The Judges · c. 1100 BC
Chapter 11
Where You Go
Ruth said, “Don’t urge me to leave you, and to return from following you, for where you go, I will go; and where you stay, I will stay. Your people will be my people, and your God my God.
For parents
Naomi’s husband dies in Moab, and then both her sons (Ruth 1:3–5), and she says the Lord has turned against her (1:13, 20–21). In the harvest field Boaz says he has ordered his young men not to touch Ruth, and Naomi says it is good she stays with his young women so that no one harms her in another field (2:9, 22); nothing happens to her.
In the days when the led , there was a famine in the land. A man from in took his wife and his two sons and went to live in the country of .
The man was , his wife was , and their two sons were and . They were , people of Bethlehem in Judah. They came to Moab and settled there.
Then Elimelech, Naomi’s husband, died, and she was left with her two sons.
The sons married women of Moab. One was named , and the other . They lived there about ten years.
Then Mahlon and Chilion both died too, and Naomi was left without her two sons or her husband.
While she was in Moab, Naomi heard that the had cared for his people and given them bread. So she got ready to leave Moab and go home, and so did her daughters-in-law.
She left the place where she was living, and her two daughters-in-law went with her. They started along the road back to the land of Judah.
Naomi said to her two daughters-in-law, “Each of you, go back to your mother’s house. May the Lord be kind to you, as you have been kind to the dead and to me. May the Lord give each of you a husband and a home where you can settle.” Then she kissed them, and they wept aloud.
“No,” they told her. “We will return with you to your people.”
Naomi said, “Go back, my daughters. Why do you want to go with me? Are there still sons in my womb who could be your husbands? Go back, my daughters, go on your way. I am too old to have a husband. Suppose I said, ‘I have hope.’ Suppose I even had a husband tonight, and had sons as well. Would you wait until they were grown? Would you stay unmarried until then? No, my daughters. I grieve for you deeply, because the Lord has raised his hand against me.”
Again they wept aloud. Then Orpah kissed her mother-in-law, but Ruth stayed with her.
“Look,” Naomi said, “your sister-in-law has gone back to her people and to her god. Follow her.”
Ruth said:
“Don’t urge me to leave you,or to stop following you and turn back.Where you go, I will go,and 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.If anything but death parts you and me,may the Lord punish me severely.”
When Naomi saw that Ruth had made up her mind to go with her, she stopped telling her to go back.
So they both walked on until they came to Bethlehem. When they got there, the whole town was excited about them. “Is this Naomi?” they asked.
The name Naomi means “pleasant”, and Mara means “bitter”. She said to them, “Don’t call me Naomi. Call me Mara, because the has made things very bitter for me.
“I was full when I left, and the Lord has brought me home again empty. Why do you call me Naomi, now that the Lord has testified against me, and the Almighty has made me suffer?”
So Naomi came back from the country of Moab, and Ruth the Moabite, her daughter-in-law, came with her. They came to Bethlehem at the start of the harvest.
Naomi had a relative of her husband’s, a rich and powerful man of Elimelech’s family. His name was .
Ruth the Moabite said to Naomi, “Please let me go to the field and . I’ll gather the heads of grain behind anyone who looks on me kindly.”
“Go, my daughter,” Naomi said.
So Ruth went. She came to a field and gleaned behind the harvesters, picking up what they left. It so happened that the part of the field she came to belonged to Boaz, who was part of Elimelech’s family.
Just then Boaz came from Bethlehem. “May the Lord be with you,” he said to the harvesters. “May the Lord bless you,” they answered.
Then Boaz said to the servant in charge of the harvesters, “Whose young woman is that?”
The servant in charge of the harvesters answered, “She’s the Moabite woman who came back from the country of Moab with Naomi. She asked, ‘Please let me glean and gather grain behind the harvesters, among the .’ So she came, and she has kept at it from the morning until now, apart from resting a little in the house.”
Then Boaz said to Ruth, “Listen, my daughter. Don’t go to glean in another field, and don’t leave this one. Stay here, close to my young women. Watch which field they are harvesting, and follow them. I’ve told the young men not to touch you. When you are thirsty, go to the jars and drink the water the young men have drawn.”
Then she bowed down with her face to the ground. “Why are you kind to me?” she asked him. “Why should you take notice of me, when I’m a foreigner?”
Boaz answered her, “I’ve been told about everything you’ve done for your mother-in-law ever since your husband died. You left your father and your mother and the land where you were born, and came to a people you didn’t know before. May the Lord repay you for your work. May the Lord, the God of Israel, give you a full reward. You have come to find shelter under his wings.”
“My lord, may you go on looking on me kindly,” she said. “You have comforted me, and you have spoken kindly to me, though I am not like one of your servants.”
When it was time to eat, Boaz said to her, “Come here and eat some bread. Dip your piece in the vinegar.” She sat down beside the harvesters, and they passed her some roasted grain. She ate until she was full, and she had some left.
When she got up to glean, Boaz told his young men, “Let her glean even among the sheaves, and don’t shame her. Pull some grain out of the bundles for her, too, and leave it. Let her glean, and don’t scold her.”
She went on gleaning in the field until evening. Then she beat what she had gleaned, to knock the grain loose, and it came to about an of barley, about six gallons.
Ruth picked up the barley and went into town, and her mother-in-law saw what she had gleaned. Then Ruth brought out the food she had left over from the meal and gave it to her.
“Where have you been gleaning today?” her mother-in-law said to her. “Where have you been working? May the man who noticed you be blessed!”
Ruth told her mother-in-law who she had been working with. “The man I worked with today is called Boaz,” she said.
“May he be blessed by the Lord,” Naomi said to her daughter-in-law, “who has not given up his kindness to the living and to the dead.” Then she told her, “The man is a close relative of ours. He’s one of our .”
Ruth the Moabite said, “He also told me, ‘Stay close to my young men until they have finished all my harvest.’”
Naomi said to Ruth, her daughter-in-law, “It’s good, my daughter, for you to go out with his young women, so that no one harms you in some other field.”
So Ruth stayed close to Boaz’s young women and gleaned until the end of the barley harvest and the wheat harvest. And she lived with her mother-in-law.