This is an excerpt from God of the Ordinary Bible Study by Alistair Begg.
In the four short chapters of Ruth, we have literary art and theological insight at its very finest. And what makes the book sparkle so much is the background against which it is set, like the way a diamond shines at the jeweler’s when they display it against a dark velvet cloth to bring out its intricacies. The book of Ruth shines against the background of Judges, because it was a time of instability and upheaval. If there were news reports in those days, they would have been filled with stories of civil unrest, moral decay, religious deterioration, and unchecked corruption.
Yet in Ruth, we find there is another side to the story. Away from all the clamor in the corridors of power, we find that God is at work in a very quiet way, in a sequence of events involving a farmer from Bethlehem, a foreigner from Moab, and a lady who had faced a triple bereavement.
Elimelech’s name means, “The Lord is King.” Yet it seems he didn’t consider the Lord to be King over the circumstances of the famine. With his family, he left Bethlehem—the “House of Bread,” ironically—and headed for Moab. This was an astonishing decision for two reasons. First, for the Jew to leave Bethlehem would be to leave the presence of God. This was the land where God promised He would be with His people. They had symbols of His abiding presence and systems He had instituted among them to remind them of His providence. They were with Him together—preserving family values, maintaining ancestral religion, seeking to do things as He instructed them to, and nurturing one another in Him. It’s also striking that Elimelech and his family chose Moab as their destination. God had commanded Israel not to involve themselves with the Moabites (Deuteronomy 23:3-4).
"No Ammonite or Moabite or any of their descendants may enter the assembly of the Lord, not even in the tenth generation. For they did not come to meet you with bread and water on your way when you came out of Egypt, and they hired Balaam son of Beor from Pethor in Aram Naharaim to pronounce a curse on you."
Deuteronomy 23:3-4 CSB
This Jewish family planned to stay in Moab only for a while. They started out as sojourners looking for a temporary solution to a physical need, but at some point, it became more permanent. They “remained” in Moab (v. 2)—even after Elimelech’s death (v. 3)—settling in a foreign land, far from God’s presence, for about a decade (v. 4). Pragmatism won out over obedient faith. Naomi’s story, going from awful to absolutely horrific, is told in just five short verses. But we shouldn’t miss the fact that a good bit of time passed between these verses. Elimelech died, but Naomi’s two sons got married in Moab— joyful occasions that likely soothed, to some extent, the tremendous grief they surely felt. The weddings expanded Naomi’s family unit and brought the prospect of even greater family connections through the hope of grandchildren.
But she could not have imagined the tragedy that would unfold. Not only did Naomi have no grandchildren—none were born to these two couples in a period of ten years—but she actually found herself without her own children, as “both Mahlon and Chilion died, so that the woman was left without her two sons and her husband” (v. 5).
Naomi was a lonely widow living in a foreign country without the protection and provision of either her husband or sons in a male-dominated society. This is a story with a hopeless setup. And as the story unfolds, we naturally wonder what’s going to happen. Is it possible that God will bring triumph from this tragedy?
"During the time of the judges, there was a famine in the land. A man left Bethlehem in Judah with his wife and two sons to stay in the territory of Moab for a while. The man’s name was Elimelech, and his wife’s name was Naomi. The names of his two sons were Mahlon and Chilion. They were Ephrathites from Bethlehem in Judah. They entered the fields of Moab and settled there. Naomi’s husband, Elimelech, died, and she was left with her two sons. Her sons took Moabite women as their wives: one was named Orpah and the second was named Ruth. After they lived in Moab about ten years, both Mahlon and Chilion also died, and the woman was left without her two children and without her husband."
Ruth 1:1-5 CSB
In Ruth 1:1-5, we see one of Israel’s family units teetering on the brink of extinction. If there was one thing that would have been a cause for shame in the nation of Israel, it was your family line coming to an end. And that was exactly what Naomi was facing. Her husband was gone, her boys were dead, and she was too old to get married again. If there were to be any prospect of offspring in these dire circumstances, it would have to be a work of God!