Ruth — Chapter 1

In the days of one judge, when the judges ruled, famine came upon the land. Lapide examines which judge presided: Josephus, Zonara, and the Master of the Histories hold it was Heli the Pontiff, but Lapide rejects this on chronological grounds (David could not have descended from Boaz within the 80 years of Heli, Saul, and Samuel). Salianus most aptly holds the famine fell under Abimelech son of Gedeon; the marriage of Boaz and Ruth under his successor Thola. The famine was likely sent by God to punish the parricides and idolatry of Abimelech and the Sichemites.

Elimelech in Hebrew means \"my God is king,\" or \"the king of my God,\" or \"my strong one is king.\" He was a prominent and wealthy man, from the family of Salmon, prince of the tribe of Juda. Naomi means \"beautiful, pleasant, agreeable.\" Mahlon means \"infirmity\" or \"choir\"; Chelion means \"deficiency\" — both names fittingly prophetic, since both sons died prematurely in Moab. Ephratei = born of Bethlehem, which was also called Ephrata.

The sons took Moabite wives. Lapide notes some Rabbis hold they sinned gravely; but they may be excused by necessity — there were no Israelite women in Moab, and celibacy was difficult and dangerous for young men in the heat of youth. Moreover, Naomi their pious mother seems to have directed them to this marriage by God's instinct, who destined through Ruth the birth of David and thence Christ.

Go into the house of your mother — since Noemi says \"house of your mother\" (not a common mother), it is clear Orpah and Ruth were not sisters nor had the same mother. Noemi tacitly urged the two daughters-in-law to embrace the faith of Israel if they wished to accompany her; implying: if you will not live as Israelites in the worship of the one true God, return to your Moabite people.

Noemi's speech about having no more sons in her womb reflects the levirate custom in use among the Gentiles as well as in the law of Moses (Deut. 20): when a woman married into a family, at her husband's death she adhered to that family and expected another husband from it, not transferring to another family, for the sake of honour and the affinity already contracted.

She is returned to her people and to her gods — Lapide: Noemi did not counsel Ruth to follow Orpah back to the gods of the Gentiles; rather, she permitted it so as to test the sincerity and constancy of Ruth's will to change both country and religion freely. Orpah's return reveals she had never truly converted; Ruth's cleaving to Noemi shows the contrary.

Where thou shalt go, I will go; and where thou shalt lodge, I will lodge. Thy people shall be my people, and thy God my God. Lapide: great was this Ruth's love, observance, and fidelity toward her mother-in-law Noemi, resolutely exchanging her native land for a foreign country and the domestic religion for the Jewish faith of pilgrims, because she saw Noemi so wise and upright, adorned with so many virtues, that she was firmly persuaded her faith and religion were true and her God the true God. Origen: \"Blessed Ruth showed such reverence to her aged mother-in-law that she suffered her not to be left even until death; wherefore she is perpetually magnified in Scripture, and before God is blessed for infinite ages.\" Jerome: \"O virtue to be preferred even to men! A woman of an uncircumcised nation imitates the faith of Abraham, whom male circumcision abandoned... She is therefore chosen by the Lord; she becomes an Israelite in mind, not by birth; by faith, not by blood; by virtue, not by tribe; whence she is so blessed as to be called the mother of prophets and kings.\"

The Lord do so and so to me, and more also, if aught but death part thee and me. The Hebrews by euphemism omit the evil they invoke upon themselves in oaths, lest the thing imprecated actually befall them. Allegorically Ruth here bears the type of the Church passing from the Gentiles to Christ. Chrysostom: \"Consider what was done in Ruth — it fits our own situation. She was a foreigner, fallen into extreme poverty; but Boaz, seeing her, neither despised her poverty nor abominated the baseness of her birth: just as Christ, receiving the Church as both a foreigner and afflicted with great want of good things, took her as a sharer.\" Ambrose: \"How did she enter the Church if not because she was made holy and immaculate in morals above the law? ... In her the figure of our entering the Church of the Lord from the nations went before.\"

Noemi: \"Call me not Noemi (that is, beautiful), but call me Mara (that is, bitter), for the Almighty hath filled me with bitterness.\" She had been honoured with a noble husband and two sons; now she is widowed and bereaved. Lapide notes Gregory the Great used this very text twice in letters when praised by others, replying: \"Call me not Noemi, that is beautiful, but call me Mara, for I am full of bitterness.\" For \"Omnipotens\" the Hebrew is Shaddai, which signifies both \"Giver of all abundance\" and \"One who chastises and lays waste\" — both meanings fitting this verse.

Noemi returned with Ruth the Moabitess to Bethlehem when first the barley was reaped — that is, at Passover. For on the second day of Pasch the Hebrews offered God the firstfruits of the ears, and on the third day began to reap them. The Chaldean paraphrase: \"They ascended to Bethlehem at the very coming of Pasch, when the children of Israel began to reap the omer of barley that was wont to be elevated before the Lord.\"