The Judges & Ruth

She said to them: Go ye home to your mothers, the Lord deal mercifully with you, as you have dealt with the dead and with me.

May he grant you to find rest in the houses of the husbands whom you shall take. And she kissed them. And they lifted up their voice, and began to weep,

And to say: We will go on with thee to thy people.

But she answered them: Return, my daughters: why come ye with me? have I any more sons in my womb, that you may hope for husbands of me?

Return again, my daughters, and go your ways: for I am now spent with age, and not fit for wedlock. Although I might conceive this night, and bear children,

If you would wait till they were grown up, and come to man's estate, you would be old women before you marry. Do not so, my daughters, I beseech you: for I am grieved the more for your distress, and the hand of the Lord is gone out against me.

And they lifted up their voice, and began to weep again: Orpha kissed her mother in law, and returned: Ruth stuck close to her mother in law.

And Noemi said to her: Behold thy kinswoman is returned to her people, and to her gods, go thou with her.

She answered: Be not against me, to desire that I should leave thee and depart: for whithersoever thou shalt go, I will go: and where thou shalt dwell, I also will dwell. Thy people shall be my people, and thy God my God.

The land that shall receive thee dying, in the same will I die: and there will I be buried. The Lord do so and so to me, and add more also, if aught but death part me and thee.

Then Noemi seeing that Ruth was steadfastly determined to go with her, would not be against it, nor persuade her any more to return to her friends:

So they went together, and came to Bethlehem. And when they were come into the city, the report was quickly spread among all: and the women said: This is that Noemi.

But she said to them: Call me not Noemi (that is, beautiful,) but call me Mara (that is, bitter), for the Almighty hath quite filled me with bitterness.

I went out full and the Lord hath brought me back empty. Why then do you call me Noemi, whom the Lord hath humbled, and the Almighty hath afflicted?

So Noemi came with Ruth, the Moabitess, her daughter in law, from the land of her sojournment: and returned into Bethlehem, in the beginning of the barley harvest.

Now her husband Elimelech had a kinsman, a powerful man, and very rich, whose name was Booz.

And Ruth, the Moabitess, said to her mother in law: If thou wilt, I will go into the field, and glean the ears of corn that escape the hands of the reapers, wheresoever I shall find grace with a householder, that will be favourable to me. And she answered her: Go, my daughter.

She went, therefore, and gleaned the ears of corn after the reapers. And it happened that the owner of that field was Booz, who was of the kindred of Elimelech.

And behold, he came out of Bethlehem, and said to the reapers: The Lord be with you. And they answered him: The Lord bless thee.

And Booz said to the young man that was set over the reapers: Whose maid is this ?

And he answered him: This is the Moabitess, who came with Noemi, from the land of Moab,

And she desired leave to glean the ears of corn that remain, following the steps of the reapers: and she hath been in the field from morning till now, and hath not gone home for one moment.

And Booz said to Ruth: Hear me, daughter, do not go to glean in any other field, and do not depart from this place: but keep with my maids,

And follow where they reap. For I have charged my young men, not to molest thee: and if thou art thirsty, go to the vessels, and drink of the waters whereof the servants drink.

She fell on her face, and worshipping upon the ground, said to him: Whence cometh this to me, that I should find grace before thy eyes, and that thou shouldst vouchsafe to take notice of me, a woman of another country?