Ruth, Esther

Marion Ann Taylor, Tremper Longman III

• Publisher: Zondervan Academic
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9780310490906
• Topic: Teologia e religione
• Subtopic: Critica e interpretazione biblica

A new commentary for today's world, The Story of God Bible Commentary explains and illuminates each passage of Scripture in light of the Bible's grand story.

The first commentary series to do so, SGBC offers a clear and compelling exposition of biblical texts, guiding everyday readers in how to creatively and faithfully live out the Bible in their own contexts. Its story-centric approach is ideal for pastors, students, Sunday school teachers, and laypeople alike.

Each volume employs three main, easy-to-use sections designed to help readers live out God's story:

• LISTEN to the Story: Includes complete NIV text with references to other texts at work in each passage, encouraging the reader to hear it within the Bible's grand story.
• EXPLAIN the Story: Explores and illuminates each text as embedded in its canonical and historical setting.
• LIVE the Story: Reflects on how each text can be lived today and includes contemporary stories and illustrations to aid preachers, teachers, and students.

—Ruth, Esther—

The book of Ruth presents a compelling account of how most of us experience God in our everyday lives. We see God working indirectly behind the scenes, giving us a theology of divine and human cooperation, as those who pray for God's blessings participate in answering their own petitions as well as the prayers of others. In Esther's story, we recognize our own world today, often experiencing it as a place where God seems hidden. Her book challenges us in unique ways.

Edited by Scot McKnight and Tremper Longman III, and written by a number of top-notch theologians, The Story of God Bible Commentary series will bring relevant, balanced, and clear-minded theological insight to any biblical education or ministry.

CHAPTER 1

Ruth 1:1–22

LISTEN to the Story

¹In the days when the judges ruled, there was a famine in the land. So a man from Bethlehem in Judah, together with his wife and two sons, went to live for a while in the country of Moab. ²The man’s name was Elimelek, his wife’s name was Naomi, and the names of his two sons were Mahlon and Kilion. They were Ephrathites from Bethlehem, Judah. And they went to Moab and lived there.

³Now Elimelek, Naomi’s husband, died, and she was left with her two sons. ⁴They married Moabite women, one named Orpah and the other Ruth. After they had lived there about ten years, ⁵both Mahlon and Kilion also died, and Naomi was left without her two sons and her husband.

⁶When Naomi heard in Moab that the LORD had come to the aid of his people by providing food for them, she and her daughters-in-law prepared to return home from there. ⁷With her two daughters-in-law she left the place where she had been living and set out on the road that would take them back to the land of Judah.

⁸Then Naomi said to her two daughters-in-law, “Go back, each of you, to your mother’s home. May the LORD show you kindness, as you have shown kindness to your dead husbands and to me. ⁹May the LORD grant that each of you will find rest in the home of another husband.”

Then she kissed them goodbye and they wept aloud ¹⁰and said to her, “We will go back with you to your people.”

¹¹But Naomi said, “Return home, my daughters. Why would you come with me? Am I going to have any more sons, who could become your husbands? ¹²Return home, my daughters; I am too old to have another husband. Even if I thought there was still hope for me—even if I had a husband tonight and then gave birth to sons—¹³would you wait until they grew up? Would you remain unmarried for them? No, my daughters. It is more bitter for me than for you, because the LORD’s hand has turned against me!”

¹⁴At this they wept aloud again. Then Orpah kissed her mother-in-law goodbye, but Ruth clung to her.

¹⁵“Look,” said Naomi, “your sister-in-law is going back to her people and her gods. Go back with her.”

¹⁶But Ruth replied, “Don’t urge me to leave you or to turn back from you. Where you go I will go, and where you stay I will stay. Your people will be my people and your God my God. ¹⁷Where you die I will die, and there I will be buried. May the LORD deal with me, be it ever so severely, if even death separates you and me.” ¹⁸When Naomi realized that Ruth was determined to go with her, she stopped urging her.

¹⁹So the two women went on until they came to Bethlehem. When they arrived in Bethlehem, the whole town was stirred because of them, and the women exclaimed, “Can this be Naomi?”

²⁰“Don’t call me Naomi,” she told them. “Call me Mara, because the Almighty has made my life very bitter. ²¹I went away full, but the LORD has brought me back empty. Why call me Naomi? The LORD has afflicted me; the Almighty has brought misfortune upon me.”

²²So Naomi returned from Moab accompanied by Ruth the Moabite, her daughter-in-law, arriving in Bethlehem as the barley harvest was beginning.

Listen to the Text in the Story: Biblical Texts: Genesis 19:30–38; 31:14–16; 38:13–19; Exodus 15:22–27; 34:12–16; Numbers 25:1–9; Deuteronomy 23:3–6; 25:5–10; 27:19; 28:15–68; Joshua 2; Judges 2:6–23; 3:15–30; 11:23–28; 1 Samuel 22:3–4; 2 Samuel 8:12; 1 Kings 17:8–24; 2 Kings 3:1–27; Ezra 10:2–4; Nehemiah 13:23–27; Job 12:9–10; 27:2–4; Psalms 146:9; Isaiah 1:17; Ancient Near Eastern Texts: The Mesha Stela (known also as the Moabite Stone); Hittite and Middle Assyrian laws concerning the provision of husbands for widows; “The Widow’s Plea”; the Sumerian Job-like wisdom poem, “Man and His God”; The Hittite “Treaty Between Mursilis and Duppi-Teshub”; The Sumerian “Lamentation of the Destruction of Ur.”

Background Texts

A number of Old Testament and ancient Near Eastern texts provide helpful background information and commentary on the opening chapter of Ruth. Judges 2:6–23 summarizes the period leading up to the time of the judges. It speaks of Israel’s recurrent unfaithfulness to the covenant, God’s use of Israel’s enemies as vehicles of punishment, and God’s raising up of judges to deliver his penitent people. The covenant curses in Deuteronomy 28:15–68 include famine, sickness, infertility, and death. Given what we know about the period of the judges, it is possible that the famine in Bethlehem and perhaps even the deaths of Elimelek and his sons and their childless marriages were linked to covenant unfaithfulness. Naomi certainly saw the hand of God behind her afflictions (Ruth 1:21).

Moab and the Moabites

Other Old Testament narratives mentioning Moab and the Moabites provide a helpful backdrop to the story of Elimelek’s move to Moab and his sons’ marriages to Moabite women. Genesis 19:30–38 traces the origins of Moab to the incestuous relation between Lot and his eldest daughter. Other stories involving the Moabites feature seduction, idolatry, and duplicity (for example, the seduction of Israelite men by Moabite women that led to idolatry in Num 25:1–9). Moab is most often portrayed as an enemy in the Old Testament, and stories of military incursions dominate the history of Moab and Israel. Eglon, king of Moab, for example, oppressed Israel for eighteen years, only to be duped and his country subdued by a repentant Israel in Judges 3:15–30. David, on the other hand, whose ancestry is traced to Ruth the Moabite, entrusted his family to the king of Moab early in his career (1 Sam 22:3–4); later David regarded them as enemies (2 Sam 8:12).

Old Testament laws prohibiting covenants with foreigners, including marriage (Exod 34:12–16), provide an important commentary on Elimelek’s move to Moab, the subsequent marriages of his sons to Moabite women, and the repeated identification of Ruth as “the Moabite” now living in Bethlehem. Mosaic Law barred Moabite men and their sons from entering “the assembly of the LORD, not even in the tenth generation” (Deut 23:2–3). However, not all exogamous marriages were censured in Scripture: Tamar (Gen 38:13–19), Rahab (Josh 2:1), Ruth (Ruth 3:1–9; 4:12), and Bathsheba (2 Sam 11:2–5) were integrated into the community and named in the lineage of Jesus (Matt 1:3, 5–6). By contrast, foreign women such as Jezebel and Solomon’s wives were linked with apostasy and licentiousness; Solomon’s wives in particular were used as negative examples to support the extreme measures taken against foreigners in the postexilic period (Neh 13:23–27; Ezra 10:2–4).

As the following excerpt from the ninth-century BC Mesha Stela attests, hostilities between Moab and Israel were very real (see 2 Kgs 3:1–27):

I am Mesha son of Chemosh-yat, king of Moab. . . . I built this high place for Chemosh in Qarhoh, a high place of salvation, because he delivered me from all assaults, and because he let me see my desire upon all my adversaries. King Omri of Israel had oppressed Moab many days, for Chemosh was angry with his land. His son succeeded him, and he too said, I will oppress Moab. In my days he said it; but I saw my desire upon him and his house, and Israel perished utterly forever. Omri had taken possession of the land of Medeba, and dwelled there his days and much of his son’s days, forty years; but Chemosh dwelled in it in my days.¹

This passage also introduces the assumption shared by Jephthah, Naomi, and many others in the Old Testament that deity, people, and land are intimately connected (Judg 11:23–28). This being the case, Elimelek’s decision to leave the “promised” land to sojourn in Moab, where Chemosh ruled, suggests desperation and perhaps even lack of faith (Judg 2:18). Not surprisingly, Naomi felt that God’s hand had turned against her family (Ruth 1:13).

Widows

Israelite law identifies widows as a group who, like orphans and sojourners, need to be provided for and protected by God and God’s people (Exod 22:21–24; Deut 27:19; see also Ps 146:9; Isa 1:17). Deuteronomy 25:5–10 prescribes the marriage of a childless widow to her brother-in-law, who would provide security and an heir, thus keeping the name of the deceased alive. Old Testament stories featuring widows help us to empathize with Naomi. The story of the widow of Zarephath who planned to make the last supper that she and her son would share with just “a handful of flour in a jar and a little olive oil in a jug” helps us to appreciate an ancient widow’s dire straits (1 Kgs 17:8–24).

Legal texts from other ancient Near Eastern civilizations demonstrate concern for the welfare of widows. The following Hittite law (ca. 1650–1500 BC) makes provision for the care of a childless widow through marriage to another male in her husband’s family:

If a man has a wife, and the man dies, his brother shall take his widow as wife. (If the brother dies,) his father shall take her. When afterwards his father dies, his (i.e., the father’s) brother shall take the woman whom he had.²

Middle Assyrian Laws from the eleventh century BC expand the list of potential husbands to include male children as young as ten and address the issue of what happens to the widow’s dowry. These laws imply the same sense of urgency for finding a husband that Naomi expresses. Ruth’s choice to align herself with an old woman who cannot provide what the culture says she needs seems all the more remarkable:

If a man either pours oil on her head or brings (dishes for) the banquet, (after which) the son to whom he assigned the wife either dies or flees, he shall give her in marriage to whichever of his remaining sons he wishes, from the oldest to the youngest of at least ten years of age. If the father is dead and the son to whom he assigned the wife is also dead, a son of the deceased who is at least ten years old shall marry her. If the sons of the (dead) son are less than ten years old, if the father of the daughter wishes, he shall give his daughter (to one of them), but if he wishes he shall make a full and equal return (of gifts given). If there is no son, he shall return as much as he received, precious stones, or anything not edible, in its full amount; but he shall not return anything edible.³

Suffering

Like Naomi, Job believed that his life was in God’s hand (Job 12:9–10) and that the Almighty had made his life bitter (Job 27:2–4). Naomi’s situation, as well as the words she uses to describe it, finds parallels not only in Job but also in the Sumerian lament, “Man and His God,” from about 2000 BC:

My god . . . How long will you leave me unguided? . . .

The man—his bitter weeping was heard

by his god,

when the lamentation and wailing that

filled him had soothed the heart of

his god for the young man

. . . and his god withdrew his hand from

the evil word,

. . . he turned the [young man’s] suffering

into joy . . .

[The man uttered] constantly the

exaltedness of his god.⁴

Curses

The curse section of the second millennium Hittite “Treaty Between Mursilis and Duppi-Teshub” makes explicit what is implicit in Ruth’s oath, “May the LORD deal with me, be it ever so severely” (Ruth 1:17):

Should Duppi-Teshub not honor these words of the treaty and the oath, may these gods of the oath destroy Dupp...