Ruth 1:1-5
It was the worst of times, it was the worst of times.
Ruth is a romantic comedy, and some of the lessons are obvious.
Naomi is bitter; you, don’t be like her. Ruth makes a move; single women, shoot your shot, but not, like, too much, you know? Boaz is a good guy; guys, be like him.
But Ruth is also one of those books, like every book of the Bible, that speaks through its subtleties: what it doesn’t say, the conventions it subverts, its dialogical drama, the patterns and repetitions, its commentary on the laws.
My buddy, Chris, and I are reading Ruth in Hebrew and trying to hear as much of the story as we can. Here is what I see in 1:1-5. All translations are our own.
Ruth 1:1a
It was the days of the judging of the judges,
and a famine was in the land.
If it mattered which judge was judging, we'd have been told. The setting is more thematic than precise, but it's the biblical equivalent of setting a story in, say, 'The Dark Ages.' The days of the judging of the judges were bad days. To punctuate the point, the text adds a famine.
Ruth 1:1b-2
Now a man from Bethlehem of Judah went to sojourn among the fields of Moab:
he and his wife and his two sons.
Now the name of the man was Elimelech
and the name of his wife was Naomi
and the name of his two sons were Mahlon and Chilion,
Ephrathites from Bethlehem of Judah,
and they came to the fields of Moab
and they settled there.
This first action begins in the singular (a man... went) and ends in the plural (they came... they settled). This feints at the convention of a 'story about a man.' He'll die in the next verse, and a new primary actor will emerge.
Naomi. Means "my delight."
The two sons. They're his two sons, not theirs, as Elimelech is the primary agent in the story, not Naomi. Mahlon means "sick" and Chilion means "pining," which is bad vibes.
Ephrathites. Literally, that's Ephraim-people. Ephraim was Jacob's second-born son, named for fruitfulness in a land of affliction. The only story about Ephrathites (ephrathiym, as opposed to 'men of Ephraim') in Scripture so far is a sad one, told in Judges (12:1-6). The "fugitives" of Ephraim were the 42,000 men subjected to the sibboleth v. shibboleth pronunciation test by the Gileadites, and slaughtered on the spot.
Moab. In the Pentateuch, Moab was a place to "camp" (Num. 22:1), not to "settle" (Ruth 1:3). In fact, this is where Israelite men began to "play the harlot with the daughters of Moab," and Yahweh, out of his "jealousy," commanded Moses to execute the leaders who had done so (Num. 25:1-9).
Ruth 1:3-5
And Elimelech, the husband of Naomi, died,
and she was left remaining along with her two sons.
And they took for themselves Moabite wives;
the name of the first was Orpah
and the name of the second was Ruth.
And they dwelled there about ten years.
And then they died, even the two of them, Mahlon and Chilion.
And the woman was left remaining without the two of her boys and without her husband.
"Sick" and "pining," whatever else they mean, are unstable descriptors for two men in an unstable situation. Marrying Moabites staves off death for a time, but not time enough.
The singular man, Elimelech, dies, and the next singular action verb is attributed to Naomi (vatisha'er, "she was left remaining"). The "two sons" act, taking two Moabite wives (a la Num. 25?), and then they die. "The woman," not this time called by her name, takes up her same verb: vatisha'er, "she was left remaining." The "with" changes to "without," after the emphatic phrase in the previous line, "even the two of them."
Orpah means "gazelle." Gazelles only appear in the Pentateuch as "clean" meat (Deut. 12:15, 22; 14:5; 15:22). Afterwards, they are evoked symbolically for the swiftness of their feet (2 Sam. 2:18; 1 Chr. 12:8; Prov. 6:5; Song 2:17; 8:14). I'm not sure whether swift-of-foot is a great association with a wife figure in a story, even if the Song of Songs deploys it positively. That's a love story. Ruth 1:1-5 isn't the same kind of love story...
Ruth means "friendship," which, seems better. My only observation: despite often being appended with the ethnic descriptor, "the Moabitess," her name appears exactly twelve times in the book (1:4, 14, 16, 22; 2:2, 8, 21, 22; 3:9; 4:5, 10). She represents Israel better, we will see, than Israelites do.
The narrator changes sons (ben) to boys (yeled) in the final line. The men who were Elimelech's sons(1:1, 2), then Naomi's sons (1:3), are now her deceased boys (1:5). What is this, a literary display of Naomi's tenderness? Perhaps. Naomi will discuss sons (ben) again at 1:11, 12, and Ruth's child, Obed, will be called a son (4:13, 15, 17). But when Naomi holds Obed at 4:16, he will be called "the boy" (4:16), and she will be like a mother to him.
With that moment in view, the line "the woman was left remaining without the two of her boys," appears to foreground the motherly aspect of her devastation over the, what, pragmatic or economic (?) aspect. That seems important.
Well, "Ephraim" was meant to be fruitful in the land, but his sickly and pining kids were anything but. And here remains Naomi, the Judahite, "my delight," in the place to which her late husband had emigrated. Her only companions, a Gazelle, a Friend, and her grief over her two dead boys.