her husband.” Then she kissed them, and they lifted up their voices, and wept. 10They said to her, “No, but we will return with you to your people.” 11Naomi said, “Go back, my daughters. Why do you want to go with me? Do I still have sons in my womb, that they may be your husbands? 12Go back, my daughters, go your way; for I am too old to have a husband. If I should say, ‘I have hope,’ if I should even have a husband tonight, and should also bear sons; 13would you then wait until they were grown? Would you then refrain from having husbands? No, my daughters, for it grieves me seriously for your sakes, for Yahweh’s hand has gone out against me.”
14They lifted up their voices, and wept again; then Orpah kissed her mother-in-law, but Ruth joined with her. 15She said, “Behold, your sister-in-law has gone back to her people, and to her god. Follow your sister-in-law.” 16Ruth said, “Don’t urge me to leave you, and to return from following you, for where you go, I will go; and where you stay, I will stay. Your people will be my people, and your God my God. 17Where you die, I will die, and there I will be buried. May Yahweh do so to me, and more also, if anything but death parts you and me.”
The author of Ruth is unknown, but the book records well how God works according to faith through the life of one family. The author records in detail how corrupt the people of Israel living in the time of the judges had become, and shows well how differently each person lives depending on the judgments and decisions they make.
The setting of Ruth is thought to be the time of Gideon the judge, in the late twelfth century, when the forty years of peace that Israel had enjoyed thanks to the deeds of Deborah and Barak had come to an end and Israel was oppressed by the Midianites. This dating rests on the fact that David, who began to reign in Hebron in 1010 BC, was Ruth’s great-grandson.
The story of Ruth goes like this. A family living in Bethlehem could not withstand a famine and moved to the land of Moab. While they were living there, Elimelech, the head of the family, his elder son Mahlon, and Chilion, Ruth’s husband, all died, for reasons we do not know. After the men of the family had died, Naomi the mother-in-law and Ruth her daughter-in-law returned to Bethlehem, and Ruth married Boaz, whom God had chosen, and became David’s grandmother. She was a foreign woman, yet she is listed in the genealogy of the Messiah. This confirms that the Book of Ruth is historically true and that it is a record of the history of redemption. As we follow Ruth’s steps, we want to take our faith one step further toward maturity through the God who works through that woman, and through the devotion of a weak woman who sacrificed herself to keep her family together.
If you do not read Ruth merely as the story of one family, but come to see the God who guides their lives, you will hear what the Bible is trying to say. The Bible tells us that God’s purpose is the saving of souls. Through Ruth we want to meet the God who links people of faith together like stepping stones and carries out the work of salvation through those connections. Then we will be able to see how God, through the circumstance of a famine, brought the prepared Ruth into relationship with Naomi’s family and so made her an ancestor of Christ.
Genesis 3:15
15I will put hostility between you and the woman, and between your offspring and her offspring. He will bruise your head, and you will bruise his heel.”
The ‘offspring of the woman’ that God spoke of to Satan again and again refers to Jesus. Because Jesus accomplishes the work of salvation, he becomes Satan’s enemy and will bruise Satan’s head.
Genesis 9:8-9
8God spoke to Noah and to his sons with him, saying, 9“As for me, behold, I establish my covenant with you, and with your offspring after you,
In Genesis 3 God hinted that there would be an offspring of the woman, and in chapter 9 he told us more specifically that the offspring of the woman who would come through this promise would be the offspring of Noah, the man who survived the judgment of the flood.
Genesis 21:12
12God said to Abraham, “Don’t let it be grievous in your sight because of the boy, and because of your servant. In all that Sarah says to you, listen to her voice. For your offspring will be named through Isaac.
Then in chapter 21 he says once more that the ‘offspring of the promise’ is the offspring of Isaac, Abraham’s son, and so clearly shows us Christ.
Isaiah 11:10
10It will happen in that day that the nations will seek the root of Jesse, who stands as a banner of the peoples; and his resting place will be glorious.
In Isaiah 11:10 God says that in that day the nations will seek the root of Jesse, who stands as a banner of the peoples, and that his resting place will be glorious, and so he points to David, the root of Jesse. The apostle Paul, too, proclaimed in Romans that all the prophecies had been fulfilled.
Romans 1:2-3
2which he promised before through his prophets in the holy Scriptures, 3concerning his Son, who was born of the offspring of David according to the flesh,
So the Book of Ruth is one part of the process by which the prophecy that Jesus would come into the world was fulfilled. Just as a stepping stone was laid through Ruth’s life, I hope you will be sure to remember that God has a purpose for your life as well.
Ruth 4:21-22
21and Salmon became the father of Boaz, and Boaz became the father of Obed, 22and Obed became the father of Jesse, and Jesse became the father of David.
The wife of Boaz who appears here is Ruth. She gave birth to Obed, and Obed became the father of Jesse, the father of David. In this way, through the genealogy, the Bible proves that the history of redemption that Jesus came to accomplish at his first coming is true. Ruth overcame her hard circumstances by faith and made her decision, and because of that David could be born. In the same way, a life in which believers judge and choose by what is good, moment by moment, will play an important part in carrying out God’s work.
After Joshua died there was no leader, so the time of the judges, in which Ruth lived, was a corrupt and dark period. The people had entered Canaan by God’s work, but when they saw the foreigners living in plenty, they abandoned God out of greed to do well in the world. When the people became corrupt, God himself put them through the fire. But when Israel, sunk in hardship, cried out, he raised up judges for them and rescued them. God wanted to set Israel apart as his own people and establish it as a holy nation that would shine the light of salvation.
But Israel took the daughters of foreigners as wives and wanted to share in their abundant life. Having fallen into corruption, they were not faithful to their faith and sank deeper and deeper into evil. As a result, they went right back to the wicked place where people had sinned before the judgment of the flood.
Look at the last chapter of Judges. It records that there was no king in Israel. God was the king of Israel, yet the book records that there was no king. That would mean Israel had drifted that far from faith. For 342 years, every time Israel fell into corruption, God raised up judges and helped them turn back, but human beings did not give up their longing for the world. So God’s wrath against Israel was as great as the love with which he had given them grace, and he disciplined them so that they would return to being his people.
If we are rebuked, that is still evidence that God loves us. If God cut off his concern for us, he would send neither hardship nor rebuke, as with an illegitimate child, so instead we would end up as servants of Satan who have lost their way. If we do not realize God’s love, which is this deep, we will not be able to endure even a little difficulty, and we will become prodigals who leave God.
When a severe famine struck Bethlehem, Ruth’s father-in-law Elimelech left Canaan, the land into which God had led his people.
I think Elimelech too must have thought long and hard before leaving his hometown. He would have met with friends and relatives to talk it over, and he would have agonized over it. But whatever the problem, each person makes their own resolve and decision. And we must not forget that we are the ones who bear the consequences, and that we must always decide carefully. In hardship a person should lean on God all the more and endure, but it was a time when everyone did that which was right in his own eyes. So Elimelech judged that leaving Bethlehem was the right thing to do, and he took his family and left for Moab.
Until then, God had given Israel abundant harvests when they obeyed and famine and crop failure when they fell into corruption, teaching them that he cared about Israel. If Elimelech had truly met this God, he would not have left Bethlehem when the famine came.
Micah 5:2
2But you, Bethlehem Ephrathah, being small among the clans of Judah, out of you one will come out to me that is to be ruler in Israel; whose goings out are from of old, from ancient times.
Micah prophesied that Jesus would be born in Bethlehem. If believers abandon Bethlehem, where the Savior was to be born, there is no place anywhere in the world for them to dwell. When Israel, which stood at the center of God’s work of redemption, fell into corruption, it became a desolate land where even they could not live.
Your heart, like Bethlehem, is a place where God’s eyes and ears rest. If you make the temple where the Spirit of the holy God dwells desolate with sin, you cannot be protected, and so you will face hardship in spirit and in body. Anyone may meet tribulation and famine, but today, rather than thinking to work out every problem through prayer and repentance, we try to leave the hard place at once.
But we must realize that the only way through hardship, the only way to live, is to stand firm in Christ, and we must endure. Whenever we meet hardship, rather than running from it, we can survive only if we go into the arms of God, who is like a hen sheltering her chicks. So hardship is the hen’s earnest voice calling her chicks. If a chick ignores its mother’s call and does as it pleases, it has no fence of protection, and it will soon be in danger or die. Like such a chick, Elimelech did not hear God’s voice and did as he pleased, and he never came back to his hometown; he died in Moab.
Elimelech’s name means ‘God is king,’ and Naomi means ‘gracious one, lovely one.’ Their son Mahlon’s name means ‘sickly one,’ and Chilion’s means ‘one who longs, one who yearns.’ Going by their names alone: when the faith of Elimelech, who had praised God as king, and of Naomi, who had been lovely with the grace she received, fell into corruption, it bore sickly fruit, like their sons Mahlon and Chilion, and they became people who longed and yearned only for the comforts of the world. Elimelech’s wrong choice, when he abandoned the faith that would overcome hardship with endurance and grow spiritually, drove his whole family into misfortune.
Depending on the faith with which believers judge and decide the problems they face, they may set out, like Elimelech, on a road from which they can never come back, or they may become, like Ruth, an ancestor of blessing.
Elimelech belonged to the tribe of Judah. This was the family from which the Messiah, the hope of Israel, that is, Jesus Christ, the true king, was promised to be born. A man of Judah, of the family promised the Savior, was leaving the promised land. That was an act that could only bring down God’s wrath, and a dangerous act that broke the covenant Abraham had received.
When believers are full, they too praise God as king and give thanks. Believers who are full in this way look gracious and lovely, like Naomi. But if they do not get past worldly greed by faith, they will come to have a sickly faith and will be filled with longing for the world. For a believer, deciding to step outside God’s fence is a very dangerous thing and a foolish judgment. What is truly sad is this: people who cannot endure hardship in the Lord go out into the world to find a way to live, yet in the end they cannot live there either.
Elimelech probably left for Moab thinking it would be all right to go against God’s will, as long as he and his family could live comfortably in the world. Or perhaps he did not think of God at all.
Moab lay east of the Dead Sea, where the descendants of Lot lived. They worshiped Chemosh, to whom human beings were offered as sacrifices, so it was far too desolate a land for God’s people to live in. The Moabites were a people born to Lot and his elder daughter, after Lot was rescued when Sodom was destroyed by God’s judgment. They were a nation under God’s curse, forbidden ever to enter the assembly of Israel. Elimelech went to Moab to make a living, but it must have been hard to form ties and live among people who offered human beings as sacrifices to idols. That is because when God’s people throw away grace and live as people of the world, that life is in itself like a discord of things that do not agree. Elimelech and his two sons, who went to the land of Moab to live, died forever.
When her husband died, Naomi no longer had any reason to stay in the land of Moab. In those days a woman had to follow her husband’s decisions while he lived, and her son’s decisions once her husband had died. But now that her husband and her sons had all passed away, she resolved to return to her hometown. Once she had resolved to go back, it was her daughters-in-law who weighed on her mind, for it would not be easy to take young women with no husbands, and foreign women at that, to Bethlehem.
Ruth 1:12-13
12Go back, my daughters, go your way; for I am too old to have a husband. If I should say, ‘I have hope,’ if I should even have a husband tonight, and should also bear sons; 13would you then wait until they were grown? Would you then refrain from having husbands? No, my daughters, for it grieves me seriously for your sakes, for Yahweh’s hand has gone out against me.”
Naomi told her daughters-in-law to go back to their own mothers’ homes, asking how they could wait until a son was grown, even if she found a husband and bore one. In Israel there is the law of levirate marriage: if the eldest son dies without an heir, his widow marries the younger son so that the family line may continue. Such a law existed, but Naomi had no husband and could not bear sons for them, so she urged her daughters-in-law to go back. In a sense, the two daughters-in-law were Naomi’s fruit in the world. Sending them away would be as painful as abandoning forever the sons she had loved, even though they were already dead.
When they heard their mother-in-law tell them to go back, Orpah, the elder daughter-in-law, and Ruth, the younger, clung to her and wept aloud. For though their husbands were gone, they had grown so attached to their mother-in-law that they had never thought of parting from her. The two daughters-in-law must have been deeply torn by her words, for now that their husbands were dead and their mother-in-law could not bear sons for them, staying with her held no hope at all. For a woman who had married a Jew, going back to the Moabites was hard, and for a Moabite born and raised in Moab, following her mother-in-law to Bethlehem was also a venture, so it must have weighed heavily on them. In the end, Orpah chose to return to her own people, and Ruth stepped forward, saying she would follow her mother-in-law to the end.
Ruth 1:16
16Ruth said, “Don’t urge me to leave you, and to return from following you, for where you go, I will go; and where you stay, I will stay. Your people will be my people, and your God my God.
Why did Ruth make this decision? The reason is that Orpah and Ruth looked at Naomi differently. Orpah saw only the physical, seeing Naomi as simply a kind-hearted mother-in-law, while Ruth saw the spiritual, that Naomi belonged to the people of almighty God. Orpah, sad as she was, decided she must go back because her mother-in-law had no hope to offer in the flesh, while Ruth, though she understood what her mother-in-law meant in telling her to go back, must have judged that if she went back, it would be hard to serve God any longer. When we discern well in this way between the spiritual and the physical, we gain the wisdom to grasp even God’s intentions.
Ruth thought about what was in her mother-in-law’s heart, for Naomi had not told them to go back to their own people before they set out, but suddenly told them to go back on the way to the land of Judah. To Ruth, her mother-in-law’s words telling her to go back sounded instead like an earnest plea to come home with her, and as if she were asking whether Ruth, now without a husband, had faith in God strong enough to go with her to Bethlehem.
Watching Orpah go back, Naomi told Ruth to go back too, just as her sister-in-law was going back to her people and her god, and Ruth answered that where her mother-in-law was, she would be too. Perhaps these words of Ruth’s were the very answer Naomi had been waiting for. For a Moabite woman could survive in the land of Israel only if she made the decision herself, rather than being dragged along by her mother-in-law. Looking at Orpah, Naomi said, ‘your sister-in-law has gone back to her people, and to her god.’ We can see that these words also carried this meaning: if you do not go back now, you will have to live as one of God’s people and as one who serves God.
Naomi came back to Bethlehem with Ruth. Just as sinners driven out of Eden hear the good news of the gospel and return home, Naomi too heard the joyful news that God had visited his people in giving them bread, and came back to the promised land. The news that the famine was over was gospel news, like the news that Jesus Christ has paid for our sins and opened the way for us to go to God.
Naomi lost her husband and two sons, her fruit in the world, but she gained Ruth, a fruit of faith. Ruth did feel compassion for her mother-in-law, but she also had a clear understanding of God and faith in him, and that is why she became one of God’s people. Ruth thought that the God Naomi told her about was greater than any other god. Though her father-in-law and her husband had died and only weak women were left, rather than looking at the dark reality, she came to Israel to serve almighty God.
If Ruth, looking at Naomi, had wondered how people who believe in God could be so wretched as to lose husband and sons, she would have left without a second thought, as Orpah did. But Ruth chose the promised land because what she had met was not the problem in front of her but almighty God.
Believers, too, if they look only at the world, cannot help becoming Orpah, but if they believe in God, who has given eternal life, they will make the same choice as Ruth. If believers who hope for the kingdom of God do not settle for present reality, but believe in the God who works by making every season and circumstance a stepping stone, they will possess the eternal land, just as God gave the promised land to Naomi. The Moabite woman Ruth came into Israel, which placed great weight on bloodline, and became a member of God’s assembly. This shows that the kingdom of God does not rest on bloodline; faith is the condition.
When Naomi returned home with her daughter-in-law Ruth, all the city was excited about her. Naomi, who had been lovely and beautiful when she left for Moab with her husband and sons, had lost her family and her property and appeared as a widow with a widowed daughter-in-law, so she must have made a fine topic of talk. But the people welcomed Naomi back from the heart.
Ruth 1:20
20She said to them, “Don’t call me Naomi. Call me Mara; for the Almighty has dealt very bitterly with me.
Here Naomi is showing what is in her heart, saying that she went out full and has come back like this because Yahweh has punished her. She knew she had sinned against God, and so she knew full well how much courage it had taken to come home, and how mixed the feelings of the people welcoming her now must be.
She knew without having to hear it how the people who love to gossip would laugh at her for coming back ruined, and how they would say that she had abandoned God for the world and come back ruined in the end. That is why she told them not to call her Naomi but to call her ‘Mara,’ which means bitterness. Every person faces a crisis at some point. We must decide carefully, because the end of our life depends on whether we get through that crisis with God or flee from the hardship to the land of Moab. She took courage and came home, and her hometown, where the barley harvest had begun, welcomed her with abundance.
If you too have gone far away, I hope you will take courage like Naomi and decide to come back. If only you decide in this way and come back, God will take you into his arms with abundant grace, like the father who welcomed the prodigal son. Whether you went out unwillingly, following a husband, or went out by your own decision, if only you come back, your hardship will end in this way and you will find peace.
Going out into the world is easy and coming back is hard, but because Naomi made her decision in faith, Ruth was able to become one of God’s people. And when Ruth chose Jerusalem, there must surely have been fear and pain, but when she made her decision in faith, God blessed her as an ancestor of Jesus and worked the miracle of bringing her into the assembly.
Anyone who makes a decision of good will can receive blessing and enjoy it. The world you live in is darkness, but when you decide in faith, you can live a life of peace, protected in the light of Christ.