Today, the first half of our study is going to focus on the topic of marriage. Let’s begin by considering the status of this legal and religious institution here in the United States. The most recent statistics we have on marriage in the USA are from 2022. They are not pretty.
First of all, the median age for people to marry has gone up; that is, people are waiting until they are older to marry. For men, just over age 30 and for women just over age 28. Additionally, the percentage of people marrying in their teens has decreased, which can be seen as a positive, I suppose. According to the American Psychological Assn., 40-50% of first marriages end in divorce. The rate of failure for second marriages is even more sad: between 60 and 67% of those marriages end in divorce. From this we can see that “the grass is not usually greener on the other side of the fence”, as the expression goes.
Most of the time, marital partners end up taking with them into the second marriages all the foibles, problems and behaviors they were responsible for, in the first.
Moreover, marriage rates are declining in this country. In 2020, the last year for which I could find a statistic, the rate fell to its lowest level in 121 years (obviously in some respects due to the pandemic); BUT, the marriage rate has dropped by nearly 60% in the past 50 years. It’s safe to say that marriage is on the decline, a troubling trend. It’s also safe to say that the institution of marriage has strayed far from God’s original, perfect design, His blueprint for establishing and maintaining the human family and, indeed, human society.
Next, let’s consider birth rates in this country. The news is no better. Again, looking at the macro-trends over the past 50 years, the birthrate has plummeted by about 33%. The rate has decreased from an average of 3 children per woman to two, despite a very slight increase in birth rates over the past 3 years (.01%), pretty much statistically insignificant. Covid’s confinements brought a slight “baby bump”.
These two sets of trends are related. Because people are waiting longer to begin having children, fertility is decreased, and couples end up having less time to reach their child-bearing goals. We could talk this morning about the many factors that have led to this inauspicious state of affairs. But, that is not the point of today’s teaching. I mention these statistics and trends to illustrate that marriage is floundering in the USA today.
We are going to look at a type of marriage, ordained by God and practiced by the Hebrew people for generations. It is going to sound very odd to us in the culture of the Western Hemisphere, where the focus is on self-actualization as a life goal. Self-actualization is self-focused, as the name suggests. The end goal is to become the best person, making the best use of one’s gifts to become “successful”. While the general premise can be found in the life led by God’s spirit, there are important differences. The spirit-led walk focuses on God’s Holy Spirit doing the transformative work in the life of the follower of Yeshua (Jesus), with the believer submitting to God’s will as He gives and expands God-given spiritual gifts in our lives.
Self-actualization leaves God out of the picture, replacing Him with the person him- or herself on the throne and calling the shots. Children are often seen as obstacles to self-actualization. Young people are of the idea these days that they must become successful or become well-established before having children. This leads to later marriages and to later onsets of beginning to breed. Children are not seen as divine gifts from God, given in his timing and at his discretion. Children are viewed instead as something within the control of the parents entirely and more as a commodity to be added to the self- actualization portfolio in the individual's plan.
A practice that goes hand-in-hand with this behavior is extramarital sexual relations and use of birth control measures outside of marriage. People are not delaying the onset of having sex, let's be clear. They are just not getting married before they do it!
This behavior is very much ingrained in modern Western civilization. Even devout followers of Messiah who delay sexual relations until marriage are influenced by these cultural mores. Take me for example. I was brought up to believe that I should not marry until I finished my college degree. While I shopped for a husband while in college, this was not my primary focus. After getting my degree I began my career, working and living independently for the next five years, until I had found a man I believed suitable to be my husband. Don't get me wrong! I had prayed over these decisions for years! And I was sexually pure when I married. However, my first marriage ended in divorce, after seven years. Two years later, I met and married a godly man, my current husband, to whom i have been married for almost 30 years. My first child was born when I was 36, and my second when I was 38. So, although my behavior in my 20s and 30s reflected my Christian faith, you can see the influences of Western culture on my decisions.
I am sharing all of this because I know that when I begin to teach on this form of Old Testament marriage which had SUCH an impact in the story of Ruth, some of you may react with revulsion or scorn. I submit to you, however, it was part of God’s plan for that time period and because it was of God, it should not be looked at by us as repugnant.
So, let’s go. This type of marriage is called Levirate marriage. Have you heard of it? Most church members today have not, as it is deemed to be “not relevant”. After all, in today’s Western culture, it would be viewed as “against the laws of the land.” And, I’m not suggesting that we as a culture return to practices that include Levirate marriage! By no means. We do, however, need to understand and respect these practices in their biblical context so that we can better understand the book of Ruth.
We first encounter the concept of Levirate marriage In the story of Judah. Judah was one of the sons of Jacob, one of Jacob's 12 sons. In fact, Judah was the ancestor of our Messiah. I could tell you many things about this patriarch, but for today's teaching, I need to share with you a not-so-complimentary story from his life. As with all things though God used this incident to further his plan for mankind. Now, this story took place before the days of Moses, and before the Torah was codified. In other words, this story predates the law. So you can see that this practice, codified later in the Torah, was in place centuries earlier. We first read about it in Genesis chapter 38. Let me just tell the story in paraphrase form. Judah had a son named Er. Er died childless and at that time Judah instructed his second son, Onan, to marry Er’s widow and as it says in verse eight of chapter 38 to “raise up seed for your brother.”
Let's pause for a moment and consider why Judah did this, why it was so important that Er have offspring to carry on his name. Unlike Western culture, the primary obligation of a person in biblical times was to procreate, to replenish the earth, thereby fulfilling God's command to Adam and Eve. It was an obligation that was taken extremely seriously. Also, as we have previously alluded to in the Ruth study, for a man to die without descendants, without offspring, was a tremendous tragedy because it was viewed as not just the end of his ancestral line, it was viewed as the man's name being cut off from God’s chain of life! It was believed that when someone died without having produced children that that man's mission on earth would go uncontained and unfulfilled. Levirate marriage was the remedy that would “make whole” the disrupted family unit.
Similarly, a barren woman was viewed as having a tremendous curse upon her life. I have a friend, a young woman who has been trying to conceive with her husband for over seven years. They have gone to extraordinary lengths and spent a great deal of money on this baby quest. She has experienced extraordinary grief and agony over her inability to conceive. However, she has a great career, they are building a new home at the moment, she has a loving marriage... Her situation is very different from that of a woman in the Bible whose entire existence was wrapped up in being a wife and mother. Such a woman would experience exponentially greater levels of grief and feelings of complete failure. She would have felt she had failed not only her husband but additionally the entire community. Such women were often judged, scorned, and ostracized, as they were personally blamed for their inability to conceive. Their barrenness was viewed as a judgment from God upon them. Their community generally felt that it was due to some lack in their character or their earlier years that brought this judgment of God upon them. And it was never seen or viewed as any type of insufficiency or lack or a problem on the part of the husband! The wife bore it all, if you will pardon the pun. This is why we see in the story of Samuel that it was his mother, Hannah, who was agonizing in prayer in the temple. It was not her husband whom we saw there, travailing in prayer.
All right, so we see as we resume our story, that Judah has given the widow of his son ER to his second son, Onan. But, lo and behold! The second son died childless also! The widow's name was Tamar, and her head must have been spinning at this point. Judah did have a third son, who was too young at the time to be married to Tamar in Levirate marriage. Judah (Yehudah) promised her that when he was old enough to marry, she would be given in marriage to him. Years crawled by for Tamar, years in which she continued in mourning for her two husbands who had died. She walked around in what is commonly called in our culture “widow’s weeds”. Dark, unassuming, clothing. I'm sure that on some level, she was disdained by others in the family, because she was whispered about behind people's hands as they believed she was somehow culpable in the deaths of her husbands. Finally, the third son was old enough to be married! Yet, to Tamar's horror, he was given in marriage to a younger woman, because Judah too viewed Tamar as a curse and he feared his 3rd son, Shelah, would die as had his two older brothers! At this point, Tamar realized that it was Judah's intention for her to remain a barren widow in the house of her father for the remainder of her days.
However, Tamar was not content with this turn of events. She wanted her portion in the Kingdom of God. Being familiar with Levirate marriage, since she was an Israelite, she realized that a brother was not the only option to redeem her situation. In God's Providence, Judah had recently become a widower. Therefore, Tamar hatched a plan to redeem her family line. Learning that Judah was going on a trip, up to the highlands to shear his sheep, Tamar threw off her widow's weeds, and dressed herself as a shrine prostitute. In those days, prostitutes wore veils which covered the majority of their faces. So attired, she stood by the side of the road where she knew Judah would pass. Seeing her, Judah asked her to sleep with him. She bargained with him to give her his seal, his cord and the staff in his hand. These items would identify him unmistakably, should he forget to send her a young goat from his flock, as he had promised as payment for her services. They did sleep together and Judah sent the promised goat. However, the “shrine prostitute” could not be found, to receive payment. He also realized that if he made a “big deal” out of recovering his items, he would open himself up to ridicule.
Three months later, Tamar was found to be pregnant. Judah was furious and commanded that she be brought out, and burned to death. After she was summoned, she asked that a message be given to her father-in-law along with the three items that she sent to him. She asked him to examine the items, because she was pregnant by the man to whom they belonged. Judah immediately recognized the items, and listen to this... He declared her to be more righteous than he, because he did not give her in marriage to his son, his third son, Shelah.
Six months later, Tamar gave birth to twin sons. The first born was named Perez (which means “breaking out”), and the second twin named Zerah (which means “seed”). Perez Is mentioned in Ruth chapter 4, in the genealogy of David. In verse 18 the scriptures say: “Now these are the generations of Perez: Perez was the father of Hezron, Hezron was the father of Ram, Ram was the father of Amminadab, Amminadab was the father of Nahshon, Nahshon was the father of Salmon, Salmon was the father of Boaz.” This means that Perez was Boaz’ 4th-great-grandfather. What a story, right? And, you can bet that this story trickled down the generations to Boaz, as the Hebrew people were so very family-focused as well as being tremendously accurate in their oral traditions. This made Boaz favorably disposed to the idea of Levirate marriage, because he would not even be alive had it not revived his family line. The Jewish ancillary writings, the rabbinical opinions in the Talmud and in other writings, state that Judah ended up marrying Tamar. So, this marriage was, at the time a legal marriage, despite its mode being degrading. Again, God will use even the most adverse actions of mankind to further His plan, which will succeed “against all odds”.
Later on, when the Torah was given, most forms of family marriage were forbidden, but Levirate marriage, that is a brother taking to wife his brother’s widow, remained an acceptable remedy to tragic circumstances within a family. Levirate marriage was still considered to be holy and God not only permitted it; He commanded it.
Let’s keep all this in mind as we continue with our story of Ruth.
When we left our ladies in the desert, three had become two. Here we see Ruth’s beautiful declaration of love and devotion, the one spoken in so many marriage ceremonies. One of the older wedding songs, “Whither Thou Goest” was derived from these verses.
וַתֹּ֤אמֶר רוּת֙ אַל־תִּפְגְּעִי־בִ֔י לְעָזְבֵ֖ךְ לָשׁ֣וּב מֵאַחֲרָ֑יִךְ כִּ֠י אֶל־אֲשֶׁ֨ר תֵּלְכִ֜י אֵלֵ֗ךְ וּבַאֲשֶׁ֤ר תָּלִ֙ינִי֙ אָלִ֔ין עַמֵּ֣ךְ עַמִּ֔י וֵאלֹהַ֖יִךְ אֱלֹהָֽי׃
בַּאֲשֶׁ֤ר תָּמ֙וּתִי֙ אָמ֔וּת וְשָׁ֖ם אֶקָּבֵ֑ר כֹּה֩ יַעֲשֶׂ֨ה יְהוָ֥ה לִי֙ וְכֹ֣ה יֹסִ֔יף כִּ֣י הַמָּ֔וֶת יַפְרִ֖יד בֵּינִ֥י וּבֵינֵֽךְ׃
Vai-TOH-mehr Ruth al-teef-geh-EE-bee lay-ahz-BAKE lah-SHOOV
meh-ah-kah-rah-EEK kee el-ah-SHER Tail-KEE ay-LAKE oo-bah-ah-SHER tah-LEE-nee
ah-LEEN ah-MAKE ah-MEE vay-lo-HIKE eh-loh-HAI
Bah-asher tah-MOO-tee ah-MOOT veh-SHAM eh-pah-VAYR coh yah-ah-SEH
Yahweh lee veh-KOH yoh-SEEF kee ha-MAH-vet yaf-REED bay-NEE oo-bay-NAKE
But Ruth said, “Do not urge me to leave you or to return from following you. For where you go I will go, and where you lodge I will lodge. Your people shall be my people, and your God my God. 17Where you die I will die, and there will I be buried. May the LORD do so to me and more also if anything but death parts me from you.”
In the context of the Jewish way of life, what was Ruth really saying here? Is there a message beneath the surface of her words? The sages offer varying opinions. In saying, “do not urge me to leave you, to turn back from following you”, some say Ruth was asking Naomi to not dissuade her from her conversion. Others believe that Ruth is admonishing Naomi to not turn Ruth away by reciting her misfortunes. In Ruth’s declaration, “where you go I will go”, some believe she is saying that she will avoid places forbidden to Jews, such as gentile theaters and circuses which were known for their lewdness. In her saying, “where you lodge I will lodge” it is believed she is affirming that she does not need to lead a luxurious life, which she surely could have had, had she returned to Moav. The next phrase “your people are my people and your God is my God” takes Ruth’s confession to a deeper level. She is affirming that she is accepting Judaism and all of its associated practices, that she is forsaking idolatry and all other gods, as they are false. And, finally, Ruth indicates the finality of her decision by stating her intention to live by this decision all the days of her life and be buried, like Naomi, in Eretz Yisrael, the land of Israel. She was expressing her innermost desire to die the same death of the upright of heart, as Naomi would. In closing, Ruth more or less swore an oath to punctuate her words, by invoking “the Name” (Hashem).
In verse 18, Naomi finally convinced of Ruth’s sincerity and conversion, stopped trying to argue with and dissuade her. Ruth and Naomi turned their faces toward the land of Judah and journeyed on.
In referring to “the two of them”, the masculine plural ending is used. Remember, there are no mistakes in the Scriptures. For two women, certainly the feminine plural ending should have been used. It is nothing in modern, Western culture for two women to go on a trip together, or even for a woman to travel alone. However, in Ruth and Naomi’s day, women almost never traveled alone. Two women traveling alone would have put them in similar peril. The commentators believe that the masculine plural ending was used to indicate that the two women disguised themselves as men, for their own protection, which lends more sensibility to the reaction Naomi received when she rode into town. Can you just see her removing her disguise and revealing herself to be a woman, and a woman known to the townspeople at that?
The Scriptures tell us in verse 19 that the whole village was thrown into an uproar when they arrived in Bethlehem. The women were so incredulous that they asked, “Could this be Naomi?” Although the woman resembled Naomi in appearance, the ten or more years she had been gone had taken a severe toll. She had left in grandeur and wealth, accompanied by her vigorous, honored husband and two strapping teenage sons. She returned essentially penniless, with a scraggly Moabitess in tow. No doubt she had rehearsed silently in her spirit what she would say when she returned. We see those words in verse 20:
וַתֹּ֣אמֶר אֲלֵיהֶ֔ן אַל־תִּקְרֶ֥אנָה לִ֖י נָעֳמִ֑י קְרֶ֤אןָ לִי֙ מָרָ֔א כִּי־הֵמַ֥ר שַׁדַּ֛י לִ֖י מְאֹֽד׃
Vah-TOH-mehr ah-lay-HEN al-teef-REH-nah Lee No-oh-mee fuh-REH-nah lee MAH-rah
Kee-hay-MAR Shaddai lee meh-OHD
And she said unto them, Call me not Naomi, call me Mara: for the Almighty hath dealt very bitterly with me.
This verse is the only use of this name (MAR-ah) in Scripture, although variations of the name/word are used in other places to mean bitter or angry. Some translations say “harshly”. It is interesting to me that there is no confession by Naomi of the part her own actions played in bringing the judgment of God down upon her family. Does this omission indicate that she was a total innocent victim? Or, does it indicate that she was unwilling to repent of her part in bringing the tragic events to pass. Scripture does not say. Going on to verse 22, the last verse of the first chapter.
So Naomi returned, and Ruth the Moabite her daughter-in-law with her, who returned from the country of Moab. And they came to Bethlehem at the beginning of barley harvest.
Some commentators, knowing that the women arrived at the beginning of the barley harvest, theorize that word spread so quickly about their arrival because the town was gathered together in one place for the ceremony of First Fruits, also called the reaping of the Omer. On that day, Nisan 17, the same day Yeshua rose from the dead, the first of the barley harvest was cut. That grain was taken to the Tabernacle or Temple, in later years, and a ceremony of waving the sheaves of grain was performed. Barley is the first grain to ripen in Israel each spring. It has been that way for thousands of years. So, the ceremony of First Fruits was always done to thank Father Yahweh for His provision of food for His people. God had once again provided bread for His people.
If this were to be the case, that the people were gathered for these ceremonies, the two women could not have “snuck in” unobtrusively, because even the inhabitants from surrounding villages would have been in attendance. Some other Jewish commentators, and this is extra-Biblical, comment that the people were gathered for the funeral of Boaz’ wife, who had just died that day. And, it has long been Jewish custom to bury within 24 hours of death, as embalming techniques were not (and still are not) used, in Orthodox communities.
Regardless of how, the entire city became aware of Naomi’s and Ruth’s arrival in Beit Lechem. Because the feminine plural is used of those questioning her, it can be inferred that it was the women of the town who gathered around this Embittered One and this Moabitess and questioned them. Perhaps Naomi wanted to be called Mara because her former name, which meant Pleasant, increased her pain when she heard it. Now, normally, the word Marah would be spelled with a weak consonant, a “hay” on the end. However, this name is spelled with the stronger “aleph” on the end. There are two other times that the aleph has been used to strengthen a word’s connotation in Scripture. One of those is in Numbers 11:20 to strengthen the word “loathsome”,
20"but a whole month, until it comes out at your nostrils and becomes loathsome to you, because you have rejected the LORD who is among you and have wept before him, saying, “Why did we come out of Egypt?”’”
and the other is in Daniel 11:44 to strengthen the word “anger.”
44"But news from the east and the north shall alarm him, and he shall go out with great fury to destroy and devote many to destruction."
So, Naomi was applying a word to herself to convey an extremely intense bitterness.
She elaborates, in verse 21:
“I went out full, and He has brought me home again empty.”
I think that if you live long enough, you can relate to this plaintive statement. Here we see articulated the forlorn cry of the broken heart. Even if, unlike Naomi, you did not feel that, as one translation puts it “Hashem has testified against me, (the Almighty) El Shaddai has brought misfortune upon me,” I have no doubt there has been a salient moment in your life (or two or three) that you have felt this level of loss. Naomi’s statement is a tacit acknowledgement of her plight, but not a sealing of her fate. The reason for this is that the God she served and that I serve and that I hope you serve is a God who restores. And, one of the most beautiful themes of the book of Ruth is that of restoration. From nothing seemingly to something incredibly, inexplicably bountiful. The SAME “All-Powerful”, which is the meaning of El Shaddai who allowed extreme loss, has equal power to restore what the destroyer was allowed to take away.
During a time in my life, in my early 30s, of extreme loss, a godly counselor showed me some verses in the book of Joel, a book that describes the great and terrible Day of the Lord. Listen first to Joel 1: three to four.
“Tell ye your children of it, and let your children tell their children, and their children another generation.
4That which the palmerworm hath left hath the locust eaten; and that which the locust hath left hath the cankerworm eaten; and that which the cankerworm hath left hath the caterpillar eaten.”
Wow...that seems to indicate that the land had been totally stripped bare. Perhaps you have felt or are feeling like that now. But, look at chapter two, verses 25-26.
25And I will restore to you the years that the locust hath eaten, the cankerworm, and the caterpillar, and the palmerworm, my great army which I sent among you.
26And ye shall eat in plenty, and be satisfied, and praise the name of the LORD your God, that hath dealt wondrously with you: and my people shall never be ashamed.
I can’t promise or dictate what the Lord will do, but I can tell you from experience that His promises are true. They never fail. In my life, He MORE than restored what I lost in my early 30s. He did indeed deal wondrously with me, and I will never, ever forget or be ashamed of my great God.
We will see in the next chapter how God begins to restore in the lives of Ruth, Naomi and even Boaz, what each of them had “devoured”.
The last verse in chapter 1 re-states and emphasizes that both women returned. This slight, but important distinction is hard to see if you read most English translations from the Hebrew, although you can find it in some translations such as the KJV, the NASB, the ESV and others. I love how the Aramaic Bible in Plain English puts it, if you want to look the verse up in that translation. Here is the literal translation from the Hebrew: (vs. 22)
וַתָּ֣שָׁב נָעֳמִ֗י וְר֨וּת הַמֹּואֲבִיָּ֤ה כַלָּתָהּ֙ עִמָּ֔הּ הַשָּׁ֖בָה מִשְּׂדֵ֣י מֹואָ֑ב וְהֵ֗מָּה בָּ֚אוּ בֵּ֣ית לֶ֔חֶם בִּתְחִלַּ֖ת קְצִ֥יר שְׂעֹרִֽים׃
Vai-tah-SHAV No-oh-MEE veh-Ruth Ha-Mo-ah-VEE-yah chai-lah-TAHhhhh eee-MAHhhh.
Hai-shah-VAH mee-suh-DAY Moav veh-HAY-mah bah-OOO Bayt-LEH-chem. beet-kee-LAHT
Fuh-TSEER. Tseh-oh-REEM
And she returned, Naomi, and Ruth, the Moabitess, her daughter-in-law with her, who returned from the fields of Moav.
Some scholars believe that Ruth was the first Moabitess to convert to Judaism, and that with her the law of “Moabite, not Moabitess” was promulgated. What does that mean? In Deuteronomy 23, we read, and I mentioned this in a prior teaching, that converts from Moab would be prohibited from ever marrying into the nation of Israel, the congregation of God. Verse 5 explains the rationale for this:
“Because of the fact that they did not greet you with bread and water on the road when you were leaving Egypt.”
It was customary for desert-dwelling men from the Moabites, Ammonites and other people groups to give succor to travelers, in order to sustain them on their journey. Women were not allowed to participate in these acts, as it was not considered proper for them to do so. The Jewish sages ruled that because Moabite and Ammonite women had not been involved personally in the transgression of their respective nations, then they were not considered guilty of it, and could therefore marry into the Jewish nation. The Jewish commentators did not modify Scripture. They merely gave a common-sense rationale and interpretation in harmony with the mores of that day, when the question arose during the time of Ruth and Boaz, as we shall see later on in the story. And, we will also see that there was NOT universal agreement on this interpretation.
But, not to get ahead of myself, I want to get back to the first half of verse 22. Teshuvah is the Hebrew word for “return”, and it is used to apply to souls who repent and embrace the one, true God. We see the word translated as “repent” in the New Testament, to describe those who do this through the merits of His Son, Yeshua, the one and only God-Man, our Messiah.
No, Ruth had never lived in Judah, but her soul HAD been far from God, who was drawing her to Himself. She did “return” in the sense that she answered that call. And, due to what she had been told, it is likely she converted and returned with Naomi with no hope of ever being able to re-marry. Therefore, like the Gentiles who come to God through Yeshua, they are just as much given a home with God as the native-born Jews who do the same, the ones for whom Israel was given as a heritage, as their spiritual “birthplace”. In that sense, we can ALL be children of Abraham.
The chapter concludes by re-stating that Naomi and Ruth had arrived in Judah at the beginning of the barley harvest. Why emphasize that again? As most of us do not live in an agrarian society, it would be easy to miss this. As we are told in Ecclesiastes 3:2, there is “a time to plant and a time to uproot”, or a time to sow and a time to reap. This chronological detail not only serves as a bridge to the next chapter. It also tells us that the harvest season had begun, which meant that it was too late to plant crops on any lands which could have been re-claimed as belonging to Elimilech’s family. In other words, this statement is a confirmation of Naomi and Ruth being entirely destitute. Totally dependent on God’s mercy and the mercy of His people.
There are laws given in Torah regarding the care of the poor and destitute, as well as the care of widows and orphans. As we move into chapter two next week, we will see those spring into action, as well as seeing an application of what we studied today about Levirate marriage.
Have a blessed week. And remember, if you see ads on my page, they are automatically generated by the publishing entity. I do not personally endorse them.
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