Woot

but this time it's not about her

Years ago when my children were pre-teens and teens, the church we attended had a visiting missionary who was from India. When the time came for him to preach, he began by asking the congregation to turn in their Bibles to the book of Woot, and he continued on with his introduction.

Thirty seconds went by with him still talking when he realized no one was turning pages. He stopped and said, “Woot. R - U - T - H. Woot.”

I literally never turn to Ruth without thinking about that guy. This missionary also got so excited during his preaching that he jumped up on the front pew and stomped his feet a few times, which made some of us a little uneasy, so he was doubly memorable. But I digress.

Because I am just a tad unconventional, I started reading my Bible through last year in September. Maybe it was all the time I had to sit at the rehab place while Daddy was there. At any rate, I got to Ruth on November 29. I know this because I keep a notebook with my Bible so I can write at least one thing that stood out in that day’s reading. I have literally nothing written from my days in Leviticus, and I wonder what that says about me. Digressing again.

Photo by Annie Spratt on Unsplash

From the day I read Ruth, I have four pages of notes. I was going to share these thoughts at a ladies’ conference, but that’s a whole story in itself so I’m sharing it here instead, which is totally fine with me since I would a thousand times rather write than speak in front of live people.

But first, here’s a tiny bit of back story that we will come back to later. When I was reading Genesis last year and came to the part where God made all the animals and Adam named them and then God said it wasn’t good for the man to be alone, I realized this: God made a specific help for the man, presumably because he needed help. But God never made a specific help for the woman. Maybe God figured the man would help her by default. I don’t know and the Bible never says. But just remember that: God made a help for the man, but he did not make one specific help for the woman.

Back to Ruth.

In the very first verse of the book we find out who the book is about, and it’s not Ruth. This is the first time in my life I have ever realized that. The book is named for Ruth, and she is certainly a player in the story, but this book is about Naomi.

The TLDR version is this: Naomi and her husband Elimelech, Jews from Bethlehem, took their two sons and went to a foreign land because there was a famine in Israel and they needed food. They chose Moab, a country the Israelites had beaten in battle 200 years prior, so I’m assuming Elimelech and his family weren’t terribly welcome there.

While they were in Moab, Elimelech died, so Naomi was a single mother in an unfriendly foreign country in a culture where women were not welcome in the workplace. Yet Naomi stayed there long enough for the boys to grow up and marry Moabite women. This wouldn’t have been approved of by the Jews, but that’s where they were and the only women available were Moabites, so that’s who they married.

Sources who are smarter than I am have said the boys and their wives were married some ten years and yet neither of the women had children. Stress will do that, and surely this was a stressful situation what with all the competing cultures and scarce food and lack of a father to provide.

Then, to top it all off, both of the boys died too. So there was Naomi. She lost her husband while she was living in a strange land, her sons married outside of their own people (which God had said not to do), then her sons died and now she was stuck in this foreign land with these two foreign daughters-in-law. That’s a lot for one woman to handle, especially in the days when a woman on her own almost couldn’t survive. Maybe it’s because I’ve had a little trauma in my life, but I’m learning to recognize situations that could be traumatic for other people. Maybe they weren’t, but there’s a good possibility this one was for Naomi.

Finally, she made a decision. She could not stay in Moab; there was no one there to take care of her. She couldn’t go back to her father because he was likely already dead. So she would go back to Bethlehem Judah—back to her people—and maybe something would turn up. She felt backed into a corner and didn’t know what else to do.

So she told the girls to go back to their mothers’ houses (it’s interesting to me that she sent them to their mothers’ house and not their fathers’) with the intention of them finding new husbands. They were still young enough to bear children, so that was a possibility and really the best choice for them.

When they tried to argue, Naomi told them she was too old to have a husband and bear more sons. She had no hope. She grieved not only her husband and sons, but because “the hand of the Lord is gone out against me” (Ruth 1:13).

Orpah looked at the situation and said, okay, I’m going back to my mother and my gods. Ruth insisted she was going to Judah with Naomi. This is where we find the whole “whither thou goest, I will go” speech where Ruth made it clear she wanted to follow Naomi’s God. Good choice.

So off Ruth and Naomi went until they came to Bethlehem, and after all those years, everyone recognized Naomi. They all gathered around and apparently were excited to see her. But Naomi dropped a mud-bomb on the parade.

“Call me not Naomi, call me Mara [bitter] . . .”

“. . . the Almighty hath dealt very bitterly with me.”

“I went out full, and the Lord hath brought me home again empty . . .”

“. . . the Lord hath testified against me . . .”

“. . . the Almighty hath afflicted me . . .”

Can you imagine Naomi’s hurt after all she had been through? She lost her home, lost her husband, lost her only two children. She felt alone and forsaken. She’d been trying to be strong in Moab, but now she’s home with her people and it all comes gushing out. We can understand her deep grief.

But maybe she crosses a line here. In every statement, she makes it clear that all of her losses are God’s fault—not just that he allowed them, but that he did them on purpose. In each case, the verb is active and God is the one doing it:

The hand of the Lord is gone out against me . . . Almighty hath dealt very bitterly . . . Lord hath brought me home empty . . . Lord hath testified against me . . . Almighty hath afflicted me.

Clearly she blamed God for all her misfortune. Part of me understands how she feels this way. She was as human as I am but without access to all the information we now know about grief and trauma. But still. There’s a line here and Naomi has stuck her toe across it.

God could have squashed her like a grape.

“But God, who is rich in mercy, for his great love wherewith he loved us . . .”

This verse is from Ephesians 4, written centuries after Naomi was struggling, but God is the same yesterday, today, and forever. He loved Naomi just as much as he loves me today. His mercy was just as sweet and timely and rich for Naomi as it is for me today.

Instead of squashing her, God provided for her abundantly.

First, God gave Naomi a wealthy kinsman.

We see this in the first verse of chapter two.

“And Naomi had a kinsman of her husband’s, a mighty man of wealth, of the family of Elimelech; and his name was Boaz.”

He wasn’t Ruth’s kinsman, he was Naomi’s. Back then if a woman was widowed, her husband’s brother (or near kinsman) would marry her and “raise up seed” in the name of her husband. This was the way they kept the family line going and also kept the husband’s property in the family. The kinsman was her ticket to survival. He would provide for her. This would have been a huge relief to Naomi.

But Naomi was too old to have more children, so how would the kinsman raise up seed in the name of her dead husband? Watch and see.

Second, God gave Naomi a willing daughter-in-law.

We see this in the very next verse, when Ruth says to Naomi, hey, I’m going to the fields to glean corn wherever I can find a place that they let me.

In those times, if you had a field of crops, you would typically leave some around the edges for the poor to pick. It was a voluntary form of welfare that took care of the poor and also kept them incentivized to work. Ruth knew this and said she would go get whatever she could so they wouldn’t starve. She told Naomi she would find a field owned by someone “in whose sight I shall find grace.” She already knew enough about Naomi’s God to be looking for his grace.

In the next verse we learn that Ruth went and gleaned after the reapers. It says, “. . . her hap was to light on a part of the field belonging unto Boaz . . . ,” Naomi’s wealthy kinsman.

Can we just stop and acknowledge that there is nothing “hap” about this? First, God provided a wealthy kinsman. Then he provided a daughter-in-law who was willing to go work hard and sweat in the fields to bring home a few ears of corn. God orchestrated this perfectly. He brought the willing DIL and the wealthy kinsman together perfectly like two sides of a zipper.

So Ruth and Boaz met, and you can read the details of the story in the book of Ruth—it’s only four chapters and it’s beautiful.

Naomi coaches Ruth through the whole negotiation—where to go, how to dress, what to do and say. She wanted to make sure the wealthy kinsman and Ruth got together.

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(A word on rest)

One of the things I found interesting in this story is that in verse 1:9 when Naomi is telling the girls to go back to their mothers, she prays they will find “rest, each of you in the house of her husband.” She wants them to go find new Moabite husbands so they’ll have someone to take care of them and they can have rest.

Then in 3:1 while the whole process between Boaz and Ruth is going on, she says to Ruth, “. . . shall I not seek rest for thee, that it may be well with thee?” Naomi was trying to help orchestrate the marriage of Boaz and Ruth so that Ruth would have rest.

And finally in verse 18 of that chapter, Naomi tells Ruth to wait and watch, that Boaz “will not be in rest, until he have finished the thing this day.” In other words, once the marriage was finalized, Boaz would also have rest.

Clearly, God’s plan for marriage is rest. Probably for a woman, it is physical and emotional rest. She would be provided for and cherished. A woman can rest in that. For a man, maybe it’s psychological rest. He would have a partner, a helper, someone to stand by him through it all. But for both the husband and wife, marriage is intended to bring rest.

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Finally, God provided Naomi with women friends.

In the end, Boaz performed the role of the kinsman and bought Elimelech’s property and with it, Ruth as a wife, since she’s the one who could still bear children. It’s a beautiful picture of God buying us back to himself after we were estranged. We are the needy, destitute, with no hope, and he is the wealthy kinsman redeemer who makes us his own to care for us forever.

But the story doesn’t end there. Remember in the beginning when Naomi blamed God for everything? His hand was against her, he dealt bitterly with her, he testified against her, he afflicted her. Everything was his fault.

Look what 4:13 says:

“So Boaz took Ruth, and she was his wife: and when he went in unto her, the Lord gave her conception, and she bare a son.”

The Lord gave conception. HE did it. Ruth was looking for God’s grace and she found it in a wealthy kinsman and a baby she was never able to have before. She did not know that child would be a forebear of Jesus, but God did. This was no hap; it was God working out his perfect will using imperfect humans.

Then—and this is maybe the best thing I learned from this story—look at what Naomi’s women friends told her in verses 14–17:

“Blessed be the Lord, which hath not left thee this day without a kinsman, that his name may be famous in Israel. And he shall be unto thee a restorer of thy life, and a nourisher of thine old age; for thy daughter-in-law, which loveth thee, which is better to thee than seven sons, hath born him.”

Nothing like a bunch of girlfriends speaking God’s powerful truth into your life. They knew she needed a knot jerked in her bitter heart, and they wasted no time jerking it.

“And Naomi took the child, and laid it in her bosom, and became nurse unto it.”

What a privilege, what a humbling honor, what a gift to be able to nurse your own grandchild. This may sound weird to us today, but back then it was common. It allowed the younger women to get back on their feet more quickly, and it created a family bond that was so necessary, especially among the women.

“And the women her neighbors gave it a name, saying, There is a son born to Naomi . . .”

This baby was considered a son to Naomi, credited to her offspring account, the fruit of the womb being God’s reward (Psalm 127:3), and her women friends were not going to let her forget it. They were reminding her to put all her bitterness behind her and see what the Lord has done right here, right now, in your very own life, Naomi!

Naomi may not have had a help created specifically for her by God, but she had women friends who did what friends should do. Proverbs 27:17 says, “Iron sharpeneth iron; so a man sharpeneth the countenance of his friend.” Her friends were sharpening her long before it was a proverb.

One of the things I am learning through the process of writing a book is to always look for a narrative arc in a story. Who is the main character and what is the transformation they go through?

If you look at the book of Ruth in this way, you see the main character as Naomi, and you can clearly see the change in her from the beginning to the end. It was God showing her his marvelous grace despite her hard story.

I bet at the end she didn’t want to be called Mara anymore.