Daily Manna, Year Two · Day 59 · February 28
The Road Out of Moab
“And Ruth said, Intreat me not to leave thee, or to return from following after thee: for whither thou goest, I will go; and where thou lodgest, I will lodge: thy people shall be my people, and thy God my God:”
Three widows are standing on the road from Moab to Judah. The oldest, Naomi, has just told the other two to go back home.
"Turn again, my daughters, go your way; for I am too old to have an husband." Naomi works it out aloud: she has no more sons for them to marry, and they cannot wait years for husbands. Then she gives her real reason: "for it grieveth me much for your sakes that the hand of the LORD is gone out against me." She believes God has turned against her, and she says so to their faces. Yet one of them stays.
Look at Ruth as a real person, apart from the wedding readings. She comes from Moab, a nation that Israel's law kept at arm's length: "An Ammonite or Moabite shall not enter into the congregation of the LORD." She married into a family who had come to Moab as newcomers because there was famine in Bethlehem. About ten years passed, and no child is recorded. All three men of the household have died. The only person she is still tied to is a bitter widow from another country, who owes her nothing under the law.
Orpah does the sensible thing and goes home, and the book never says a word against her.
Ruth answers with an oath, and she ends it by calling a curse down on herself if she ever breaks it: "Where thou diest, will I die, and there will I be buried: the LORD do so to me, and more also, if ought but death part thee and me." In the middle of it she says, "thy people shall be my people, and thy God my God." She says that to a woman who has just told her this God is against her.
When they reach Bethlehem, Naomi tells the town, "Call me not Naomi, call me Mara," and the name Mara means bitter. She says, "I went out full, and the LORD hath brought me home again empty." Ruth is right there beside her while she says the word empty. Yet the God Naomi thought had turned against her was already at work, and Ruth's loyalty was part of how He would fill Naomi's life again.
So here is a caution for anyone who has heard these words at a wedding. They were spoken uphill, to someone who could give nothing back and did not even say thank you. And they were spoken by a woman binding herself to a God who, as far as anyone could see, had let this family fall apart. Borrow the sentence if you like, but borrow the place it was spoken from as well.
Daily Manna runs on a two-year cycle. The year one reading for day 59 is Sweet Sleep (Proverbs 3:24).