Where You Go, I Will Go
NL206 for October 15, 2023
The Text
Last Time on Tales of Faith
Last time we heard the beginning of the speech given by Moses to the people right before they entered the Promised Land. Further into the book of Deuteronomy, Moses passes off leadership to Joshua, who then leads the people into Canaan. What happens next is a pretty bloody tale of conquest (if it is accurate), and the splitting up of the land among the tribes of Israel. The next scroll, Judges, continues this story as the tribes of Israel and various other kingdoms and people-groups vie for control. This collection of stories really establishes a Deuteronomistic trope of ‘the people mess up and worship other gods,’ ‘God sends an enemy against them,’ ‘the people cry out to God and God sends a leader (judge) to save them,’ repeat. These leaders are more and more morally dubious (that sounds familiar), and by the end of the scroll, there is a summation that “in those days, everyone did what was right in their own eyes.” This is the context for the Book of Ruth, the ‘nation’ of Israel is a loose confederation of tribes who occasionally has a leader.
Overview of Ruth
1:1-5 Prologue
1:6-22 Naomi and Ruth Return to Bethlehem
2:1-23 Ruth works in Boaz’s field
3:1-18 Ruth meets Boaz at the threshing floor (oh my!)
4:1-12 Boaz and the other guy arrange for redemption
4:13-21 Afterward
Characters
Elimelech (my God is king)
Naomi (pleasant, gentle)
Mara (Bitter)
Mahlon (sick, sickness, sickly)
Chilion (finished, complete, perfect)
Ruth (friend, companion, compassionate friend)
Orpah (neck, fawn, gazelle, back of the neck)
Boaz (swiftness)
Today’s Story
A Female Driven Story
This is it, this is the one biblical text that can (more or less) pass the Bechdel Test. First noted in a 1985 comic strip by Alison Bechdel, and accredited to her friend Liz Wallace, the Bechdel (or Bechdel-Wallace) Test is a shorthand way to look at representation of women in film and literature. The test is simple:
Are there at least two women characters? (bonus points if they are named characters)
Do they talk to each other?
About something other than a man?
The story of Ruth passes number one pretty easily, Naomi and Ruth are not only named, but also are the active participants in the story. The story of Ruth passes number 2 pretty handily, many of the dialogues in the story are between these two women, and a few between Naomi and the women of Bethlehem. The dialogue that we have in today’s paricape actually passes number three as well. While there are several dialogues between women in this story about a man (specifically Boaz), this one (more or less) is not.
Men certainly are in the background of the conversation. It is the lack of either a husband or sons to take care of her that Naomi is traveling back to Bethlehem, and most of her side of the speech is oriented towards men. She tells both of her daughters-in-law to go back to their mother’s house, with the implication that their mothers can find husbands for them. When they say that they will return with her, she asks what use she is to them, she has no sons to marry them. This assumes an understanding of Levirate Marriage (Deuteronomy 25:5-10, I told you we would need it this week) where at the death of a son (specifically a firstborn), the next brother would marry his widow as a way to carry on the family line. Naomi assumes that because she has no husband or other sons, there is nothing that she can do for them. Even with a hypothetical situation of getting pregnant that night, would it be fair for them to wait the 14 or so years until he was of marrying age? Naomi is a creature of patriarchy, she is beloved property. Orpah heeds the advice, and returns home.
Ruth on the other hand not only does not return to her home, she pledges herself to Naomi. Ruth does not understand herself only in terms of a relationship with a man. She sees a relationship with her mother-in-law, and understands the implications of righteousness that this relationship implies. She sees a future and a hope for them, two women taking care of each other, end of sentence. Even though the story ends ‘happily ever after’ with a traditional family, at this point in the story that is not Ruth’s goal. Ruth and Naomi are the actors in the story all the way until the last chapter. In fact, it is this commitment to righteousness that catches Boaz’s attention.
Famine in the ‘House of Bread:
The opening of the book of Ruth places it in the time of the Judges, so a time when everyone is doing what is right in their own eyes. The people are in a perpetual cycle of falling into idolatry, and experiencing the ‘curses’ that Moses had warned them about. many times, that means the conquering and capturing of Hebrew tribes by other kingdoms. Sometimes, like in this story, it means more mundane challenges like famine. Ironically, this famine hits Bethlehem, literally ‘the house of bread.’
The results of this famine leads the actors of the story to make decisions, one event leads to another to another, until people are forced into difficult decisions. Much like life. The famine leads Elimelech to make a decision about the future of his family, to move to Moab. He dies there soon after (it seems), which leaves Naomi, Mahlon, and Chilion in a foreign land without a patriarch. Mahlon and Chilion marry Moabite women (little information is given for this decision, but we might imagine that the impetus is for the future of their line. Ten years later, Ruth and Orpah are childless, and Mahlon and Chilion die. This leaves Naomi without any male provider (a near necessity in the ancient world), and Ruth and Orpah as young widows. Naomi hears that the famine, the inciting incident, is now over and makes the decision to go back home (which she has not lived in for ten years).
The Land of Moab
Elimilech sees the situation of famine, and decides that something must be done for himself and his family. How many others in our world are put in such dire predicaments, who need to leave the home that they have grown up in, just to find a place to survive?
However, instead of moving to one of the neighboring tribal lands, Elimilech decides to bring his family to the land of Moab. The land of Moab was another kingdom to the southeast of Canaan, and generally was considered an enemy to the Hebrews. The Hebrew’s story about the beginning of the land of Moab is found in Genesis 19 after the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah. Lot and his daughters escape to a cave, and the daughters liquor up their father in order to be impregnated (lots of issues there), and the sons born from those unions are Moab and Amon (another neighboring kingdom). Suffice it to say, these were not the Hebrew’s favorite people. Yet this is where they go, and this is the ethnic heritage of Ruth, the protagonist and titular role of the story. In the text she is specifically named six separate times as a Moabite woman (it is a major plot/character point)
So why does he go there? Some suggest that the story of Ruth was not actually written during the time of the Judges [pearls clutched], but much later after the return from Exile. While there were certainly those (namely Ezra and Nehemiah) who called for ethnic purity, even within those books there is evidence that widespread mixing was going on with the various people and the returning Jewish people. This interpretation makes the story of Ruth a tale of encouragement for cross cultural relationships. The book of Ruth may have been the Hebrew equivalent of the ‘parable of the good Samaritan,’ getting people to rethink their ethnic and racial assumptions about one another.
Tragedy
In a handful of verses, Elimilech dies, Mahlon and Chilion marry, and they die. No wonder that later on, Naomi tells her fellow Bethlehemites to “call me Mara (bitter),/ for the Almighty (Shaddai) has dealt bitterly with me” (1:20). She is in a place of grief, and a feeling that God themselves is against her.
This is often a common response to trauma and tragedy. It is rooted in the assumption of the sovereignty of God, and the understanding of the ‘way things should be.’ This exploration of justice and the plans of God is explored throughout the Hebrew Poetical literature, of which Ruth is a part. The Ketuvim (writings) begin with the book of Psalms which is a mix of justice claims in which the righteous are rewarded, and the wicked are punished, and a crying out to God when that is not the case. The book of Proverbs, however, tends to present a very clear and simplistic moral perspective, “the wage of the righteous leads to life,/ the gain of the wicked to sin” (Proverbs 10:16). Proverbs’ perspective is then problematized with the story of Job, who is tortured by the satan (accuser) not only in spite of, but because of Job’s righteousness. In the end YHWH comes down in a whirlwind to answer Job’s accusation of divine injustice, and basically tells him that such things are way above his pay grade, Job simply does not have a wide enough perspective to understand justice. The Christian Old Testament inserts Ecclesiastes in between Proverbs and Job, where the teacher declares that everything is qoheleth vaper (the Hebrew arrangement places Ecclesiastes after Ruth and Lamentations).
This week we can understand the strong reaction to injustice, and the unwillingness to hear anything otherwise, as we watch in horror the unfolding of events in Israel. I am the convener of an Interfaith group that includes both Jewish and Muslim members. I attempted to write a statement in the aftermath of the brutal attack by Hamas against Israeli citizens (Jewish, Muslim, and Christian) that also acknowledged the human rights issues in Gaza and the West Bank, and called for peace. For one of my conversation partners, any criticism of the nation of Israel was unacceptable in the rawness of these early days, they were simply unable to hear such things. Perhaps like Naomi, unwilling to hear her old name, meaning pleasant or gentle, when an Almighty and Sovereign God was willing to allow such pain in her life.
This story also presents a window into someone else’s lived experience. It gives a name and (imagined) face to a woman who was moved to a foreign land, lost her husband and sons, and now returns to her land as a widow with few legal rights, and fewer options. We see the life of a young woman who chooses to leave her homeland for a found-family, and must navigate the economic and social structures of living as one of ‘the poors.’ It is so easy to distance ourselves from other people's experience, but story can allow us a window. Last week I led (for the second time) a poverty simulation which explored the racial wealth gap in America. It was eye opening for people to experience in some small way the struggles that generations of black people in our country have faced, and the structural racism in our past and present. It was so impactful for one woman, that she asked for the materials to lead her grandchildren through the simulation.
Found Family
Another major theme of this story, especially of the section that we are reading, is that of found family. Most of us have our family of origin, and I would be willing to bet that most of us have some challenges that come along with that family of origin. Sometimes families are incredibly supportive and loving, many times they are not as supportive as we would like. When we find ourselves in an unsupportive situation, or we find ourselves far from home, we can collect friends around us that can become our family (or ‘framlily’). We don’t get to choose our family of origin, but we do get to choose our framilies.
Naomi heads back to Bethlehem, having heard that YHWH had ‘considered’ their people. Ruth and Orpah start to go with her, but she tells them to go back to their mother’s houses (a possible sign that the Moabite culture could have been matriarchal). Orpah does go back, starting a very successful daytime television empire and lifestyle brand. Ruth however pledges to stay with Naomi as her found family. In an impassioned speech, often used in weddings (completely ignoring the context), Ruth promises to go with Naomi, that Naomi’s people would be her people, that Naomi’s god would be her god, that she would follow wherever she goes. The rest of the story is an unfolding of this connection, the mutual support that these women have for each other, when they have no one else to support them. It is this fierce connection and mutual support that will catch the eye of Boaz later in the story. This righteous action of Ruth sticking to Naomi, even though she could have done otherwise, is one of the first things that Boaz is told about Ruth. It is Naomi’s desire for a future for her daughter-in-law (and her own, let’s be honest) that leads her to push that relationship, eventually ending in Ruth and Boaz’s marriage.
When we moved to South Carolina, we had a wonderful found family. Relatively far away from family in North Carolina, and very far away from family in California, we gathered around ourselves a couple of families. Our kids played together, and became almost siblings (at least cousins), we would spend holidays and normal days with one another. Now that we have moved, we still see them often, our kids play Minecraft and Bloons TD6 together, we occasionally rent a house to vacation together. They are the family that we have chosen.
Pop Culture References
‘Community’ is a spectacular show about a found family of misfits who meet and become a family at community college.
For Gen X, the seminal ‘found family’ are the friends of ‘Friends.’
Millennials have ‘How I Met Your Mother’ which has a similar vibe.
There are lots of examples of those who have lost everything, and still continue on inspired by that loss.
A classic one is the “as God as my witness, I’ll never be hungry again” scene from Gone With The Wind (1939). Scarlette O’hara has just lost her home in a fire, and vows that she will do whatever it takes to not be in this same position again.
More Links
The Bible Worm Podcast 506; Episode 106 (2019)
Bible Project: Ruth (Read the Bible Series)
Faith Adjacent Podcast: “Ruth and Naomi”
Faith Adjacent Podcast: “Ruth and Naomi” (OG episode)
The Bible for Normal People: “Rev. Dr. Judy Fentress-Williams- The Book of Ruth”
Hymn Suggestions
As Those of Old Their Firstfruits Brought (712)