Ruth 1:1-18 Commentary

The next two Sundays create a wonderful opportunity for reflection on harvest, on reliance on God in the hard times and gratitude to God who provides — wonderful themes for the Thanksgiving season.

Illustration

The Bechdel Test is a way of evaluating film content named for its creator, Alison Bechdel. It is an informal way to evaluate whether female characters in a film, TV show or, really, any story are fully fleshed out as whole human persons.  The test is simple: does this story have at least two female characters who talk to one another about a subject other than men and romantic love? Ruth is a fascinating test case.

Commentary:

A lot of retellings of the story of Ruth or, rather, of Naomi, tell it as a kind of love story. Sweet Ruth is left a young, childless widow after her first husband dies.  She is devoted to her mother-in-law Naomi and accompanies her back to her hometown, Bethlehem.  Literally “House of Bread”.  Could anything be more idyllic than that?  There she and Naomi fall on hard times, are out of luck without husbands or close relatives to provide for them long-term and Ruth sticks out there as a foreign women. Undeterred, plucky Ruth heads out into the fields to get a job, to fit in with the other women picking up the grain left over by the harvesters.  There she catches the eye of rich and good Boaz.  Naomi, playing the sassy side-kick, arranges a super-weird date on the threshing floor.  Intentions are stated, plans are made, but Ruth has to return home to Naomi to wait for Boaz to sort a few matters out.  He negotiates the matter with other family members, they marry and everyone lives happily ever after.

But that reading falls flat.  One might argue this is because it doesn’t quite pass the Bechdel Test. In fact, the real stories and the characters in it are so much bigger and more challenging than that.  The first thing we need to know is that, while this book is named for Ruth, it is actually the story of a different character — Naomi.  Far from a wacky side-kick.  She is the beating, sometimes broken, heart of this story.

Naomi, her husband and 2 sons (the perfect family set-up according to custom and culture — an heir and a spare, as they say) travel to Moab.  Her sons marry.  Her daughters-in-law are, by all accounts loving and loyal.  Then her husband dies, leaving Naomi bereft but not without hope.  Wives are often younger than their husbands; they will often outlive them.  That’s why she has two sons.  They will care for her in their households.  But then they die, both without children.  Naomi has fallen on the hardest times imaginable for a woman at that time — a foreigner, no husband, no sons, far too old to marry again or have children.  There is no one in Moab to protect her and no close relative in Bethlehem.  But there, at least, she has friends and more distant relations.

She closes out this chapter of her life by summarizing.  Don’t call me Naomi anymore.  Naomi means pleasant.  Call me Mara, which means bitter because “I went away full but the Lord has brought me back empty.”

But even as Naomi returns empty, she does not return home alone.  Hard as she tries to convince her daughters-in-law to stay in Moab where they might marry again, where they might find children and protection and even happiness; she can’t seem to shake tag-along Ruth.

And here’s where this story passes the Bechdel Test with flying colors. The relationship between Ruth and Naomi is what is central to this story.  So much so that Ruth pledges herself to Naomi’s care and well-being:

“Don’t urge me to leave you or turn back from you. Where you go, I will go and where you stay, I will stay. Your people will be my people and your God my God. Where you die, I will die and there I will be buried. May the Lord deal with me, be it ever so severely if even death separates you and me.”

While many couples have chosen this speech as a reading at their wedding, in its original context it is not about romantic love. It is a promise given by a young woman to an older woman.  This is deep, complicated, familial love.  The Hebrew word for this is “hesed,” a committed kindness, loyalty to the point of self-sacrifice.

A love that compels Ruth to leave behind her own familiar surroundings, her own language and culture.  She moves to where Naomi will feel most at home, most comfortable.  She works diligently in the field, so much so that the laborers point out her hard work to Boaz.  He commends her character and respects her loyalty to Naomi.  Who knows if his heart skips a beat or he feels butterflies in his stomach?  That is not the point of this story.

Womanist theologian Wilda Gafney writes in the Africana Bible Commentary: “It is in Ruth’s power to choose where she will make her way in the world. She chooses her mother-in-law, chooses to stay with her, worship (with) her and support her. When Ruth gives birth, she is a surrogate for Naomi.”

And that is the depth of Ruth’s gritty compassion, committed love and loyal kindness to Naomi: she consents to this marriage and gives birth to this child so that Naomi will have an heir and, with him, a future.

Ruth chooses love.  Not in that cozy Hallmark kind of way but in the deep, sacrificial, long-term commitment, nothing will separate us kind of way. While many will point to Boaz as “kinsman-redeemer” as an exemplar of Christ (which is true), it might be easy to miss the way that Ruth’s  deep, sacrificial, come-hell-or-high-water commitment to Naomi shows us something Christ’s own restorative love: redeeming what is lost, filling up empty arms, the sweetening of bitter waters.  In Ruth’s actions we can begin to imagine the work of kindness that will, one day, restore the whole world.

The hesed-kindness of a Savior who gathers children on his knee, who notices the widow, who heals the outcast and restores the alienated to their families.

The hesed-loyalty of a Savior who sticks with a band of disciples over 3 long years, even though they hardly understand what he is doing, who feeds Judas at the Last Supper and who reinstates the fallen Peter after Jesus’ resurrection.

The hesed-self-sacrifice of a Savior who suffers death, accused of crimes and made guilty of sins he never committed so that our emptiness could be filled, our lives could be redeemed.

In this way, Jesus chooses deep, sacrificial, long-term commitment; a nothing-will-separate-us kind of love.