Nothing Left But Faith

When familiar supports disappear, faith is tested at its deepest level and trust in God becomes the foundation that remains.

By Ben Kitchen

Read Time: 8 minutes

Ruth 4 has always puzzled me to some extent. I had all sorts of questions, mainly about what I was supposed to take from it for my own life. Then, as part of a Bible Class series, I took a deep dive into the idea of redemption.

While I have explored all kinds of ideas and hypotheses, I’ve found they all come back to one fundamental principle: redemption is an act of mercy and loving kindness, not something the redeemed necessarily “earns” from a legal perspective.

That has clear ramifications for ourselves as we look to our Redeemer. But I’m getting ahead of myself. This is the first of three articles examining Boaz as the redeemer for Ruth and Naomi and Elimelech. First, we’ll identify the utterly hopeless situation that Naomi and Ruth found themselves in.

Naomi and Ruth’s Return

On the road back to Bethlehem from Moab, Naomi turns to her two daughters-in-law. “Go,” she says, “return each of you to her mother’s house. May the LORD deal kindly with you, as you have dealt with the dead and with me. The LORD grant that you may find rest, each of you in the house of her husband!” (Ruth 1:8-9)¹.

Much has been made of Naomi’s spirituality at this particular moment. Most commentators tend to judge her harshly. I, however, feel we need a touch more compassion. Naomi is not rejecting God. Although she is trying to send her daughters away—and she does want them to go— this isn’t some kind of test; she entrusts them to God’s care.

I believe that not much time has been devoted to “why.” Why would Naomi send them away? They had come that far with her. What did Naomi stand to gain from it? The answer is, nothing. She must have genuinely felt that returning to Moab was the best possible option for these two women she loved so much. Whether that was right or wrong can be debated endlessly, but the raw emotion is clear. And it is raw emotion we all share, whether worn on our sleeves or hidden away deep inside our hearts.

Naomi defines the bottom line of her grief in verses 11-13:

Have I yet sons in my womb that they may become your husbands? Turn back, my daughters; go your way, for I am too old to have a husband. If I should say I have hope, even if I should have a husband this night and should bear sons, would you therefore wait till they were grown? Would you therefore refrain from marrying? No, my daughters, for it is exceedingly bitter to me for your sake that the hand of the LORD has gone out against me.

“For your sake.” Naomi’s concern is for them.

In modern English, we use the word “bitter” to refer to a sort of malicious, resentful, snappy anger. The Hebrew is a bit more literal. It’s “bitter,” as in, “not sweet,” something you want to throw up and get out of your body. That’s why it’s so closely related to the word for grief, which evokes the same emotions and is itself sometimes translated as “grievous” or similar.

The hand of the LORD also did indeed go out against her. God fought her plans and the plans of her husband and sons—and, of course, prevailed. This left her in the depths of despair and grief.

As we shall now see, the root of the problem here is that they have nothing to go back to. Anything Elimelech, Mahlon, or Chilion may have owned does not belong to Naomi—at least not permanently.

The Name is Tied to the Land

Naomi is facing the end of Elimelech’s line, when his name will be “blotted out in Israel” (Deuteronomy 25:6) and “cut off from among his brothers and from the gate of his native place.” (Ruth 4:10). This is far deeper than it at first seems. It certainly incorporates the idea of the genealogy coming to an end and there being no son to “bear the name,” with potential dishonor tied to losing one’s future family, but that’s not the full picture.

If Boaz’s only reason for marrying Ruth was to “perpetuate the name of the dead,” then why is Obed not listed as Elimelech’s son? No. He is Boaz’s. In the genealogies, he is not Elimelech’s “pretend” or “adopted” son. The line to David comes through Boaz and Boaz’s ancestry, which continues in Christ’s genealogy. (The same is true of Judah’s sons Zerah and Pharez, through Tamar, who are listed as his sons, not his “adopted” or “pretend” grandsons).

It’s more than “perpetuating the name of the dead,” then. We have the full quote in Ruth 4:10, where Boaz describes what he’s doing. He redeems the field and takes Ruth as his wife to “perpetuate the name of the dead in his inheritance, that the name of the dead may not be cut off from among his brothers and from the gate of his native place.”

In Genesis 48:5-6, we also see what this continuance of a man’s “name” means.

And now your two sons, who were born to you in the land of Egypt before I came to you in Egypt, are mine; Ephraim and Manasseh shall be mine, as Reuben and Simeon are. And the children that you fathered after them shall be yours. They shall be called by the name of their brothers in their inheritance.

Jacob, in a sense, “adopts” them as sons, since each gets a share of the inheritance. But they are still the sons of Joseph (v. 5, “your two sons”), and no genealogy ever claims that Ephraim and Manasseh are literally Jacob’s direct sons, even though they receive the inheritance.

This idea of the name is beautifully interwoven with inheritance rights in the land. Naomi and Ruth’s problem isn’t just the end of Elimelech’s line, but the loss of someone to inherit and own the land and, specifically, to fulfill Elimelech’s civic duties (“his place in the gate”).

These give Naomi, and by extension Ruth, a legal place in the land beyond being homeless widows resorting to perpetual begging and gleaning. Without it, they are simply waiting for time and chance to catch up with them. For instance, if Ruth were to injure herself badly, she would no longer be able to glean, and without gleaning, there would be no more food.

If Naomi had been able to have more sons, there may have been a glimmer of hope.

Levirate Marriage

Levirate marriage (so-called) is the process of the brother of a dead man marrying his dead brother’s wife if she had no children. It’s the basic principle behind what happens with Judah and Tamar, and it’s described in Deuteronomy 25.

Levirate marriage was not a custom unique to ancient Israel, much like the inheritance laws discussed above. Surrounding nations had similar laws, although they weren’t quite the same as Israel’s. Israel’s was all about God.

The process is described in Deuteronomy 25:5-10:

If brothers dwell together, and one of them dies and has no son, the wife of the dead man shall not be married outside the family to a stranger. Her husband’s brother shall go in to her and take her as his wife and perform the duty of a husband’s brother to her. And the first son whom she bears shall succeed to the name of his dead brother, that his name may not be blotted out of Israel. And if the man does not wish to take his brother’s wife, then his brother’s wife shall go up to the gate to the elders and say, “My husband’s brother refuses to perpetuate his brother’s name in Israel; he will not perform the duty of a husband’s brother to me.” Then the elders of his city shall call him and speak to him, and if he persists, saying, “I do not wish to take her,” then his brother’s wife shall go up to him in the presence of the elders and pull his sandal off his foot and spit in his face. And she shall answer and say, “So shall it be done to the man who does not build up his brother’s house.” And the name of his house shall be called in Israel, “The house of him who had his sandal pulled off.”

So, Levirate marriage was a legal marriage between the surviving brother and the widow. The firstborn son of this marriage would become the heir of the dead brother’s estate—he would “succeed to the name” of the dead brother and, we can probably assume, would not inherit anything from his actual father.

Once again, it’s not that the genealogical records then have to pretend that half of this son’s DNA comes from the dead brother. It doesn’t, and the genealogies never do take that approach. But this son would become, in essence, the legal heir to everything belonging to the dead man, retaining the name and the inheritance within the tribe (see Numbers 36).

Purely theoretically, Elimelech’s brother might have married Naomi. The firstborn son of that marriage would become the heir of Elimelech’s estate. Ruth would marry that son, and both Ruth and Naomi would be “redeemed,” in a sense, from their hopeless situation. Through this theoretical child, they would have a legal right to Elimelech’s estate.

Alternatively, since Naomi seems to have no more children, Elimelech’s brother could have married Ruth. Their firstborn son would then inherit Elimelech’s estate and, as that child’s mother and grandmother, Naomi and Ruth would also find themselves redeemed.

Unfortunately, though, Elimelech’s brothers are never mentioned, and either never existed, had died, or were too poor to be relevant, and, in any case, Levirate marriage came with a string of legal complexities and opt-outs that made the law all but negligible to Naomi and Ruth’s situation.

At the gate, Boaz tells the near-kinsman that he must marry Ruth, which ultimately makes the other man walk away. Most commentators take that to mean the job of a redeemer had expanded to also include Levirate marriage. There is no evidence to support that theory, apart from trying to interpret the specifics of what’s going on here in Ruth 4.

Interestingly, the Levirate marriage law described in Deuteronomy 25 comes with conditions. It only applies to “brothers” who are “living together.” After the death of one brother, the other is also given the full legal right to opt out. He will be publicly shamed (because he refuses to “build up his brother’s house” and, in essence, leaves the widow to fend for herself), but he is not legally obligated to marry her.

In other words, nobody is legally obligated to marry Ruth based on the law of Levirate marriage. In fact, it seems that Levirate marriage as a legally binding rule didn’t apply to her at all, because Mahlon’s brother was dead, and her father-in-law apparently had no brothers either. Even if he did, they certainly weren’t “dwell[ing] together.”

Unfortunately, Naomi seems to have no way to secure this. She genuinely believes Moab is the more sensible choice for her daughters-in-law’s future. From a natural perspective, she was completely right. Moab offered them a future and an inheritance; she and the land of Israel simply could not.

Ruth’s Choice: Hopelessness, but Faith

Thus, Naomi reinforces her earlier push for them to go back to Moab. As we know, Orpah returns “to her people and to her gods.” (1:15). But Ruth refuses to leave. “Where you are, I am,” she says (in the present tense), and I can imagine her arms folded tightly in this moment: “and where you lodge, I lodge; your people is my people, and your God my God.” (v. 16 YLT).

Even though Bethlehem holds no future for her, Ruth’s love and care for Naomi means she goes anyway. Her commitment to following her mother-in-law makes no sense (naturally speaking), and is based purely on just that. Commitment. It is a humanly illogical decision of faith to continue with her. In fact, Ruth’s conviction appears to stem from long before Naomi asks them to turn back.

Thus Orpah turns back to “her people and her gods,” and Ruth refuses. And Naomi and Ruth survive the long, arduous, no doubt extremely dangerous road from Moab back to Bethlehem. But although they’re home, their situation is utterly bleak. The law makes provisions for the stranger, the widow, and the orphan, and here we essentially have all three wrapped into one. Yet it appears that there is no way for them to escape the poverty.

In the next article, we’ll delve a little deeper into who owns Elimelech’s estate, and why that matters for both Naomi’s and Ruth’s futures.

Ben Kitchen,
Grand River Ecclesia, ON