TRV
Translation
Complete Jewish Bible
Elimelekh, Na'omi's husband, died; and she was left, she and her two sons.
American Standard Version
And Elimelech, Naomi’s husband, died; and she was left, and her two sons.
World English Bible Messianic
Elimelech, Naomi’s husband, died; and she was left, and her two sons.
Geneva Bible (1599)
Then Elimelech the husband of Naomi died, and she remayned with her two sonnes,
Young's Literal Translation
And Elimelech husband of Naomi dieth, and she is left, she and her two sons;
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In the KJVVerse 7,131 of 31,102
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Commentary on Ruth 1 verses 1–5
1 ¶ Now it came to pass in the days when the judges ruled, that there was a famine in the land. And a certain man of Bethlehemjudah went to sojourn in the country of Moab, he, and his wife, and his two sons.
2 And the name of the man was Elimelech, and the name of his wife Naomi, and the name of his two sons Mahlon and Chilion, Ephrathites of Bethlehemjudah. And they came into the country of Moab, and continued there.
3 And Elimelech Naomi's husband died; and she was left, and her two sons.
4 And they took them wives of the women of Moab; the name of the one was Orpah, and the name of the other Ruth: and they dwelled there about ten years.
5 And Mahlon and Chilion died also both of them; and the woman was left of her two sons and her husband.
The first words give all the date we have of this story. It was in the days when the judges ruled (Rut 1:1), not in those disorderly times when there was no king in Israel; but under which of the judges these things happened we are not told, and the conjectures of the learned are very uncertain. It must have been towards the beginning of the judges' time, for Boaz, who married Ruth, was born of Rahab, who received the spies in Joshua's time. Some think it was in the days of Ehud, others of Deborah; the learned bishop Patrick inclines to think it was in the days of Gideon, because in his days only we read of a famine by the Midianites' invasion, Jdg 6:3, Jdg 6:4. While the judges were ruling, some one city and some another, Providence takes particular cognizance of Bethlehem, and has an eye to a King, to Messiah himself, who should descend from two Gentile mothers, Rahab and Ruth. Here is,
I. A famine in the land, in the land of Canaan, that land flowing with milk and honey. This was one of the judgments which God had threatened to bring upon them for their sins, Lev 26:19, Lev 26:20. He has many arrows in his quiver. In the days of the judges they were oppressed by their enemies; and, when by that judgment they were not reformed, God tried this, for when he judges he will overcome. When the land had rest, yet it had not plenty; even in Bethlehem, which signifies the house of bread, there was scarcity. A fruitful land is turned into barrenness, to correct and restrain the luxury and wantonness of those that dwell therein.
II. An account of one particular family distressed in the famine; it is that of Elimelech. His name signifies my God a king, agreeable to the state of Israel when the judges ruled, for the Lord was their King, and comfortable to him and his family in their affliction, that God was theirs and that he reigns for ever. His wife was Naomi, which signifies my amiable or pleasant one. But his sons' names were Mahlon and Chilion, sickness and consumption, perhaps because weakly children, and not likely to be long-lived. Such are the productions of our pleasant things, weak and infirm, fading and dying.
III. The removal of this family from Bethlehem into the country of Moab on the other side Jordan, for subsistence, because of the famine, Rut 1:1, Rut 1:2. It seems there was plenty in the country of Moab when there was scarcity of bread in the land of Israel. Common gifts of providence are often bestowed in greater plenty upon those that are strangers to God than upon those that know and worship him. Moab is at ease from his youth, while Israel is emptied from vessel to vessel (Jer 48:11), not because God loves Moabites better, but because they have their portion in this life. Thither Elimelech goes, not to settle for ever, but to sojourn for a time, during the dearth, as Abraham, on a similar occasion, went into Egypt, and Isaac into the land of the Philistines. Now here, 1. Elimelech's care to provide for his family, and his taking his wife and children with him, were without doubt commendable. If any provide not for his own, he hath denied the faith, Ti1 5:8. When he was in his straits he did not forsake his house, go seek his fortune himself, and leave his wife and children to shift for their own maintenance; but, as became a tender husband and a loving father, where he went he took them with him, not as the ostrich, Job 39:16. But, 2. I see not how his removal into the country of Moab, upon this occasion, could be justified. Abraham and Isaac were only sojourners in Canaan, and it was agreeable to their condition to remove; but the seed of Israel were now fixed, and ought not to remove into the territories of the heathen. What reason had Elimelech to go more than any of his neighbours? If by any ill husbandry he had wasted his patrimony, and sold his land or mortgaged it (as it should seem, Rut 4:3, Rut 4:4), which brought him into a more necessitous condition than others, the law of God would have obliged his neighbours to relieve him (Lev 25:35); but that was not his case, for he went out full, Rut 1:21. By those who tarried at home it appears that the famine was not so extreme but that there was sufficient to keep life and soul together; and his charge was but small, only two sons. But if he could not be content with the short allowance that his neighbours took up with, and in the day of famine could not be satisfied unless he kept as plentiful a table as he had done formerly, if he could not live in hope that there would come years of plenty again in due time, or could not with patience wait for those years, it was his fault, and he did by it dishonour God and the good land he had given them, weaken the hands of his brethren, with whom he should have been willing to take his lot, and set an ill example to others. If all should do as he did Canaan would be dispeopled. Note, It is an evidence of a discontented, distrustful, unstable spirit, to be weary of the place in which God hath set us, and to be for leaving it immediately whenever we meet with any uneasiness or inconvenience in it. It is folly to think of escaping that cross which, being laid in our way, we ought to take up. It is our wisdom to make the best of that which is, for it is seldom that changing our place is mending it. Or, if he would remove, why to the country of Moab? If he had made enquiry, it is probable he would have found plenty in some of the tribes of Israel, those, for instance, on the other side Jordan, that bordered on the land of Moab; if he had had that zeal for God and his worship, and that affection for his brethren which became an Israelite, he would not have persuaded himself so easily to go and sojourn among Moabites.
IV. The marriage of his two sons to two of the daughters of Moab after his death, Rut 1:4. All agree that this was ill done. The Chaldee says, They transgressed the decree of the word of the Lord in taking strange wives. If they would not stay unmarried till their return to the land of Israel, they were not so far off but that they might have fetched themselves wives thence. Little did Elimelech think, when he went to sojourn in Moab, that ever his sons would thus join in affinity with Moabites. But those that bring young people into bad acquaintance, and take them out of the way of public ordinances, though they may think them well-principled and armed against temptation, know not what they do, nor what will be the end thereof. It does not appear that the women they married were proselyted to the Jewish religion, for Orpah is said to return to her gods (Rut 1:15); the gods of Moab were hers still. It is a groundless tradition of the Jews that Ruth was the daughter of Eglon king of Moab, yet the Chaldee paraphrast inserts it; but this and their other tradition, which he inserts likewise, cannot agree, that Boaz who married Ruth was the same with Ibzan, who judged Israel 200 years after Eglon's death, Jdg 12:1-15.
V. The death of Elimelech and his two sons, and the disconsolate condition Naomi was thereby reduced to. Her husband died (Rut 1:3) and her two sons (Rut 1:5) soon after their marriage, and the Chaldee says, Their days were shortened, because they transgressed the law in marrying strange wives. See here, 1. That wherever we go we cannot out-run death, whose fatal arrows fly in all places. 2. That we cannot expect to prosper when we go out of the way of our duty. He that will save his life by any indirect course shall lose it. 3. That death, when it comes into a family, often makes breach upon breach. One is taken away to prepare another to follow soon after; one is taken away, and that affliction is not duly improved, and therefore God sends another of the same kind. When Naomi had lost her husband she took so much the more complacency and put so much the more confidence in her sons. Under the shadow of these surviving comforts she thinks she shall live among the heathen, and exceedingly glad she was of these gourds; but behold they wither presently, green and growing up in the morning, cut down and dried up before night, buried soon after they were married, for neither of them left any children. So uncertain and transient are all our enjoyments here. It is therefore our wisdom to make sure of those comforts that will be made sure and of which death cannot rob us. But how desolate was the condition, and how disconsolate the spirit, of poor Naomi, when the woman was left of her two sons and her husband! When these two things, loss of children and widowhood, come upon her in a moment, come upon her in their perfection, by whom shall she be comforted? Isa 47:9; Isa 51:19. It is God alone who has wherewithal to comfort those who are thus cast down.
Matthew Henry (1662–1714) — Commentary on the Whole Bible. This section covers verses 1–5. Public domain.
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Ambrose of MilanAD 397
Commentary on Luke
Therefore, if we acknowledge that Thamar is described in the genealogies on account of a mystery in the Lord's generations, we must also certainly not consider Ruth to be overlooked for the same reason: about whom the holy Apostle seems to have had an understanding, when he foresaw through the Spirit that the calling of the Gentiles was to be celebrated by the Gospel, saying that the Law is not made for the just, but for the unjust (1 Timothy 1:9). For how did Ruth, being a foreigner, marry a Jew? And by what reasoning did the evangelist think that the mention of a union should be made in the birth of Christ, which was forbidden by the series of laws? Therefore, did the Savior not originate from a legitimate generation (Deut. XXIII, 3)? It seems to be contrary unless we adhere to the apostolic belief, for the law was not established for the righteous, but for the unrighteous. And since she is a foreigner and a Moabite (especially since the law of Moses prohibited these marriages, and the Moabites were excluded from the Church; for it is written: Moabites shall not enter the Church of the Lord even to the third and fourth generation, and forever), how then did she enter into the Church if not because she was holy and blameless in her conduct, above the law? For if the Law was given to the impious and sinners, certainly Ruth, who surpassed the definition of the Law, and entered into the Church, and became an Israelite, and deserved to be counted among the greater ones of the Lord's family, because of the choice of her mind and not her body, is a great example for us, because in her the figure of our entrance into the Church of the Lord, who are gathered from the nations, preceded. Let us therefore imitate her; so that because she deserved this prerogative of being admitted into her society by her manners, as history teaches: we also, because of the choice of our manners, may be counted among the Church of the Lord, with the support of our merits.
For when the Israelites were afflicted by famine in the earlier days of the Judges, a man named Elimelech from the city of Bethlehem in Judah, where Christ was born, went to live in the land of Moab with his wife and two sons. His sons took Moabite wives, one named Orpah and the other named Ruth, and they lived there for about ten years before they died. But after her husband and sons died, the woman, left alone and without her own family, heard that God had visited Israel and she decided to return home. She urged her daughters-in-law to go back to their families as well. One concession: but Ruth stayed with her mother-in-law. When her mother-in-law said to her, 'Look, your sister-in-law has gone back to her people and her gods; go back with her,' Ruth replied, 'Do not press me to leave you and to turn back from following you. Where you go, I will go; where you lodge, I will lodge. Your people shall be my people, and your God my God. Where you die, I will die—there will I be buried.' (Ruth 1:15, 17). And so the two arrived at Bethlehem. Therefore, when Boaz, the great-grandfather of David, learned of these customs, as well as the respect towards the mother-in-law, the devotion towards the deceased, and the religiousness towards God, according to the law of Moses, in order to raise up the offspring of the deceased, he chose her as his wife.
JeromeAD 420
LETTER 39.5
You call to mind Blaesilla’s companionship, her conversation and her endearing ways; and you cannot endure the thought that you have lost them all. I pardon you the tears of a mother, but I ask you to restrain your grief. When I think of the parent, I cannot blame you for weeping, but when I think of the Christian and the recluse, the mother disappears from my view. Your wound is still fresh, and any touch of mine, however gentle, is more likely to inflame than to heal it. Yet why do you not try to overcome by reason a grief which time must inevitably assuage? Naomi, fleeing because of famine to the land of Moab, there lost her husband and her sons. Yet when she was thus deprived of her natural protectors, Ruth, a stranger, never left her side. And see what a great thing it is to comfort a lonely woman: Ruth, for her reward, is made an ancestor of Christ. Consider the great trials which Job endured, and you will see that you are over-delicate. Amid the ruins of his house, the pains of his sores, his countless bereavements, and, last of all, the snares laid for him by his wife, he still lifted up his eyes to heaven and maintained his patience unbroken. I know what you are going to say “All this befell him as a righteous man, to try his righteousness.” Well, choose which alternative you please. Either you are holy, in which case God is putting your holiness to the proof; or else you are a sinner, in which case you have no right to complain. For if so, you endure far less than your deserts.
JeromeAD 420
HEBREW QUESTIONS ON CHRONICLES
The Hebrews’ tradition is that this is he in whose time the sun stood still, on account of those who did not keep the law, so that, when they had seen such a miracle, they should turn to the Lord God. And because they scorned to do such a thing, therefore the famine grew worse, and he who seemed foremost in the tribe of Judah not only was expelled from his native land with his wife and sons, made helpless by famine, but even continued in that same exile with his sons.
Source: Quotations drawn from early Church Fathers and historical Christian theologians (AD 100–1500). Some quotes address the surrounding passage context rather than this verse alone.
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SUMMARY
Ruth 1:3 marks a profound and tragic turning point in the life of Naomi, immediately following her family's relocation to Moab due to the severe famine in Judah. This concise verse records the death of her husband, Elimelech, leaving Naomi as a widow with her two sons in a foreign land. This devastating loss not only initiates a period of deep grief and extreme vulnerability for Naomi but also serves as the pivotal catalyst for the entire narrative, setting the stage for God's redemptive work to unfold through unexpected and initially painful circumstances.
CONTEXT
EXPOSITION AND ANALYSIS
Key Word Analysis
Verse Breakdown
Literary Devices
The brevity and directness of Ruth 1:3 are themselves powerful literary techniques. The verse employs Conciseness to deliver a profound blow, making the impact of Elimelech's death immediate and stark. This stark declaration also functions as Foreshadowing, hinting at the series of tragedies that will befall Naomi, culminating in the deaths of her sons in Ruth 1:5. The verse evokes Pathos, immediately drawing the reader into Naomi's impending sorrow and vulnerability. The simple statement of fact, "Elimelech Naomi's husband died," carries immense emotional weight, establishing the tragic circumstances from which the story of redemption will ultimately emerge. The phrase "she was left" uses Understatement to convey the profound shift in Naomi's status and security, allowing the reader to infer the depth of her new predicament without explicit elaboration, thus inviting empathetic engagement from the audience.
THEOLOGICAL AND THEMATIC CONNECTIONS
Ruth 1:3, though brief, is pregnant with theological significance, initiating a narrative arc that explores themes of divine sovereignty, human suffering, and God's providential care for the vulnerable. Elimelech's death, while a personal tragedy, is part of a larger divine tapestry, setting in motion the events that will lead to the preservation of the family line and the eventual birth of David. This verse highlights the harsh realities of life in a fallen world, where even those who seek refuge can encounter profound loss and hardship. Yet, it simultaneously lays the groundwork for demonstrating God's faithfulness, even in the midst of desolation, hinting that His purposes can be achieved through unexpected and painful circumstances. The vulnerability of Naomi as a widow with sons, soon to be without them, resonates with God's consistent concern for the marginalized and His covenantal promises to provide for them, often through the kindness and obedience of His people.
REFLECTION AND APPLICATION
The stark reality of Elimelech's death in Ruth 1:3 confronts us with the universal experience of loss and the profound fragility of life. Naomi's immediate vulnerability as a widow in a foreign land serves as a powerful reminder of how quickly circumstances can change, stripping away security and familiar comforts. This verse invites us to cultivate deep empathy for those who experience profound grief, sudden shifts in their life's stability, or who find themselves dislocated and without traditional support systems. It challenges us to consider how we, as individuals and as communities of faith, respond to the vulnerable among us—the bereaved, the displaced, the isolated, and those who have "been left" by life's tragedies. Just as God ultimately demonstrated His faithful care for Naomi, even through the actions of others, we are called to be instruments of His compassion and provision. We are reminded that even in the darkest moments, when life seems to unravel, God is sovereignly at work, often through the kindness and obedience of His people, to bring about unexpected hope, redemption, and a new future.
Questions for Reflection
FAQ
Why is Elimelech's death so significant to the story of Ruth?
Answer: Elimelech's death is the pivotal inciting incident for the entire narrative of Ruth. Before this event, the family was intact, albeit living in a foreign land due to famine. His death immediately creates a profound crisis for Naomi, transforming her from a married woman with a provider into a vulnerable widow. This initial loss, compounded by the subsequent deaths of her sons (as seen in Ruth 1:5), forces Naomi to make critical decisions, most notably her decision to return to Bethlehem. Without Elimelech's death, the circumstances that lead to Ruth's unwavering loyalty, their journey back to Judah, and the providential encounter with Boaz (and thus the lineage of David) would not have occurred. It is the catalyst for the entire story of redemption, demonstrating how God can use even the most tragic circumstances to unfold His sovereign plan.
CHRIST-CENTERED FULFILLMENT
Ruth 1:3, with its somber declaration of death and the resulting vulnerability, finds profound Christ-centered fulfillment in several ways. Elimelech's death plunges Naomi into a state of profound loss and isolation, a human experience that Jesus intimately understands and enters into. The vulnerability of the widow, highlighted here, is precisely the demographic that Jesus consistently championed and identified with throughout His earthly ministry, demonstrating compassion for the marginalized and providing for their needs, such as the widow of Nain. More profoundly, Elimelech's death, while tragic, is a necessary step in the unfolding of God's redemptive plan that ultimately leads to the lineage of David and, through him, to Christ. Just as Elimelech's death clears the way for a new beginning and a greater purpose for Naomi and Ruth, so too did the death of Christ on the cross appear to be the ultimate loss, yet it was the essential, divinely ordained act that brought about ultimate redemption and new life for all humanity. His death was not the end but the means by which He conquered sin and death, offering hope, security, and eternal provision to all who are "left" in a broken world. Through His sacrifice, Christ fulfills the role of the ultimate "Kinsman-Redeemer," providing an eternal inheritance and establishing a new, spiritual family for all who believe, demonstrating that even through the deepest sorrow, God brings forth glorious salvation (see Hebrews 2:14-15 and Ephesians 2:19).