The Story of Ruth
Naomi lost her husband and two sons in Moab, and returned to Bethlehem with only one comfort in her bitterness, her daughter-in-law Ruth.
?1100 BC
Bronze Age ?3000 – ?1050 BC
Naomi lost her husband and two sons in Moab, and returned to Bethlehem with only one comfort in her bitterness, her daughter-in-law Ruth.
?1100 BC
Bronze Age ?3000 – ?1050 BC
In all world literature, there can be few love stories to rival the story of Ruth and Boaz, set in about 1100 BC as a very early episode in the back-story of King David. Their tale has all the best ingredients: a determined heroine, a manly yet sensitive hero, a leap of faith, disappointments, misunderstandings and sexual tensions — and of course, a happy ending.
IN the days before Israel’s kings, when the land was ruled by the Judges, there was a great famine; and Elimelech, a man of Bethlehem, migrated to Moab (a heathen land with strange gods) together with his wife Naomi and their two sons. There Elimelech died, but Naomi’s sons grew up and married two Moabite women, Orpah and Ruth.
Naomi’s two sons also died, leaving Naomi and her two daughters-in-law all widows. Hearing that food was now plentiful again in Israel, Naomi returned to Bethlehem. ‘Is this Naomi?’ cried the ladies of Bethlehem, who remembered her fondly; but she replied, ‘Call me not Naomi, call me Mara: for the Almighty hath dealt very bitterly with me.’ Yet she was not without comfort. Orpah she had persuaded with difficulty to remain in Moab with her own people, but Ruth absolutely refused to stay behind. “Whither thou goest, I will go” Ruth declared stubbornly; “and where thou lodgest, I will lodge: thy people shall be my people, and thy God my God.”