A famine has struck the land of Israel, so Naomi
and her husband Elimelech go to the land of
Moab to live. Their two sons marry
Moabite women, one of these women being Ruth.
We realize that as a Moabite, Ruth would have been prohibited by Jewish
law from marrying her Jewish husband.
Yet, when Ruth and her mother-in-law Naomi are
both made widows in the midst of this famine, Ruth chooses to stay with Naomi
to help take care of her. Ruth chooses
to embrace the God of Israel, to return to the land of Israel at the start of
the barley harvest. Perhaps they are
hoping to find food in these dire circumstances. Naomi’s other daughter-in-law,
Orpah, goes back to her Moabite family.
There is no condemnation for this action. And Ruth does not seem to be bound by any
specific religious law to stick around and care for her mother-in-law.
Ruth
takes an oath: “Wherever you go, I will go,
wherever you lodge I will lodge, your people shall be my people, and your God
my God." This oath significantly
describes her relationship with both Naomi and God, as she uses language that
is similar to a covenantal relationship, as she goes beyond what the law and
the morality of the ancient Mediterranean world require of her. Ruth risk starvation and risks the rejection
of her own people in deciding to return to the land of Israel with Naomi, in
embracing the God of Israel as her own.
We live in a society where so many people decide that they don’t
have time to go to church one hour a week because of their busy schedules. Thus, perhaps Ruth’s sacrifice and
declaration speaks to us very strongly today.
We might ask ourselves: What sacrifice, big or small, is God asking of
us today, to follow him with our hearts on our journey of faith?
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