Ruth 1:1-5
A Famine, and a Family That Left
1In the days when the judges ruled, there was a famine in the land. And a certain man from Bethlehem in Judah, with his wife and two sons, went to reside in the land of Moab.
2The man’s name was Elimelech, his wife’s name was Naomi, and the names of his two sons were Mahlon and Chilion. They were Ephrathites from Bethlehem in Judah, and they entered the land of Moab and settled there.
3Then Naomi’s husband Elimelech died, and she was left with her two sons,
4who took Moabite women as their wives, one named Orpah and the other named Ruth. And after they had lived in Moab about ten years,
5both Mahlon and Chilion also died, and Naomi was left without her two sons and without her husband.
Berean Standard Bible
In the days when the judges ruled, there was a famine in the land.
Neither half of that sentence is good news. Judges is the book sitting immediately before this one, and it ends by saying that everyone did what was right in his own eyes, which is scripture's own verdict on the period rather than ours. Add hunger to lawlessness and you have the world this family is living in.
So they leave. A man from Bethlehem in Judah takes his wife and his two sons across the border to live in Moab, and the writer reports the decision without telling us whether it was a good one. Moab is not a neutral address for an Israelite. The law had something particular to say about Moabites, and this family walks its two boys into the middle of it.
Then we get the names, all four at once: Elimelech, Naomi, Mahlon and Chilion. Keep hold of them, because by the end of the fifth verse three of the four are dead.
Elimelech goes first. Verse 3 reports his death with no cause, no illness named and no comment from anybody, and he is introduced and buried within two sentences of each other. The sons marry Moabite women, Orpah and Ruth. They live in Moab about ten years, and the decade gets half a clause. Whatever filled that decade, the writer does not slow down for any of it, and by the time we look up again both young men are gone too.
Naomi was left without her two sons and without her husband.
The sentence never says that the three men died, though they did. It says she was left, and from here everything gets counted by what is missing from her. She came into Moab as somebody's wife and somebody's mother. She is neither now, in a country that was never hers, with two foreign daughters-in-law and no way home that anybody has mentioned yet.
No voice comes from heaven in these five verses. No prophet arrives to interpret the famine, nobody is accused of anything, and God is not said to be doing one thing. A famine, a border crossing, three deaths.
How We Know
Verse 1 dates itself, and the date is bleak. Judges closes at 21:25 saying that in those days there was no king in Israel and everyone did what was right in his own eyes. The book gives us its own setting and does not flatter it.
The move to Moab is not neutral either. Deuteronomy 23:3 bars a Moabite from the assembly of the LORD, to the tenth generation. That law stands over the family that goes there, and it stands over Ruth for the rest of the book. The story never mentions it again, and never has to. Both come from outside this book and support the position Ruth is in from her first appearance, carrying nothing about how she is treated later.
Questions
1 When has this family had to do something that none of us wanted to do?
AnswerWhatever comes to mind probably had a reason attached that everybody could see at the time. Elimelech had one as well. There is a famine at home, so he takes his wife and his two sons across the border. The writer never says he was wrong, and never says he was right either.
2 What kind of time is all of this happening in?
AnswerThe days when the judges ruled. Judges is the book immediately before this one and it ends by saying that everyone did what was right in his own eyes, so scripture has already described this period as a mess before Ruth adds a famine to it.
3 Three of the four people we meet by name are dead by the end of the passage. How much are we told about why?
AnswerNothing at all. Elimelech dies with no cause given. After about ten years in Moab, Mahlon and Chilion die, also with no cause given. Nobody in the account calls it judgment, or a warning, or anything else, and no prophet turns up to explain it to Naomi or to us.
4 The last sentence could have been about the three men who died. Who is it about instead?
AnswerNaomi. It says that she was left, without her two sons and without her husband, and it does that without describing a single death. She walked into Moab as a wife and a mother, and one sentence takes both of those away from her.
What This Means for Us
God is not mentioned in these five verses. That is not an oversight, and it is the honest condition Naomi is living in. She has a famine, a border, three deaths, and no word from anybody about why.
At 1:6 the book says the LORD had attended to his people by providing them with food, and the whole thing starts turning. Naomi does not know that yet. She is inside the part where nothing has been said.
So if somebody here is in a first chapter, they are allowed to still be in it, and they are not being asked to see what is not visible yet. What holds is not their reading of the situation. It is that God was already at work in Moab while the page said nothing about him.
Prayer
Father, some of us are early in a story we cannot read yet. Thank you that you were at work in Moab when nothing about it looked like you. Give us patience with chapter one, and keep us from pretending we understand more than we do. Amen.