Untitled Sermon

OUTSIDE THE TEXT

Background and setting here

Naomi puts stress on the meaning of her name (see on verse 22). Her experiences have been anything but pleasant, and she disclaims the name ‘Pleasant’ accordingly. She suggests that the women (the forms of pronoun and verb are feminine) should call her Mara’, a word which means ‘bitter’ (the form of this word with final aleph instead of he is Aramaic or perhaps Moabitic rather than Hebrew). Her reason is that God has dealt very bitterly with her (cf. Job 13:26). Moffatt brings out something of the wordplay in the Hebrew with, call me Mara, for the Almighty has cruelly marred me. Naomi does not think of chance or of the work of the gods of the heathen. She is sure that her God is over all, so that the explanation of the bitter things she has experienced must be with him. The name she uses for God is šadday, not the commonest of names, and one which appears to mean ‘Almighty’ (see Additional note, pp. 255ff.). Naomi thinks of the irresistible power of God. When he determined that bitterness should enter her life there was no other possibility. It is worth noticing that, while the name šadday is sometimes used in contexts of blessing, it is also found when it is the severity as well as the power of the Lord that is in mind (e.g. Isa. 13:6; Joel 1:15). This is one of very few places where it stands alone in prose (this is not unusual in poetry, but in prose ‘God Almighty’ is more common). F. I. Andersen points out that Naomi’s speech may well be poetry. In verse 22 šadday is found in good, poetic parallelism.