Ruth 1:19-22
Call Me Mara
19So Naomi and Ruth traveled until they came to Bethlehem. When they entered Bethlehem, the whole town was stirred because of them, and the women of the town exclaimed, “Can this be Naomi?”
20“Do not call me Naomi,” she replied. “Call me Mara, because the Almighty has dealt quite bitterly with me.
21I went away full, but the LORD has brought me back empty. Why call me Naomi? After all, the LORD has testified against me, and the Almighty has afflicted me.”
22So Naomi returned from the land of Moab with her daughter-in-law Ruth the Moabitess. And they arrived in Bethlehem at the beginning of the barley harvest.
Berean Standard Bible
The journey home gets one line. Whatever those roads were like for two widows traveling with no men, the writer will not spend a sentence on them, because the account moves straight to the arrival.
Bethlehem is stirred by their arrival, and the women look at her and wonder aloud whether this can really be Naomi. Nobody says welcome home. A town that cannot place a face it used to know is telling you something about what the years did to it, and she has not opened her mouth yet.
When she does open it, she asks them to change her name.
Call me Mara, because the Almighty has dealt quite bitterly with me.
The reason arrives inside the same sentence as the request, so nobody has to guess at what she means by it. She wants to be called what happened to her instead of what she was called on the way out. Then she says the same thing again in different words.
I went away full, but the LORD has brought me back empty.
Full is an odd word from a woman who left during a famine, and it cannot mean her cupboards. She means her people. A husband, two sons, a household with men in it, and by that measure the arithmetic is hers and it is correct. She puts the blame in four places and all four are the same place: the Almighty dealt bitterly with her, the LORD brought her back empty, the LORD testified against her, the Almighty afflicted her.
This is not somebody who has stopped believing in God. It is somebody who believes in him without a flicker of doubt and thinks he has turned against her personally. Nobody in the book steps in to fix that. There is no narrator's note, no neighbor arriving with a better verse, no correction anywhere. She says it in front of the whole town and it goes into scripture in her own words.
Then the last verse does two quiet things at once.
So Naomi returned from the land of Moab with her daughter-in-law Ruth the Moabitess. And they arrived in Bethlehem at the beginning of the barley harvest.
She has just said empty, and the very next sentence names the person standing at her elbow. Then it names the season, and the season is barley harvest, which means there is food. The writer does not argue with her. He sets a daughter-in-law and a harvest down beside the word empty and leaves all three of them on the page together.
How We Know
The text glosses its own name change rather than leaving it to the reader. Naomi asks to be called Mara and supplies the reason in the same breath: the Almighty has dealt quite bitterly with me. Nobody needs Hebrew to follow it, because the sentence explains itself.
Then verse 21 and verse 22 are set against each other without comment. Naomi says the LORD has brought her back empty. The narrator's next sentence says she returned with her daughter-in-law Ruth the Moabitess, and that the barley harvest was starting.
The book leaves her statement standing and lays two facts down beside it. That is a writer content to let a character be wrong on the page.
Questions
1 When something goes badly wrong for one of us, do we want to be talked out of how we feel about it, or heard first?
AnswerMost people want to be heard first, and most of us reach for the talking out of it instead, usually within about a sentence. Nobody in Bethlehem does that to Naomi. She says the bleakest thing in the book in the middle of a crowd, and not one person answers her back.
2 How does the town react when the two women walk in?
AnswerThe whole of Bethlehem is stirred, and the women ask each other whether this can be Naomi. It is shock rather than a welcome.
3 What does Naomi ask to be called, and what reason does she give for it?
AnswerMara, and she attaches bitterness to it in the same breath, because the Almighty has dealt quite bitterly with her. She would rather be called what has happened to her than keep the name she left home with.
4 Naomi says she has come back empty. What does the next sentence put beside that word?
AnswerRuth, and the barley harvest. The writer does not tell us Naomi is wrong and he does not argue with a word she said. He records that she returned with her daughter-in-law Ruth the Moabitess, and that they arrived as the harvest was starting, and he lets us look at the three things together.
What This Means for Us
Naomi says the bitter thing straight at God, and God does not go anywhere. She calls herself Mara, says the Almighty has dealt bitterly with her, says the LORD brought her back empty. It goes into the book unedited, with no correction attached.
Then the last line of the chapter mentions, without comment, that they arrived at the beginning of the barley harvest. The provision the LORD had already started is standing in the fields while she is saying she is empty. Both of those are true at once.
So families do not have to police each other's grief. Somebody can say the dark honest thing here without being handed a verse to make it stop, and the reason that is safe is not that they are right. It is that God is already at work in the part they cannot see yet.
Prayer
Father, we say things about you in hard seasons that we would not say in easy ones. Thank you that you do not strike people down for it, and that you let Naomi say hers on the page. Open our eyes to what is already standing beside us. Amen.