Ruth and Naomi: Where You Go, I Will Go

Three women stand on a dusty road, weeping. All three are widows. One is about to turn back. One is about to go on alone. And one is about to say words people will still be repeating three thousand years later.

This story happens back in the days when the judges ruled Israel. A famine hits Bethlehem, which is a bitter irony, because Bethlehem means house of bread. So a man named Elimelech takes his wife Naomi and their two sons across the Jordan to the land of Moab, where there is food. The sons marry Moabite women, Orpah and Ruth. Then sorrow comes, one blow after another. Elimelech dies. About ten years later, both sons die too. Naomi is left with no husband, no sons, and a long way from home.

Then news arrives. The Lord has come to the help of his people back in Judah and given them food again. So Naomi sets out for home, and her two daughters-in-law go with her. But on the road, Naomi stops. “Go back, each of you, to your mother's house. May the Lord be as kind to you as you have been to the dead and to me.” She kisses them, and they cry aloud. “No, we'll go with you to your people.” “Turn back, my daughters. Why come with me? I have no more sons for you to marry. The hand of the Lord has gone out against me.” Orpah weeps, kisses her mother-in-law goodbye, and goes home. The book doesn't blame her; it's what Naomi asked. But Ruth holds on to Naomi and won't let go.

“Don't urge me to leave you, or to turn back from following you. Where you go, I will go. Where you stay, I will stay. Your people will be my people, and your God my God. Where you die, I will die, and there I will be buried. May the Lord deal with me, be it ever so severely, if anything but death separates you and me.”

When Naomi sees that Ruth is determined, she says no more. The two of them walk on until they reach Bethlehem, and the whole town is stirred. “Can this be Naomi?” Her name means pleasant. “Don't call me Naomi,” she says. “Call me Mara,” which means bitter. “I went away full, but the Lord has brought me home empty.” Empty. Except, of course, she isn't. Standing beside her is Ruth. And they have arrived just as the barley harvest is beginning.

The two women need food. So Ruth goes out to glean, gathering the stalks of grain the harvesters leave behind. And she happens, the book says, to end up in the field of a man named Boaz, a relative of Elimelech. Happens. Boaz arrives from town and greets his workers. “The Lord be with you!” “The Lord bless you!” they call back. Then he notices Ruth. “Whose young woman is that?” “She's the Moabite who came back with Naomi. She's been working since morning, with hardly a rest.” Boaz goes over to her. “Stay in my field. Keep close to my young women. I've told the men not to bother you. When you're thirsty, drink from the water jars.” Ruth bows to the ground. “Why are you so kind to me, a foreigner?” “I've heard all you've done for your mother-in-law,” Boaz says. “You left your father and mother and your homeland to live among people you didn't know. May the Lord repay you. May you be richly rewarded by the God of Israel, under whose wings you have come to take refuge.” At mealtime he gives her roasted grain, more than she can eat. And quietly he tells his workers, “Let her gather even among the sheaves. Pull out some stalks for her on purpose, and leave them.”

That evening Ruth carries home about an ephah of barley, a remarkable amount for one day's gleaning. Naomi stares. “Where did you glean today? Blessed be the man who noticed you!” “His name is Boaz.” And for the first time in a long time, Naomi's voice lifts. “The Lord has not stopped showing his kindness, to the living and to the dead! That man is a close relative. He's one of our redeemers.” So Ruth keeps gleaning in Boaz's fields until the barley and wheat harvests are finished, and she lives with her mother-in-law. The story isn't over. But hope has come home to Bethlehem.

Why could Ruth gather grain in a stranger's field at all? Because God's law made room for people like her. In the books of Leviticus and Deuteronomy, Israel's farmers were told not to harvest right up to the edges of their fields, and not to go back for sheaves they had missed. Those leftovers belonged to the poor, the foreigner, the fatherless and the widow. Ruth was a foreigner and a widow both. Boaz went far beyond what the law required. But the law itself had already left the door open for her.

Ruth and Naomi. You'll find it in the book of Ruth, chapters 1 and 2. Naomi said she had come home empty. But God had sent her home with Ruth, and soon with arms full of grain. So here is something to think about. Who in your life needs someone to say, I'm staying with you?