TRV
Translation
King James Version
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.
Complete Jewish Bible
They took wives for themselves from the women of Mo'av; the name of the one was 'Orpah; and the name of the other was Rut. They lived there for about ten years.
Berean Standard Bible
who took Moabite women as their wives, one named Orpah and the other named Ruth. And after they had lived in Moab about ten years,
American Standard Version
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 dwelt there about ten years.
World English Bible Messianic
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 lived there about ten years.
Geneva Bible (1599)
Which tooke them wiues of the Moabites: the ones name was Orpah, and the name of ye other Ruth: and they dwelled there about ten yeeres.
Young's Literal Translation
and they take to them wives, Moabitesses: the name of the one is Orpah, and the name of the second Ruth; and they dwell there about ten years.
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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 1:4 succinctly details the marriages of Naomi's two sons, Mahlon and Chilion, to Moabite women named Orpah and Ruth, respectively, and establishes their decade-long residence in the land of Moab. This verse marks a significant period of integration and apparent stability for the family after their relocation from Bethlehem due to famine, crucially introducing the two women whose contrasting choices and enduring loyalty will profoundly shape the unfolding narrative of loss, resilience, and divine redemption within the book.
CONTEXT
EXPOSITION AND ANALYSIS
Key Word Analysis
Verse Breakdown
Literary Devices
Ruth 1:4 employs several significant literary devices. The most prominent is Character Introduction, as Orpah and Ruth are formally named and brought into the narrative, immediately signaling their future importance to the plot. There is also subtle Foreshadowing through the potential etymology of Orpah's name (H6204, meaning "mane" or "back of the neck"), which can be seen as hinting at her later decision to "turn her back" and return to her people and gods (Ruth 1:14-15). Furthermore, the narrative presents a degree of Irony or Paradox: the act of intermarriage, often viewed negatively in Israelite law, becomes the very means through which God's redemptive plan unfolds, ultimately bringing a Moabitess into the lineage of David and, by extension, the Messiah. The mention of "about ten years" also functions as a crucial Temporal Marker, emphasizing the passage of time and the establishment of a new phase in the family's life before further upheaval.
THEOLOGICAL AND THEMATIC CONNECTIONS
Ruth 1:4, seemingly a simple statement of fact, carries profound theological weight. It highlights God's sovereign ability to work through unconventional circumstances and even human decisions that might appear to deviate from established norms. While the Mosaic Law discouraged intermarriage with Moabites (e.g., Deuteronomy 23:3-6), the narrative of Ruth demonstrates that God's grace and redemptive purposes are not confined by human boundaries or legalistic interpretations. The inclusion of Ruth, a Moabitess, into the lineage of David and ultimately Christ, foreshadows the radical inclusivity of God's salvation, extending beyond ethnic Israel to embrace all who would trust in Him. This verse sets the stage for a story that champions loyalty, faithfulness, and divine providence, illustrating how God's plan unfolds through the lives of ordinary people, often in unexpected ways, revealing His boundless love and capacity to redeem.
REFLECTION AND APPLICATION
Ruth 1:4 invites us to consider the intricate ways in which God orchestrates events, even through choices that might seem questionable or pragmatic from a human perspective. The decade spent in Moab, culminating in these marriages, represents a period of adaptation and integration for Naomi's family, a testament to their resilience in the face of famine and loss. For us, this can be a powerful reminder that life often involves seasons of transition, where we might find ourselves in unfamiliar territories, making decisions that are born out of necessity or circumstance. Yet, even in these moments, God's hand is at work, weaving together our stories for His greater purpose. The introduction of Orpah and Ruth also highlights the profound impact of relationships in our lives—how seemingly ordinary encounters can become pivotal, shaping our destinies and revealing God's unfolding plan. It challenges us to look beyond immediate appearances and trust in the sovereign wisdom of God, who can use any person or situation to bring about His perfect will, often in ways we least expect, demonstrating His faithfulness even in foreign lands and unexpected unions.
Questions for Reflection
FAQ
Why did Mahlon and Chilion marry Moabite women, given the Mosaic Law's prohibitions against intermarriage?
Answer: While the Mosaic Law, particularly in Deuteronomy 7:3-4 and Deuteronomy 23:3-6, generally discouraged intermarriage with foreign nations, including Moabites, the text of Ruth does not explicitly condemn Mahlon and Chilion for their marriages. Several factors might explain this: (1) Necessity: As exiles in a foreign land, their options for Israelite spouses would have been severely limited, making local marriages a practical choice for family continuity. (2) Pragmatism: Marrying local women was a pragmatic way to establish a household and integrate into Moabite society, especially during a decade-long residence. (3) Divine Sovereignty: Most importantly, the book of Ruth is a narrative that transcends strict legalism to highlight God's broader redemptive plan. The focus is not on the legality of the marriages but on the character and faithfulness of Ruth, a Moabitess, who ultimately becomes an ancestor of King David and Jesus. The story emphasizes that God's grace extends beyond ethnic boundaries, demonstrating His ability to work through all circumstances, even those that might appear to be deviations from the norm, to achieve His redemptive purposes.
What is the significance of the phrase "and they dwelled there about ten years"?
Answer: The phrase "about ten years" is significant for several reasons. Firstly, it indicates a substantial period of time, suggesting that Naomi's family established a life in Moab, integrating into the local community and finding a degree of stability after their initial arrival due to the famine (see Ruth 1:1). This wasn't a temporary stop but a decade-long residence, implying a deeper commitment to their new home. Secondly, it sets the stage for the subsequent tragedy detailed in Ruth 1:5. The decade of apparent peace makes the sudden deaths of Mahlon and Chilion even more impactful, highlighting the transience of earthly security and the unpredictable nature of life. Thirdly, it underscores the depth of the relationships formed, particularly the marriages, which endured for a significant duration, making the subsequent choices of Orpah and Ruth all the more poignant. It emphasizes the passage of time and the profound changes that can occur within a family's life, preparing the reader for the dramatic shifts to come.
CHRIST-CENTERED FULFILLMENT
Ruth 1:4, by introducing Ruth, a Moabite woman who marries into an Israelite family, subtly but profoundly foreshadows the expansive, inclusive nature of God's redemptive plan culminating in Jesus Christ. The Mosaic Law often served to separate Israel from the surrounding nations, but in Ruth, we witness a breach in that wall, as a Gentile woman is not only welcomed but becomes an integral part of the lineage of the Messiah (see Matthew 1:5). This unconventional path—a "forbidden" marriage leading to divine blessing—serves as a powerful prefigurement of the gospel, which shatters ethnic and social barriers, inviting all people, Jew and Gentile, into God's family through faith in Christ. Just as Ruth, an outsider, found her place within Israel through loyalty and love, so too does Christ, our ultimate Kinsman-Redeemer, extend His grace to all who are "far off" (as described in Ephesians 2:13), bringing them near by His blood. The inclusion of Ruth in the messianic line powerfully illustrates that God's saving purpose was never exclusively for one nation, but always intended to embrace "every tribe and language and people and nation" (Revelation 5:9), demonstrating the universal scope of His redemptive love.