It's Monday again....and I decided to borrow something to share with you from Bible Gateway.com I'm in busy mode preparing for the American Christian Fiction Writer's conference that is being held this week at the DFW Hyatt Regency Hotel just a few minutes up the road from my home in Arlington, TX. I'm excited and nervous about attending, as this is my first time. I am looking forward to a very rewarding and informative adventure as well as joyful in meeting many author friends. I'm looking forward to sharing many great things with you in the future.
Naomi
The Woman Who
Tasted the Cup of Bitterness
Scripture Reference—The Book of Ruth
Name Meaning—As indicated under Naamah No. 1 (which see)
Naomi means “my joy,” “my bliss,” or “pleasantness of Jehovah,” and is a name
suggestive of all that is charming, agreeable, attractive. Until deep sorrow
overshadowed her, we can understand Naomi having a nature corresponding to her
name. Although her character came to be purged and enhanced by her suffering,
Naomi had an innate nobility that gave her personality an irresistible charm.
Family Connections—While both Naomi and Elimelech were
staunch members of the Hebrew race, we are told nothing of their genealogy.
Elimelech, who married Naomi, is thought to have belonged to one of the
outstanding families in Israel, being a brother of Salmon, prince of Judah, who
married Rahab. If this was so, then Naomi began her married life in comfortable
circumstances. Naomi and Elimelech belonged to Bethlehem-Judah where two sons
were born to them, namely, Mahlon and Chilion.
The Book of Ruth, which is one of the most lovely idylls in literature, and
has enchanted every age, presents us with two women who are among the
best-loved in history and whose story still captivates the world because of
their unique devotion. Naomi and Ruth, her daughter-in-law, afford a relief
after characters like Tamar, Delilah and Jezebel. In this sketch let us try to
delineate the life and experience of Naomi who knew a great deal about “the
ringing groove of change,” to use Tennyson’s phrase. Because of her manifold
changes in life, Naomi came to fear God in a deeper way (
Psalm 55:19).
Her Change of
Country
During the rule of the Judges, Israel suffered a serious famine which was
deemed to be one of the punishments visited upon the people when they had
sinned (
Leviticus
26:14, 16). Driven to
consternation, Elimelech the Ephrathite of Bethlehem decided to emigrate with
his family to another land where food was more plentiful, and so traveled from
Judah and settled in the highlands of Moab. For Naomi such an uprooting from
her native home must have constituted a real sacrifice. Sincere in her faith,
she loved the people of God and was strongly attached to the wonderful
traditions of her race.
In taking the initiative to go to Moab—a foreign country—from Bethlehem,
Naomi’s husband stepped out of the will of God. If the famine was a judgment
upon the nation, Elimelech should have repented, tried to have helped his
fellow countrymen back to God, and prayed for the removal of the scourge (
Psalm
34:9, 10,
17). One may argue that
Elimelech was wise in taking Naomi and their two sons out of a famine-stricken
area to another land where there was sufficient food. But Elimelech was a
Hebrew, and as such had the promise, “In the days of famine, thou shalt be
satisfied.” Elimelech means, “My God is King.” Had he truly believed God was
his King, he would have stayed in Bethlehem, knowing that need could not
throttle God who is able to furnish a table in the desert. But Elimelech belied
the name he bore when he left Bethlehem—“the house of bread”—for Moab, meaning
“waste” or “nothingness.” With his family he went from a place where God was
honored to another land so heathen in its ways.
Although the land of Moab may sound remote it was only some 30 miles from
Bethlehem-Judah—a long enough journey in those far-off days when they had no
transportation. The distance, however, was not one of
miles, but of
mind.
As H. V. Morton puts it, “Distances in the Bible are not measured from one
place to another, but from God. Naomi and her husband felt they were going into
a far country because Moab was a land of foreign worship.” Thus Bethlehem to
Moab measured the distance from God to the alien worship of an alien country.
What disturbed feelings Naomi must have had as, with her family, she found
herself in a strange land, unknown, and with all the problems of establishing a
home in repellant surroundings.
Her Change of
Connections
It was not long before Naomi discovered the error in leaving Bethlehem for
in the new and heathen land nothing but misfortune dogged her footsteps. Her
two sons married women of Moab. Instead of helping to support their mother they
took wives of the alien country they were in. The Jewish law forbade marriage
outside of the nation. Naomi’s husband, Elimelech, died. He had fled to Moab to
escape a possible death from famine, and died in the midst of plenty leaving
his wife a widow in a land of idolaters. Bereft of her husband, Naomi loses all
heart to live on in a land of foreigners.
When the stem dies, the leaf that grew
Out of its heart must perish too.
Naomi became one of the widows whom Paul describes as being “desolate.” To
add to her desolation and grief, she also lost both of her sons and so Naomi
“was left of her two sons and husband.” By this time she was old and helpless
with her widowed daughters-in-law, Ruth and Orpah, to shelter. As they were not
of her people, nor of her faith in God, Moab true to its name, must have been
empty, desolate and inhospitable to Naomi’s grief-stricken, aching heart.
Doubtless, Ruth and Orpah, whose hearts too had been emptied, were a source of
comfort to Naomi, even though they knew that their marriage to Mahlon and
Chilion was against her religious principles. So, as George Matheson fittingly
expresses it—
To all appearance Naomi was desolate. Husband and children were
gone—the place of sojourn was a land of strangers &--;the voices of the old
sanctuary were silent. Her heart and spirit were broken, her conscience was up
in arms. The God of her fathers, she felt, had deserted her for her desertion
of Him. She must retrieve the past—she must go back—back to the old soil, back
to the favour of her God.
Bethlehem was Naomi’s native land, and all her relatives and friends were
there. Thus she left for Bethlehem, not so much because of her cup of sorrow in
Moab, but because she had heard that “the Lord had visited his people in giving
them bread.”
Her Change of
Character
Naomi was determined to return to Bethlehem alone, but her daughters-in-law
left with her, possibly excited about a new start in a new land. But on the
journey back, Naomi paused and pleaded with Ruth and Orpah to return to Moab.
She knew what it would mean for them as Moabites to cross the boundary line,
stressing the point that in Canaan there would be very little prospect of their
finding husbands. What a moment that must have been as those three widows stood
there at the parting of the ways. Orpah, without much ado, kissed Naomi, and
then went back to her own idolatrous people, but Ruth clave unto Naomi and
begged her to take her to Bethlehem (see
Ruth).
As Naomi and Ruth entered the city together the thoughts of each must have
been different. To Naomi there came flashing back thoughts of a happy youth and
of a life at peace with God—thoughts which tended to aggravate her desolation.
But for Ruth, there was the novelty and strangeness of a foreign people, a
speech not fully understood, and youth’s quest for new adventure. Naomi’s
arrival in the old community created a sensation. Quickly it passed from lip to
lip that the well-known, beautiful and pleasant woman who had left ten years
before was back, and as all the city met her they cried, “Is this Naomi?” Why
the question form of their welcome? Did they detect a radical change in her
appearance and demeanor? The repetition of her significant name irritated her
as she cried—
Call me not Naomi [pleasant, winsome, agreeable], call me
Mara [bitter]: for the Almighty hath dealt very bitterly with me. I went
out full, and the Lord hath brought me home again
empty: why then call ye me Naomi, seeing the Lord
hath testified against me, and the Almighty hath afflicted me?
Naomi could not bear the contradiction between the name she bore, and the
person she was. Ten years in Moab with all its anguish, and also the loss of
fellowship with God and His people had dried up her finer feelings. Once so
sweet, Naomi was now sour, and blamed God for the poverty and desolation she
had endured. But why chide God? Was not her cup of bitterness the result of the
act of disobedience when, with her husband, she left Bethlehem for Moab? Had
she stayed in her own land and maintained her trust in God, in spite of the
famine, He would have undertaken for her and her family and brought them
through. But the journey to Moab was a journey from God, and consequently her
bitterness was the fruit of such an act of disobedience.
Her Change of
Circumstances
Naomi was back in Bethlehem as a “returned empty.” She went away to Moab
with plenty but retraced her steps in poverty. How descriptive of her adverse
circumstances is her lament! “I went out full, and the Lord hath brought me
home again empty.” Naomi and Ruth, then, clinging to each other, plunge into
the poverty and solitariness facing them—but with a different outlook. Both
women were widows and sufferers, but suffering old age often yields to
hopelessness and despair, whereas suffering youth rebounds and seeks to be
responsive to the life that is around. Thus Ruth felt the stir of excitement in
her new surroundings. Naomi and she must eat, and knowing that her
mother-in-law, whom Ruth surrounded with loving care, was too old to bend her
back to work in the fields, Ruth goes out and secures work as a gleaner in the
fields of Boaz. Under Jewish law the poor were allowed to glean in any harvest
field, and Ruth qualified for the weary, humble task of following the reapers
and gathering up the gleanings for Naomi and herself.
What romance followed is more fully told in our study on
Ruth (which see). Boaz, related to Naomi’s husband, was
therefore connected by marriage to Ruth, and by Jewish custom, Boaz, as next of
kin, could be regarded as Ruth’s rightful betrothed. Naomi, with her bitterness
now subdued and her former pleasant disposition restored, took a lively
interest in the kindness of Boaz to Ruth, and advised her in the steps leading
to her marriage to Boaz. The idyllic conclusion was reached as Naomi, through
her tender boldness, saw Ruth lifted out of obscurity and poverty into marriage
with a godly man, as well as a mighty man of wealth. For Naomi, the winter of
desolation was past, and the time of the singing of birds had come. Although
her natural hopes had perished, Naomi lived again in the life of her dear,
sacrificial daughter-in-law, and there were loud rejoicings when Ruth’s
first-born, Obed, was carried to Grandma Naomi. Now her daughter-in-law who
loved her was better to Naomi “than seven sons.” How lovingly she would nurse
Ruth’s child and bless God because, as Professor R. G. Moulton expressed it—
The family she thought she
had seen perish has been restored to the genealogies of Israel; for baby Obed
lives to become the father of Jesse, and Jesse is father of the great King
David. And in the genealogical tables of Matthew, the Moabitess who left her
people for love of Naomi is duly named as an ancestress of the Messiah Himself.
http://www.biblegateway.com/
WOW - what a remarkable story. The Book of Ruth is indeed one of my favorites from the Old Testament. Hope you enjoyed it also. The proof of God's love is so eminent.....and to think that Naomi is an ancestor of Jesus...amazing. Now, we are all in the ancestory of Jesus Christ as Christians......now....THAT IS AMAZING!!
Hope you have been blessed and will continue PASSING IT FORWARD to others God's love and salvation story.
Until next time....Hugs,
Barb
About the book:
