We need to consider the three testimonies that are in this section.
The testimony of Naomi (vv. 6–15). God visited His faithful people in Bethlehem, but not His disobedient daughter in Moab. Naomi heard the report that the famine had ended, and when she heard the good news, she decided to return home. There is always “bread enough and to spare” when you are in the Father’s will (Luke 15:17). How sad it is when people only hear about God’s blessing, but never experience it, because they are not in the place where God can bless them.
Many years ago, I was in a prayer meeting with a number of Youth for Christ leaders, among them Jacob Stam, brother of John Stam who, with his wife Betty, was martyred in China in 1934. We had been asking God to bless this ministry and that project, and I suppose the word “bless” was used scores of times as we prayed. Then Jacob Stam prayed, “Lord, we’ve asked you to bless all these things; but, please, Lord, make us blessable.” Had Naomi been in that meeting, she would have had to confess, “Lord, I’m not blessable.”
Whenever we have disobeyed the Lord and departed from His will, we must confess our sin and return to the place of blessing. Abraham had to leave Egypt and go back to the altar he had abandoned (Gen. 13:1–4), and Jacob had to go back to Bethel (35:1). The repeated plea of the prophets to God’s people was that they turn from their sins and return to the Lord. “Let the wicked forsake his way, and the unrighteous man his thoughts, and let him return to the Lord, and he will have compassion on him; and to our God, for he will abundantly pardon” (Isa. 55:7).
Naomi’s decision was right, but her motive was wrong. She was still interested primarily in food, not in fellowship with God. You don’t hear her confessing her sins to God and asking Him to forgive her. She was returning to her land but not to her Lord.
But something else was wrong in the way Naomi handled this decision: She did not want her two daughters-in-law to go with her. If it was right for Naomi to go to Bethlehem, where the true and living God was worshipped, then it was right for Orpah and Ruth to accompany her. Naomi should have said to them what Moses said to his father-in-law, “Come thou with us, and we will do thee good; for the Lord has spoken good concerning Israel” (Num. 10: kjv). Instead, Naomi tried to influence the two women to go back to their families and their false gods.
Why would a believing Jewess, a daughter of Abraham, encourage two pagan women to worship false gods? I may be wrong, but I get the impression that Naomi didn’t want to take Orpah and Ruth to Bethlehem because they were living proof that she and her husband had permitted their two sons to marry women from outside the covenant nation. In other words, Naomi was trying to cover up her disobedience. If she returned to Bethlehem alone, nobody would know that the family had broken the law of Moses.
“He who covers his sins will not prosper, but whoever confesses and forsakes them will have mercy” (Prov. 28: nkjv). When we try to cover our sins, it’s proof that we really haven’t faced them honestly and judged them according to God’s Word. True repentance involves honest confession and a brokenness within. “The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit; a broken and a contrite heart, O God, Thou wilt not despise” (Ps. 51:17). Instead of brokenness, Naomi had bitterness.
The tragedy is that Naomi did not present the God of Israel in a positive way. In Ruth 1:13, she suggests that God was to blame for the sorrow and pain the three women had experienced. “It is more bitter for me than for you, because the Lord’s hand has gone out against me!” (v. 13 niv). In other words, “I’m to blame for all our trials, so why remain with me? Who knows what the Lord may do to me next?” Had Naomi been walking with the Lord, she could have won Orpah to the faith and brought two trophies of grace home to Bethlehem.
The testimony of Orpah (vv. 11–14). The two daughters-in-law started off with Naomi (v. 7), but she stopped them and urged them not to accompany her. She even prayed for them (vv. 8–9) that the Lord would be kind to them and find them new husbands and give them rest after all their sorrow. But of what value are the prayers of a backslidden believer (Ps. 66:18)? Three times Naomi told Orpah and Ruth to return (Ruth 1:8, 11–12).
When she saw them hesitating, Naomi began to reason with them. “I’m too old to have another husband and bear another family,” she said. “And even if I could bear more sons, do you want to waste these next years waiting for them to grow up? You could be in your mother’s house, with your family, enjoying life.”
Orpah was the weaker of the two sisters-in-law. She started to Bethlehem with Naomi, kissed her, and wept with her, yet she would not stay with her. She was “not far from the kingdom” (Mark 12: niv), but she made the wrong decision and turned back. Orpah kissed her mother-in-law, but we wonder whether her heart was really in it, for her decision proved that her heart was back home where she hoped to find a husband. Orpah left the scene and is never mentioned again in the Scriptures.
The testimony of Ruth (vv. 15–18). Naomi was trying to cover up; Orpah had given up, but Ruth was prepared to stand up! She refused to listen to her mother-in-law’s pleas or follow her sister-in-law’s bad example. Why? Because she had come to trust in the God of Israel (2:12). She had experienced trials and disappointments, but instead of blaming God, she had trusted Him and was not ashamed to confess her faith. In spite of the bad example of her disobedient in-laws, Ruth had come to know the true and living God, and she wanted to be with His people and dwell in His land.
Ruth’s conversion is evidence of the sovereign grace of God, for the only way sinners can be saved is by grace (Eph. 2:8–10). Everything within her and around her presented obstacles to her faith, and yet she trusted the God of Israel. Her background was against her, for she was from Moab where they worshipped the god Chemosh (Num. 21:29; 1 Kings 11:7, 33), who accepted human sacrifices (2 Kings 3:26–27) and encouraged immorality (Num. 25). Her circumstances were against her and could have made her bitter against the God of Israel. First, her father-in-law died, and then her husband and her brother-in-law, and she was left a widow without any support. If this is the way Jehovah God treats His people, why follow Him?
Ruth dearly loved her mother-in-law, but even Naomi was against her, for she urged Ruth to return to her family and her gods in Moab. Since Elimelech and Mahlon were now dead, Ruth was technically under the guardianship of Naomi, and she should have obeyed her mother-in-law’s counsel. But God intervened and graciously saved Ruth in spite of all these obstacles. “Not by works of righteousness which we have done, but according to His mercy He saved us” (Titus 3: nkjv). God delights in showing mercy (Mic. 7:18), and often He shows His mercy to the least likely people in the least likely places. This is the sovereign grace of the God “who will have all men to be saved, and to come unto the knowledge of the truth” (1 Tim. 2: kjv).
Ruth’s statement in Ruth 1:16–17 is one of the most magnificent confessions found anywhere in Scripture. First, she confessed her love for Naomi and her desire to stay with her mother-in-law even unto death. Then she confessed her faith in the true and living God and her decision to worship Him alone. She was willing to forsake father and mother (2:11) in order to cleave to Naomi and the God of her people. Ruth was steadfastly “determined” to accompany Naomi (1:18) and live in Bethlehem with God’s covenant people.
But there was a divine law that said, “An Ammonite or Moabite shall not enter the congregation of the Lord; even to the tenth generation none of his descendants shall enter the congregation of the Lord forever” (Deut. 23: nkjv). This meant permanent exclusion. How then could Ruth enter into the congregation of the Lord? By trusting God’s grace and throwing herself completely on His mercy. Law excludes us from God’s family, but grace includes us if we put our faith in Christ.
When you read the genealogy of Jesus Christ in Matthew 4, you find the names of five women, four of whom have very questionable credentials: Tamar committed incest with her father-in-law (Gen. 38:3); Rahab was a Gentile harlot (Josh. 2:5); Ruth was an outcast Gentile Moabitess (Ruth 1:5); and “the wife of Uriah” was an adulteress (2 Sam. 11:6). How did they ever become a part of the family of the Messiah? Through the sovereign grace and mercy of God! God is “long-suffering toward us, not willing that any should perish but that all should come to repentance” (2 Peter 3: nkjv). (Mary is the fifth woman in the genealogy, and she was included because of God’s grace and her faith. See Luke 1:26–56.)