Ruth 1:6-14
Go Back, My Daughters
6When Naomi heard in Moab that the LORD had attended to His people by providing them with food, she and her daughters-in-law prepared to leave the land of Moab.
7Accompanied by her two daughters-in-law, she left the place where she had been living and set out on the road leading back to the land of Judah.
8Then Naomi said to her two daughters-in-law, “Go back, each of you to your mother’s home. May the LORD show you loving devotion, as you have shown to your dead and to me.
9May the LORD enable each of you to find rest in the home of your new husband.” And she kissed them as they wept aloud
10and said, “Surely we will return with you to your people.”
11But Naomi replied, “Return home, my daughters. Why would you go with me? Are there still sons in my womb to become your husbands?
12Return home, my daughters. Go on, for I am too old to have another husband. Even if I thought there was hope for me to have a husband tonight and to bear sons,
13would you wait for them to grow up? Would you refrain from having husbands? No, my daughters, it is much more bitter for me than for you, because the hand of the LORD has gone out against me.”
14Again they wept aloud, and Orpah kissed her mother-in-law goodbye, but Ruth clung to her.
Berean Standard Bible
Word reaches Naomi in Moab that the famine at home has broken, and the writer refuses to report it as a change in the weather. He says the LORD attended to his people and gave them food. After a chapter with nothing in it but graves, the first good thing that happens comes with a name attached to it. So the three widows pack up, and Naomi sets out on the road back toward Judah with both of her daughters-in-law walking beside her.
Then she stops, and what comes out of her is generous and brutal in the same breath. She tells them to go back, each of them to her mother's home. Then, before they can argue, she blesses them.
May the LORD show you loving devotion, as you have shown to your dead and to me.
She is releasing them, and she names what they did for her while she does it. Neither of them is being dismissed. She kisses them, they weep aloud, and both younger women tell her they are coming anyway.
So Naomi argues. Her case is entirely practical and she pushes it further than is comfortable to sit and listen to. She has no more sons to give them. She is too old to have another husband. Even supposing she found one tonight and bore sons, would these two wait for the boys to grow up? A widow's future in that world ran through a husband, and Naomi is doing the arithmetic out loud, in front of them, with her own life as the numbers. Then she says the rest of it.
it is much more bitter for me than for you, because the hand of the LORD has gone out against me.
She thinks God has done this to her on purpose, and she says so out loud, on the road, to her two daughters-in-law. Nobody steps in to tidy the sentence up. There is no correction from the narrator, no neighbor arriving with a better answer, no note telling us she has misread her own life. It goes down the way she said it.
They weep again. Then the two young women do opposite things, and the whole book turns on the second one.
Orpah kissed her mother-in-law goodbye, but Ruth clung to her.
Orpah did what she was told, by the woman with every right to tell her, who told her more than once and meant it every time. She is not the villain of this chapter. She took sensible advice from somebody who loved her. Ruth heard the same advice and clung.
How We Know
Naomi's argument only works if a particular law is in the room, and the book never explains it because it does not have to.
She asks whether there are still sons in her womb to become their husbands. That question assumes the duty in Deuteronomy 25:5, where a brother is to marry the widow of a man who dies without a son. Without that, her question is not an argument at all.
And the book comes back to it. In Ruth 4:5, buying the land from Naomi carries with it the widow of the deceased, and the point of the arrangement is a name raised up on the dead man's inheritance. What Naomi says on the road in chapter 1 is settled at the gate in chapter 4, and neither passage stops to explain the custom to us.
Questions
1 Which of the two is harder for us at this table, telling somebody the truth or being kind to them?
AnswerMost people are good at one and reach for it every time. Naomi manages both in a single speech. She tells her daughters-in-law there is nothing left for them in following her, and in the same conversation she asks God to show them loving devotion and to give them rest.
2 What is Naomi's argument for sending them home, and how far does she take it?
AnswerThat she has nothing to give them. No husband, no more sons, and no realistic chance of either. She takes it out past the point of politeness, all the way to asking whether they would wait for sons she has not had yet to grow up, because she wants them to see there is no future in her.
3 What does Naomi believe God has done to her, and how does the book handle it?
AnswerShe believes his hand has gone out against her, and she says it out loud on the road. The book does not correct her, soften it, or hand anybody a better answer to say back. It writes it down and carries on.
4 Should we think badly of Orpah?
AnswerNo. She kissed Naomi goodbye and went home because Naomi told her to, more than once, and meant it. The advice was sound and she took it. What Ruth does next is remarkable precisely because nobody had asked her for it and refusing it was the reasonable choice.
What This Means for Us
Naomi can afford to tell them the truth because she is not the one who has to provide. Twice in this speech she hands them to somebody else: may the LORD show you loving devotion, may the LORD give you rest in a new home. She has nothing to offer and she says so, and then she asks God for what she cannot give.
That is what makes the truth-telling possible. She is not softening the facts to keep them, and she is not going cold in order to be accurate, because she is not the last resort in this conversation and she knows it.
Somebody at this table is owed a hard and honest conversation. You can say the true thing without managing the outcome, and the reason you can is that the person in front of you is being handed to God rather than to your ability to fix them.
Prayer
Father, we find it hard to be truthful and kind in the same sentence, so we usually drop one. Teach us to tell the truth without going cold, and to bless people we cannot fix. Thank you for those who cling to us when leaving would be reasonable. Amen.