Ruth Chapter 1

 

Ruth Chapter 1 Highlights.

   A severe famine had engulfed the land and Elimelech left to take his family to Moab.  The land of Moab was a fertile land.  The family had to cross a plateau over 4000 feet and lay east of the Dead Sea.  Elimelech went to sojourn  ( Hebrew ger)which at the root means to live among people who were not blood relatives enjoying the native civil rights dependent on foreign hospitality.  Abraham had done this as well as we see in Genesis 12:10 ," And there was a famine in the land: and Abram went down into Egypt to sojourn there.."

We as believers in God and in Jesus His Son too are sojourners here in this land. I Peter 1:1 is addressed to the sojourners  scattered who are elect verse 2 .   Lit the Greek word means someone passing through.  Hebrews 11 :13 has the same word , strangers and pilgrims on the earth...These all died in faith, not having received the promises, but having seen them afar off, and were persuaded of them, and confessed that they were strangers and pilgrims on the earth. " This world is not my home" is the old song sung by several as the Gaithers.

The Christian acknowledges the certainty of death and the uncertainty of life on earth in a way of faith and belief that enables them to live here in the love and fear of God but looking forward to a new world and a new earth by faith. The Anglican priest RS Thomas knew this and reflected it in his poetry, "  I have seen the sun break through

to illuminate a small field

for a while, and gone my way

and forgotten it. But that was the pearl

of great price, the one field that had

the treasure in it. I realize now

that I must give all that I have

to possess it. Life is not hurrying

 

on to a receding future, nor hankering after

an imagined past. It is the turning

aside like Moses to the miracle

of the lit bush, to a brightness

that seemed as transitory as your youth

once, but is the eternity that awaits you."

from plough.com,"  We need an ideal to aspire to, a standard of beauty against which to measure our lives. We may be debarred from Eden, but we must not forget the shalom for which we were created. We can’t give up on Wales or on beauty or on God just because they seem distant and elusive. The saving paradox is that the loss of such beauty may only intensify our perception of and longing for it: 'An absence is how we become surer of what we want.'

Thomas was an Anglican priest in a modern age of disbelief. He was an Anglo-Welsh poet, doomed by his birth to write in the colonizing tongue. Yet these dislocations taught him to know and love “the silence we call God” and to seek after “the true Wales of my imagination.”

2.  Naomi  experiences the death of three relatives, her husband, and her two sons.  She decides to return to Judah for she hears that " the LORD had visited His people in giving them bread." 1:6  In her mind this was God's purpose and His timing.

The word visits means in Hebrew God's gracious blessing. Same word in Gen. 21:1 " And the LORD visited Sarah as he had said"  Same word in Gen. 50:24, " And Joseph said to his brethren, I die: and God will surely visit you, and bring you out of this land.... which He sware to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob."

God visits us in so many ways in His providence and care for He care for us.  As it says in I Peter 5:7 , " Casting all your care upon Him; for He careth for you."

 Even in the blessing, Naomi concludes in 1:13 that " the hand of the LORD is gone out against me"

In 2 Corinthians 1:3-5 we are told why we often experience trouble in our lives " God comforteth us in all our tribulation , that we may be able to comfort them which are in any trouble, by the comfort wherewith we ourselves are comforted of God."

3.  Lastly, we see how Naomi made an appeal for Ruth to return to her people after she kisses and weeps with her and Orpah.  But Ruth stuck ( clave- KJV) to Naomi 1:14.

The Hebrew dabaq is to stick to, and the noun form gives glue ..also loyalty and devotion.

Ruth showed a great love and devotion to her mother-in-law.  She determined to go with Naomi, and willingly gave herself over to accompany Naomi on Naomi's terms wherever that road might lead.  She would go with Naomi permanently 1:16-17.  This was a deliberate action. She was not uninformed about the LORD. 1:17  " and there will I be buried"--a family tomb where those who loved God would not be separated even in death.  She determined strongly with an oath.

The Christian does this as well . 2 Timothy 1:12 ..." I am not ashamed: for I know whom I have believed, and am persuaded that He is able to keep that which I have committed unto Him against that day."