Ruth and Naomi

RUTH AS A STORY OF HEADSCARVES

A stream of headscarves goes through history. We sometimes see themas the background to television pictures of politicians who enjoy pos-ing for the camera, shaking hands, and drawing crowds. Theheadscarves do not pose. Bent over against the cold or the heat, theytear at one’s heart as they stand mourning—by the graves of their deadhusbands or slaughtered sons. They fight over scarce pieces of bread orlook for water in order to keep their children and grandchildren alive.They go away from their destroyed homes, fleeing the violence of war.Who keeps history going, one asks, the politicians or these women?Survival evidently happens under cover.

The headscarves are a byway of history. The biblical book of Ruthtakes place on such a byway. Two migrant women, Naomi and Ruth,are widows and have great difficulty in surviving. After much sorrowand inventiveness they succeed. Eventually they even have a child whois to become the ancestor of King David. However, the genealogy atthe end of the book has only included the names of the fathers, andso this byway is brought back to the main road.

The book of Ruth is still closed. Soon we shall be taken on a jour-ney though a world that is not ours, and we shall come up against thestrange world of foreigners: they are like us, and remain different fromus. We can develop an eye for them, but their eyes never coincide withours. And our effort at understanding is specifically directed towardsachieving their perspective: we want to see what they see and feel whatthey feel. Yet the moment that we think that we have been successfulhere, we often discover that our perspective does not coincide withtheirs but theirs with ours; and so usually we have reduced the otherto ourselves again. It’s like the story of the rabbi who all his life hasmade an effort to be humble. After a long life of practicing this hethinks, “Now at last I’ve become humble. I’m as humble as anyone can

Introduction

be. I’m a champion of humility.” And immediately he realizes, “I haveto begin all over again.”

Ruth is not just an illegal alien in Bethlehem but also a woman, ina society in which women only become someone as “wife of,” “daugh-ter of,” “sister of.” So when all these men—the husband, the father, orthe brother—disappear, such a woman completely ceases to exist.Even to be a daughter-in-law, as Ruth is, is not a real alternative. Cer-tainly not if the mother-in-law, who in her turn derives her identityonly from her husband and her sons, no longer has either husband orsons. It is difficult to derive your identity from someone who herselfhas no identity. All that is left is illegal work, dirty and heavy work tostay alive. In her case it is gleaning ears of grain, standing all day bentover and working hard for a handful of grains of wheat or barley. Howcan anyone doing that become visible, one might wonder? Sometimesan invisible someone encounters good people. Sometimes someonefinds a storyteller who thinks it important to make the invisible visi-ble, and sometimes as a reader one becomes part of a tradition thatbelieves in a God who has a weakness for headscarves.

SEEING AND READING

Even then the question remains: how does one as a reader get some-thing into one’s head and framework of thought? Is it possible for atime to see with the eyes of someone else, even if that someone is acharacter in a story, or a narrator? Precisely because it is difficult toadapt one’s own way of looking, here I have opted for a systematicapproach. My purpose is to offer present-day readers some help inreading a biblical text methodically and seeing different facets of thebook of Ruth. The approach is laid out at the back of the book in theform of a guide to reading. This guide indicates the perspectives, thelines, and the elements that the text offers the reader. We see whatNaomi or Ruth sees, or we adopt the perspective of the narrator whoorders everything in terms of his view and presents it to the reader.Time and again different perspectives and lines will become visible inthe text, depending on the perspective you as reader choose, on thecross-section you make, the elements you accept. Thus, making visible

2 • Ruth and Naomi

means putting a searchlight on the text in order to light up elementsof it. In reading, even systematic reading, seldom, if ever, is everythingseen. Some facets become visible, and together these form a kind offacet-eye. Thus, we gradually develop an eye that is our own eye, andin it the views of other people and their perspectives are included. Toemphasize this, in this book I shall sometimes put passages, passagesin which we look through the eyes of a character in the first person, initalics. That may perhaps also bring out the different perspectives fromwhich one can look at reality and at the text.

A MINIATURE

The story of Ruth is very short. It’s like a medieval miniature. Youmarvel at a miniature more and more, the longer you look at itthrough a magnifying glass. So you will also be caught up in Ruth,certainly if you read it in the Hebrew. The language has a dominantpresence; words keep recurring, lines are spun, and a tower of imagesreaches up to heaven. It is difficult to translate such a text. Either thetranslation is very faithful to the text but stiff and cold, in which casethere is no question of attraction or charm, or the translation is morepoetical in English, with the consequence that it is further from theHebrew. I have opted for a literal translation of Ruth, chapter by chap-ter, and in it to indicate the Hebrew sentence or phrase construction,making clear by the layout of the text when a character offers theinformation (indentation) or when it is provided by the narrator (noindentation); at the same time I wanted to achieve a readable text.

The book of Ruth is not just a story; you could also call it a shortplay. It consists of four acts, which are written out in four chapters. Ifyou were watching a stage performance, I think that it would lastabout half an hour. If you read the book straight through, it will takeeven less. Yet here is a book of 176 pages about such a short story.Unimaginable? Yes. But it takes time to create connections in languageand to bring out meanings that give some indication of another lifeand offer the possibility of getting into someone else’s skin.

Introduction • 3

In the days when the judges gave leadership there was a famine inthe land. So a man went from Bethlehem in Judah to live as anemigrant in the country of Moab, he, his wife, and his two sons.The name of the man was Elimelek, the name of his wife wasNaomi, and the names of his two sons were Mahlon and Chilion.They were Ephrathites from Bethlehem in Judah. When they cameto the country of Moab, they settled there. Then Elimelek, the hus-band of Naomi, died. She was left, she and her two sons. Thesetook Moabite wives. The name of the one was Orpah, the nameof the second was Ruth, and they lived there about ten years. Thenthese two, Mahlon and Chilion, also died. The wife was left,without her two children and her husband.

She arose, she and her daughters-in-law, and returned fromthe country of Moab, for she had heard in the fields in Moab thatYHWH had visited his people to give them bread. Thereupon she setout from the place where she had lived, and her two daughters-in-law with her. They went on the way to return to the land ofJudah. But Naomi said to her two daughters-in-law: “Go!Return, a woman to the house of her mother! May YHWH showgoodness to you, as you have shown it to the dead and to me. MayYHWH grant you that you find rest, a woman in the house of herhusband.” When she kissed them farewell, they raised their voicesand burst into tears. They said to her, “We want to return withyou to your people.” Naomi said: “Turn back, my daughters! Whyshould you go with me? Do I still have sons in my womb who canbecome your husbands? Turn back, my daughters! Go! For I amtoo old to have a husband. Even if I said ‘There is still hope forme,’ even if I belonged to a man tonight, and actually bore sons,

Ruth 1

The Journey

would you wait till they grew up? Would you withhold yourselvesso long from belonging to a man? No, my daughters! It is muchmore bitter for me than for you. YHWH’s own hand has struck me.”They raised their voices, and burst into tears again. Then Orpahkissed her mother-in-law farewell, but Ruth clung to her.

She said, “See, your sister-in-law is going back to her peopleand her God. Go back; follow your sister-in-law.” But Ruth said,“Do not press me to abandon you, to go back from following you,Where you go I shall go. Where you spend the night, I shall spendthe night. Your people are my people; your God is my God. Whereyou die, I shall die, and there shall I be buried. Thus may YHWH

do to me and thus may he continue to do. Nothing but death willseparate me from you.” She saw that she was determined to gowith her. And she refrained from speaking to her.

The two of them went on until they got to Bethlehem. And ithappened when they came into Bethlehem that the whole townbuzzed with excitement over them. They said, “Is this reallyNaomi?” But she told them, “Do not call me Naomi (Lovely), callme Mara (Bitter), for the Almighty has made me very bitter. Iwent away full, and YHWH has made me return empty. Why doyou call me Naomi? YHWH has testified against me. The Almightyhas done evil to me.”

So Naomi returned and Ruth the Moabitess her daughter-in-law with her, who returned from the country of Moab. Theyarrived in Bethlehem at the beginning of the barley harvest.

THROUGH THE EYE OF THE NEEDLE

There is a famine. Even in Bethlehem, the house (bet) of bread(lehem), there is no longer anything to eat. So a man goes away fromBethlehem in Judah with his family. His name is Elimelek, “my Godis king.” The situation is serious: the one whose God is king is fleeing


from the house of bread because of famine. He goes away to a landwhere other gods are king and where there is enough to eat. In thatland, Moab, live people who speak another language, with other cus-toms and another religion. The man and his family go towards anuncertain future. The need must have been very great for them to havebeen prepared to take such a risk. They go there as migrants, as resi-dent aliens. At that time, being a migrant was a status with virtuallyno protection, midway between the full rights of the indigenous pop-ulation and the lack of rights of the slave. Such an alien could not buyland and cultivate a property like the native population, but couldenter the service of indigenous employers, usually landowners, andthus earn his living.

The narrator tells his story from the perspective of Elimelek, as thepossessive pronouns show. The woman is twice called “his” wife andthe sons “his” sons. The name of Elimelek’s wife is Naomi, whichmeans “pleasant” or “lovely.” Those of the sons are less clear. Thenames Mahlon and Chilion rhyme and have the same rhythm of twosyllables. They also always appear together. In short, they form anindissoluble pair like Bill and Ben or Wallace and Grommit. Here thetext puts great emphasis on the number two: “the man and his twosons went away,” “the names of his two sons were,” “she and her twosons remained after Elimelek’s death,” “then the two also died,” and“the woman was robbed of her two children.” We now certainly knowthat there were two of them.

These two sons marry two women from Moab. However, theword “marry” does not appear here, nor indeed does it occur anywherein the Hebrew Bible. Every time men “take” a wife, our Bible trans-lations render this “marry.” Marriage and marrying are much laterinventions, which for convenience are projected back on these texts.That does not mean that “take a wife” or “go into a wife” does not atthe same time indicate the start of a lasting relationship between manand woman. But it is not an equal relationship for the two of them.

Ruth 1: The Journey • 7

The woman is tied to the man, but the man is not exclusively tied tothe woman; he can take another wife. It is evident from many biblicaltexts that the procreation of children is central to any man-womanrelationship. So the texts mention taking, becoming pregnant, andgiving birth in the same breath (see also Ruth 4:13). If you didn’tknow better, you would think that all this took place in a couple ofhours. Problems arise when the woman does not become pregnant,but is infertile. Men were never infertile at that time.

So Elimelek’s sons take foreign wives, one called Orpah and theother Ruth. We are not told who marries whom. Because Mahlon andChilion, and Orpah and Ruth, always appear in this order, one mightthink that Mahlon married Orpah and Chilion Ruth. This idea caneven be maintained up to the end of the book of Ruth: up to 4:9 and10, to be precise. There Chilion and Mahlon are mentioned in reverseorder, and then it proves that Ruth was the wife of Mahlon. It is amaz-ing that the reader has to wait to the end of the book to discover thatRuth was “married” to Mahlon. Perhaps that doesn’t really matter. Theonly thing that counts is that the brothers from Judah both takeMoabite women as wives.

The two Moabite women at first only appear together, just like thebrothers. The meaning of the names Orpah and Ruth is unknown.The name Orpah is sometimes explained from the word ‘orep, “neck.”Because she is the one who later turns her back on Naomi, her namehas something to do with neck. Ruth’s name has no demonstrablemeaning. At the same time, it is the only name in this story that con-sists only of one syllable, which is very rare in the Bible. Its brevity andpronunciation make the name a striking one. Nor does this nameRuth appear elsewhere in the Hebrew Bible, as the name of anyoneelse. It is striking that the main character in the book, after whom thebook is even named, does not have a name with any meaning that wecan explain, while others, like Elimelek and Naomi, do have well-known names. But of course they also come from Judah. Probably


here the names of these foreign women do not add anything. Ruth’sname gives no indication of how we can look at her. We see her onlyas a foreigner, as the people of Judah see her, and as we often seeMuslim or Pakistani women. We see only the headscarf, with a spher-ical shape beneath it; the outside and outsider’s clothing limit ourperception.

So at the beginning of the book of Ruth we are looking at theworld with a family from Bethlehem. They are called “Ephrathites.”Evidently that is a well-known term for the inhabitants of Judah. Weknow only that Ephrath or Ephratha occurs in Genesis 35:19: “Rachelwas buried on the way to Ephrath(a) (that is, Bethlehem).” That canmean that Ephrath(a) is the old name for Bethlehem and that “Ephra-thites” denotes the oldest indigenous families of Bethlehem. Membersof an old and distinguished Bethlehem family have to flee because ofa famine and emigrate to Moab. It is as if members of the Rockefellerfamily had to flee and emigrate.

THROUGH NAOMI’S EYES

Naomi Gets Her Own Eyes

As readers, we look with the eyes of the people from Judah, above allElimelek. When he suddenly dies, the perspective immediately shiftsto Naomi: “Then Elimelek, the husband of Naomi, died” (1:3). Averse earlier Naomi was still called Elimelek’s wife; now he is “Naomi’shusband.” We do not know why or of what he died; simply thatNaomi is left, “she and her two sons.” The story pauses only brieflyover the two sons. Then in verse 5 there follows an almost identicaldescription to that in verse 3: “Then these two also died. The wife wasleft, without her two children and her husband.” Whoever saw a fam-ily die out so tersely? Did the sons die together as a result of a disaster,or did one die soon after the other? There is no point in asking


questions here, since the attention of the narrator is focused on noth-ing, or rather no one, but Naomi. He shows how in two stages shechanges from being the “wife of” and “mother of” to “the womanwithout.” Naomi has lost all that can normally give one identity. Sheno longer has a face, yet the readers get the opportunity to lookthrough her eyes.

Moving from the outside inwards, through Naomi’s actions, per-ceptions, and words, we get a glimpse of her world. We experience heroutside world through what she does or wants to do, namely to“return.” She thinks only of one thing, and that is to go back. She pro-duces variations on that in every key: she wants to return, turn back,go back, and really returns. Finally the narrator sums this all up in1:22: “Naomi, who returned from the land of Moab.” This becomesas it were her title: she is “the one who returned.” We read what shehears in 1:6b: “She had heard in the fields in Moab that YHWH hadvisited his people to give them bread.”

In verse 1 the narrator had simply mentioned the bare fact of thefamine, without any suggestion that God was behind it. Now Naomiassumes that YHWH is the one who gives bread. In her view, wasn’tYHWH then also the one who had withheld bread from his people dur-ing the famine? That isn’t clear, but seems to be the case. Naomiconcludes from what she has heard that YHWH has been involved.That is her “view,” or rather her “way of hearing” (unfortunately thereis no word in English for “seeing through the ears”—perspective, view,and vision are all visual categories). Naomi evidently assumes that inreality all events are a consequence of YHWH’s activity. Another strik-ing feature of this “way of hearing” is that Naomi thinks that YHWH

had visited “his” people and not “her” people. In her understanding,YHWH has distanced himself from her; she no longer belongs to Hispeople.

The narrator again lets us look with Naomi, in 1:18: “Naomi sawthat Ruth was determined to go with her.” Naomi wants to go back to


Judah; she kisses her daughters-in-law farewell and says that they muststay in Moab. They protest, but Naomi is firm. Only when she seesthat Ruth cannot be dissuaded from going with her does she drop heropposition. It is not said that she is madly happy that Ruth is goingwith her. She does not radiate happiness but resignation; she is notrelieved but accepts with a shrug of her shoulders. A little phrase like“she saw that she was determined” doesn’t seem to have much mean-ing, but that isn’t the case. We get a disconcerting glimpse into whatNaomi is feeling: Ruth has just laid open her soul to Naomi, and allthat Naomi says is . . . nothing. She is silent and remains silent. Theyboth go on their way together, but there doesn’t seem to be any“togetherness” about it. Naomi goes, and Ruth goes with her. Naomiis bitter and doesn’t see the positive aspect of Ruth’s choice. Perhapsshe doesn’t want Ruth to be going with her and finds Ruth an encum-brance. Certainly any initiative to go with Naomi comes from Ruthand not from Naomi.


The Book of Ruth is one of the most fascinating and original books of theBible. It contains a much greater proportion of dialogue than otherbooks, so that it could easily be made into a film or performed as a play.Its heroines, Naomi and Ruth, are two widows coming to the land ofJudah from abroad who have great difficulty in surviving, and onlythrough considerable inventiveness and risk do they win through to ahappy ending that promises them security for the future.

The dialogue form makes it possible for us not only to follow the storybut also, in a way that is unusual in the Bible, to see below the surface tothe feelings and motivations of character. As Ellen van Wolde guides usthrough the book, she draws our attention to the constant change of per-spective, and makes us see just what a brilliant storyteller the author ofthe book is.

But this is not just a study in literary criticism. Ruth and Naomi arerefugees, foreigners, aliens, like the refugees and aliens in our societies,immigrants from abroad who are marginalized and themselves have greatdifficulty in surviving. In following the story of Ruth and Naomi here, weare made to see the reality of the life of the others, whom we are all tooinclined to ignore. How can such people, too, find security and happyendings to their stories?

Ellen van Wolde is Professor of Old Testament Exegesis and Hebrew inthe Theological Faculty of the University of Tilburg, the Netherlands.She has also written an imaginative account of the first eleven chaptersof Genesis, Stories of the Beginning.

ISBN 1-57312-253-X

Documents

Ruth and Naomi