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*/The Book of Ruth/*
A Tale Of Two Widows
*by Steve Zeisler*
The facts and the truth are not the same thing, are they?
Discovering the truth is a matter of interpreting the facts, making sense of the data, putting it into categories and assigning meaning to it.
Ruth 1:1-5 tells us the terrible facts of a tragic history.
This book opens with grief, loss, hardship, and suffering.
Here are the facts:
Now it came about in the days when the judges governed, that there was a famine in the land.
And a certain man of Bethlehem in Judah went to sojourn in the land of Moab with his wife and his two sons.
And the name of the man was Elimelech, and the name of his wife, Naomi; and the names of his two sons were Mahlon and Chilion, Ephrathites of Bethlehem in Judah.
Now they entered the land of Moab and remained there.
Then Elimelech, Naomi's husband, died; and she was left with her two sons.
And they took for themselves Moabite women as wives; the name of the one was Orpah and the name of the other Ruth.
And they lived there about ten years.
Then both Mahlon and Chilion also died; and the woman was bereft of her two children and her husband.
The opening sentence tells us of difficulties on the macro level.
It says that it was during the period of the judges when this story took place.
That was a time of moral chaos and national humiliation for Israel.
It was a terrible time to be a Jew.
Further, we're told that the weather didn't cooperate and that famine struck.
And it was a lasting famine; ten years would go by while the famine blighted at least the region of Bethlehem.
Then we enter the personal story of this family, a man named Elimelech, which means "My God is King," and a woman named Naomi, which means "Pleasant."
With such names, they were, we can assume, good people.
Buffeted by circumstances, they moved to Moab so that they could survive the famine.
Then in the land of Moab both the husband and the two sons who married there died, tragically, for reasons we don't know.
Standing in the front of the auditorium during worship services, I sometimes find my gaze captured by widows and widowers in this congregation, people who are now alone because their lifetime partner was taken away.
It's heart-wrenching to remember the story of saying good-bye to the beloved partner.
In many cases I was part of that process.
But Naomi's tragedy was compounded because she had two sons who also died, not as older men who had lived full lives and accomplished much, but as young men, recently married.
Neither of them had been able to produce children, so we can imagine they were in their prime when their lives were taken.
Leslie and I have three children, and in the last five years or so, two of them went through very difficult times medically.
I feared for their future, and it was as heart-wrenching as anything I've ever gone through.
I'm grateful that God has brought them both through the threats.
But this woman's children both died.
The emotional pain and loss of seeing her family die, in her arms we can well imagine, was made even worse, though.
To be a woman alone was to be faced with ruin in that culture.
There was no social security, no safety net, no way for a woman to predict good things for her future if she didn't have a man in her life.
Naomi's future was filled with threat and fear and difficulty.
DECIDING WHAT IS TRUE
Those are the facts.
But what do they mean?
What is the truth?
The rest of chapter 1 is going to give us two voices, Naomi's and Ruth's, speaking about what the facts mean.
These two voices are very different from each other.
One of the helpful literary devices of this book is that what Naomi's daughter-in-law went through paralleled what Naomi herself went through.
Ruth was also a widow, childless, and poor; Ruth would also live a life in a land that was not her own, being dislocated and an immigrant.
Yet Ruth's response to it was completely different.
She saw the facts differently.
Seeing the two of them side by side will help us understand much of what God has to say to us in this passage.
When you're asked to describe yourself, which facts come out?
Well, you're probably not as bad off as Naomi (a very small handful of us are).
But you're also not like Tiger Woods, are you?
You're not young and rich and handsome and smart, leading the Masters by nine strokes with the best golf swing in history.
You're somewhere in between.
But given the facts, whatever they are, the question that remains is, what is the truth about you?
Where is God in this?
There are many ways we can take hold of the conditions of our life and try to give them meaning.
Remember what Job's comforters did to try to give meaning to his life when Job suffered blow after blow, like Naomi.
They came to him and said, "You're suffering because you're guilty."
A lot of people think that way, don't they?
When life gets hard they say, "I must have done something terrible to deserve this."
And they pile shame upon the suffering they're already experiencing.
Other people try to give meaning to the facts by mounting political crusades to change conditions that are hard.
They say, "The status of women in this culture needs to be overturned.
We're going to do something about that."
Or, "Men are dying too young in this culture.
We need to do something about the medical procedures for sickly men."
Some adopt the old advice of Paul Simon: "If I never loved, I never would have cried.
I am a rock, I am an island."
This approach disengages them from life.
They won't suffer anything because they won't get near enough to anyone to ever allow suffering.
But God has to figure into the conclusion someplace.
We have to draw meaning ultimately from his purposes and his reality.
Life has to make sense in his presence.
And that's what this book is about.
So we'll turn now and hear Naomi and Ruth each speak about the facts.
(You may notice as you read through this book that more than half of the verses in the book are direct address.
This is a book of conversation, and we'll do well to learn to hear what the people are saying.)
Verses 6-22:
Then she arose with her daughters-in-law that she might return from the land of Moab, for she had heard in the land of Moab that the LORD had visited His people in giving them food.
So she departed from the place where she was, and her two daughters-in-law with her; and they went on the way to return to the land of Judah.
And Naomi said to her two daughters-in-law, "Go, return each of you to her mother's house.
May the LORD deal kindly with you as you have dealt with the dead and with me.
May the LORD grant that you may find rest, each in the house of her husband."
Then she kissed them, and they lifted up their voices and wept.
And they said to her, "No, but we will surely return with you to your people."
But Naomi said, "Return, my daughters.
Why should you go with me?
Have I yet sons in my womb, that they may be your husbands?
Return, my daughters!
Go, for I am too old to have a husband.
If I said I have hope, if I should even have a husband tonight and also bear sons, would you therefore wait until they were grown?
Would you therefore refrain from marrying?
No, my daughters; for it is harder for me than for you, for the hand of the LORD has gone forth against me."
And they lifted up their voices and wept again; and Orpah kissed her mother-in-law, but Ruth clung to her.
Then she said, "Behold, your sister-in-law has gone back to her people and her gods; return after your sister-in-law."
But Ruth said, "Do not urge me to leave you or turn back from following you; for where you go, I will go, and where you lodge, I will lodge.
Your people shall be my people, and your God, my God.
Where you die, I will die, and there I will be buried.
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