Our Lord & Savior

The Book of Ruth: Part 1

Elimelech's Family goes to Moab

(Ruth 1:1-5)

1 In the time when judges governed, a famine arose in the land. A man from Bethlehem in Judah went to live temporarily in Moab with his wife and two sons.

2 The man's name was Elimelech, his wife's name was Naomi, and his two sons were named Mahlon and Chilion; they were Ephrathites from Bethlehem in Judah. They arrived in Moab and settled there.

3 Then Elimelech, Naomi's husband, died, and she was left with her two sons.

4 These sons married Moabite women; one was named Orpah and the other Ruth. They lived there for about ten years.

5 Eventually, both Mahlon and Chilion also died, and Naomi was left without her two sons and her husband.

Naomi Returns with Ruth

(Ruth 1: 6-22)

6 Then she rose with her daughters-in-law to return from the land of Moab, for she had heard there how the Lord had visited His people by providing them bread.

7 So she departed from the place where she was, accompanied by her two daughters-in-law, and they set out on the road back to the land of Judah.

8 Naomi then said to her two daughters-in-law, "Go back, each of you, to your mother's home. May the Lord show you kindness, as you have shown to the dead and to me."

9 "May the Lord grant each of you rest in the home of another husband." She kissed them, and they wept aloud.

10 They said to her, "We will surely return with you to your people."

11 Then Naomi said, "Return home, my daughters. Why would you come with me? Are there still sons in my womb to become your husbands?

12 Go back, my daughters; go on your way. I am too old to have a husband. Even if I had hope and married tonight and bore sons,

13 would you wait for them until they grew up? Would you refrain from marrying others? No, my daughters, it grieves me deeply that the Lord's hand has turned against me."

14 They wept aloud again, and Orpah kissed her mother-in-law goodbye, but Ruth clung to her.

15 Naomi said, "Look, your sister-in-law has returned to her people and her gods. Go back after your sister-in-law."

16 Ruth said, "Do not urge me to leave you or to turn back from following you. For where you go, I will go, and where you stay, I will stay. Your people will be my people, and your God, my God.

17 Where you die, I will die, and there I will be buried. May the Lord deal with me, be it ever so severely, if anything but death separates you and me."

18 When Naomi realized that Ruth was determined to go with her, she stopped urging her.

19 So the two of them continued on their journey until they reached Bethlehem. When they arrived in Bethlehem, the whole town was stirred because of them, and the women exclaimed, "Can this be Naomi?"

20 "Don't call me Naomi," she told them. "Call me Mara, because the Almighty has made my life very bitter."

21 I left full, and the Lord has brought me back empty. Why do you call me Naomi when the Lord has testified against me, and the Almighty has brought misfortune upon me?

22 Thus, Naomi returned, and with her Ruth the Moabitess, her daughter-in-law, who came back from the land of Moab. And they arrived in Bethlehem at the start of the barley harvest.