Naomi, the Prodigal Who Returned

19So they both went until they came to Bethlehem. When they had come to Bethlehem, all the city was excited about them, and they asked, “Is this Naomi?” 20She said to them, “Don’t call me Naomi. Call me Mara; for the Almighty has dealt very bitterly with me. 21I went out full, and Yahweh has brought me home again empty. Why do you call me Naomi, since Yahweh has testified against me, and the Almighty has afflicted me?” 22So Naomi returned, and Ruth the Moabitess, her daughter-in-law, with her, who returned out of the country of Moab. They came to Bethlehem in the beginning of barley harvest.

People are still working hard to see what cannot be seen. They dig into and study every corner of what lies beyond the mountains, what lies deep in the sea, what lies under the ground and what lies in the air. Now, finding the earth too small, they search the whole universe for planets where people could live, so it seems space travel for ordinary people is not far off. In this way people are always curious about what they cannot see. Curiosity about the world grew into science, and people curious about the spiritual world have made gods to help them and keep those gods close by. And people are even trying to work out God himself with their own wisdom and science.

Yet everything human beings wonder about, God has already made known through the Bible. Everything people marvel at as their inventions or discoveries is only their finding what God hid within all things when he created the world. What people now call miracles is like finding the hidden pictures God has concealed. Those who find what God hid are respected all their lives by those who did not find it, as though it had been their own ability from the start, and they live in plenty. God created it all for his children, yet sinful human beings use all of it freely and still do not give thanks.

But God the Creator has not withdrawn his grace, so that every human being who breathes can live in safety. And freely at that: he has granted them the free use of many things they need to live, water and fire, land and air, and life itself.

If someone without faith has found what God hid, under the name of invention or discovery, it only means that this person found, before anyone else, the creations God made to give to his children, and so came to enjoy wealth. That person enjoys God’s grace freely, yet does not know it was created for God’s children, and so does not give thanks. Perhaps, tempted by Satan, they may even live a more hardened life in order to show that it was their own ability and not God’s grace.

So when you look at the many powerful people who rule the world, the one thing they lack is God’s grace and an absolute thankfulness for that grace. For to someone who does not know grace as grace, and fails to give thanks when thanks is due, even heaven’s blessing is no blessing. Whether they own much or little, for believers on whom God’s eyes and heart rest, knowing grace as grace is a very special blessing. That is why we must not take God’s grace lightly, and must have the wisdom and courage to know how to give thanks in all things.

God divides those who give thanks for his grace from those who do not know how to give thanks, and to the children who give thanks in all things he has granted the special blessing of the saving of their souls and of being God’s children. And those who receive God’s grace and live by it yet do not give thanks, he calls illegitimate children, and he has had them live by common grace. Believers who give thanks for God’s unseen grace as though they could see it are the ones who can enjoy the grace of heaven that God pours out.

Elimelech threw away the grace God had given him far too easily. And his wife Naomi, too, easily left the precious land of the covenant into which God had led them, because her husband and sons were more precious to her than God’s grace. If Naomi had had a firm faith, she would have stopped her husband’s wrong choice and wisely led the family in faith. But Naomi had no ability to judge her husband’s choice, and so she ended up abandoning the promised land.

The promise God had made to Israel until then was that he would keep them to the end. He told them not to worry, because however high the mountains and however wide the seas, everything in this world is under his feet. For to God there is no mountain so high that he cannot cross it, and no sea so wide that he cannot pass over it.

Think about it for a moment. If God, who created the mountains and the seas, rules over all things, then the mountains and the seas are only God’s footstool, and believers in God’s arms are above all things. That means God’s children stand higher than the mountains and the seas.

God is above all things, and his children look down on the world from his arms. If they abandon God because of the world’s problems and their own greed, where will they fall? Won’t they inevitably fall into the world Satan has seized and flounder there along with its people? To keep believers from foolish judgments, God gives them hardship and rebukes them and helps them make right decisions. If they do not pray to such a God, they will fall in the end.

When her husband Elimelech said he would leave Bethlehem, Naomi should have prayed to God about what the right decision was. But instead of wrestling with it spiritually, she left Bethlehem easily, thinking that she had a dependable husband and two strong sons besides, and that while her own people suffered from the drought, her family could eat well and live well. Because they were going off to rich Moab with plenty of wealth, she was perhaps even proud of her husband for making a decision others could not easily make. As she left her hometown with the whole family, she may even have pitied the people left behind in Bethlehem, which was falling into ruin in the famine. Even now, people standing on the border between the world and faith think of themselves as wise. They look at those who keep their faith to the point of seeming foolish, and sometimes mock them for not enjoying life a little more.

For people of the world, it makes no difference what choice they make. But Naomi’s life shows that believers, on whom God’s eyes and heart rest, would in the end have no choice but to come back empty-handed. When she left home, Naomi was excited at the thought that she would not have to struggle any more, and she left Bethlehem amid many people’s envy and blessings and settled in Moab.

But unexpectedly, her husband and both her sons died. Naomi experienced firsthand how utterly the judgment of human beings who trust the world comes to nothing, like a castle built on sand. Whether a person makes a one-year plan or a ten-year plan, we must know that unless God works to bring that plan to fulfillment, no human plan will ever be accomplished.

Of course, people of the world might say, “I’m lucky; the plans I make always work out. So was that God helping me too?” But the miracles and blessings the world talks about did not happen for the saving of souls. That is why they are simply one more worldly matter, with nothing to do with God.

If we cannot discern spiritually the things people of the world say to believers in order to mock God, our faith can be shaken. So we must first judge whether God’s grace has come upon their lives. Doubts like “Those people live well without any faith, so why do I, who believe in God, have such trouble?” and thoughts like “Could it be that I am suffering because my faith is small?”—these are themselves the proof that faith is missing.

What Naomi trusted in was her husband, her sons and money. But when all of it slipped through her hands like sand, all she had left was herself, trembling with fear, and two daughters-in-law who had lost their husbands and could only stare into empty air. She knew that in this situation she was the only one who had to make a decision. After ten years she had become so wretched, yet she had to decide whether to go back home just as she was, or to stay in Moab, serving foreign gods and living among the Moabites. After much agonizing, Naomi reasoned that she had abandoned Bethlehem because her faith had not been right until then, but that she could not live the wrong way again. So she decided to go home.

Orpah, the elder daughter-in-law, chose to stay in Moab, and Ruth, the younger, said she would go with her, so Naomi went home with Ruth. The whole town gathered to look at Naomi and whispered among themselves. The Naomi who had been so self-assured when she left home was nowhere to be seen. After ten years she came back a woman grown so wretched that they were startled. They asked whether this was really the lovely Naomi they had known.

Ruth 1:20

20She said to them, “Don’t call me Naomi. Call me Mara; for the Almighty has dealt very bitterly with me.

Naomi told them not to call her Naomi but to call her Mara. The Almighty had dealt very bitterly with her, she said, and so she who had gone out full had come back like this, having lost everything. “Mara” is a word meaning “distressed” and “bitter.”

Exodus 15:22-23

22Moses led Israel onward from the Red Sea, and they went out into the wilderness of Shur; and they went three days in the wilderness, and found no water. 23When they came to Marah, they couldn’t drink from the waters of Marah, for they were bitter. Therefore its name was called Marah.

This “Mara” is the name of that spring, Marah. Moses led Israel from the Red Sea into the wilderness of Shur, and they went three days and found no water. When they came to Marah, they could not drink its water because it was bitter, and so they called its name Marah. It is said the name arose because the water there was so salty that no one could drink it. It is said to have been so undrinkable that the Arabs called it the worst water in the whole region.

Naomi is now comparing herself to this useless water. We can understand how painful it must have been for Naomi to confess that she was a worthless person, of no use anywhere at all. She knew well that she had become as useless as Marah because of the sin she had committed against God, the Almighty.

The people of Israel who crossed the Red Sea and reached Marah could at least murmur against Moses that they had no water to drink now. But Naomi had judged and decided for herself, so she could blame no one. It was her own choice alone, and its result.

Exodus 15:25

25Then he cried to Yahweh. Yahweh showed him a tree, and he threw it into the waters, and the waters were made sweet. There he made a statute and an ordinance for them, and there he tested them;

In the same way, Naomi went through hardship and was put through the fire, and only then did she come to know that the one “tree” that could save her was God alone. She judged that only if God’s grace were thrown into her sin-stained heart could she live and return to God again. So, ashamed as she was, she found the courage to come back home.

Now God, who heard Naomi’s earnest prayer, pointed to wise Boaz as the “tree” that could save Naomi and Ruth, and through Boaz he quenched the thirst of Naomi and Ruth forever.

When Naomi came back to Bethlehem, she may have come with a merely human hope: it was home, after all, so perhaps she could at least get by, and perhaps she could return to God’s arms again. But God saw her resolve to go back all the same, and through Boaz he granted her a great blessing beyond anything Naomi could imagine. This shows that the way to receive great blessing is not to pray for blessings but first to show God your faith.

In Luke 15 there is a prodigal son who took his father’s property into a far country, lived riotously and wasted all that great wealth. The picture of that prodigal coming home is the very picture of Naomi.

Elimelech and Naomi received God’s grace and love, but they did not know how precious it was. So, like the prodigal, they went to Moab, far away from God, threw away their life as believers altogether, enjoyed their pleasures and wasted all the goods the Father had given them. And so, just as the prodigal lost all his money and became a beggar, Naomi lost her husband and her sons and was left with no one to lean on. The prodigal and Naomi lost all the fruit of the flesh. It is not so hard for believers to abandon the believer’s life. People easily think someone has abandoned the believer’s life when they are not faithful in the visible things: not going to church, not serving, not giving the tithe, and so on.

But we drift away from God when we fail to discover his grace, when he has answered our prayers but we are too spiritually dark to realize it, when we are always complaining even though living each day is itself a blessing, when our negative thinking is stronger than our positive thinking. Please do not forget that when thoughts like these grow in you, that is pride: this is good enough, I am doing well enough, I am better than the other person, I am doing something right now. When we forget to give thanks, we stop fearing God, we are always making excuses for ourselves, and we act as we please by the measure of our own faith. So we fail to build up other believers, and we end up sitting in the place of those who hinder God’s work.

When the prodigal had wasted all his property, the people of the world sent him, now penniless, to work at the pigsty. When believers put themselves at the center, living as they please and as the world wants, that life itself is like feeding pigs. The prodigal was so hungry that he tried eating the husks the pigs ate, but even that did not go well. He was always hungry and could not fill the emptiness of his longing to go home.

Naomi, too, tried to mix with the Moabites and make a good life, but as though she were eating husks, she was always hungry, and she was in pain from longing to go home. Perhaps Naomi had felt that emptiness from the time she left home, and she probably could not tell why her heart felt so empty. She had her husband, her sons and her daughters-in-law, and wealth and food in abundance, yet she could not understand why she felt as empty as if she were alone.

When believers who love God leave God, they cannot eat spiritual food, so they are always hungry and empty. They try to fill themselves with the world as people of the world do, but unless they are filled with the Word, it is all husks in the end. That is why they are never filled.

The prodigal had already wasted all his wealth, but he could not shake off his longing to go back to his father. Whether his father would rebuke him or his older brother scold him when he came back in rags, he went with the resolve that he must go back no matter what, and was taken into his father’s arms. Naomi’s husband and sons had all died and she was left alone, wretched in appearance, but she could not shake off the conviction that she must return to the promised land. Even if people laughed at her, or simply did not welcome her, Naomi went to Bethlehem with the thought that she must go home.

Everyone agonizes a great deal before going home, but when you leave the place of sin and are held in the Father’s arms, all the suffering is over. If you feel that you are in the place of sin, turn back at once. That is why you must not be curious about the world. For if you set foot in the world thinking you must become outstanding in the world to serve God well, you will fall off a cliff a thousand fathoms deep. The master of the world and of life, which people want so badly, is not a human being but God himself. So only in God’s arms can you be protected and receive answers to all your problems.

Luke 15:22-24

22“But the father said to his servants, ‘Bring out the best robe, and put it on him. Put a ring on his hand, and shoes on his feet. 23Bring the fattened calf, kill it, and let us eat, and celebrate; 24for this, my son, was dead, and is alive again. He was lost, and is found.’ They began to celebrate.

When the prodigal came home, the father put the best robe on him, put a ring on his hand and good shoes on his feet. Then he killed the fattened calf, held a feast and rejoiced over him. When Naomi came home, God began a feast of blessing for her. He filled all her need for food with an abundant barley harvest, brought her to meet Boaz, who was well prepared in spirit and in body, and blessed her to become an ancestor of faith through Ruth.

When you return to God, there is no need to think it over at length. If you think the road you are on now is the road toward the world, the wise thing is to turn back quickly to the Father. And if you find the courage to throw yourself into the Father’s arms, God, who is greater and stronger than we are, will forgive it all.

You should applaud Naomi’s courage. She had lost all the fruit of the flesh, and when she came home she would be mocked, but you should applaud her resolve that she could bear all that pain if only God would forgive her. May you become a Naomi like that. And so may you become precious people who receive overflowing blessing from God.