People of the Bible

Naomi

Came home and told the town to stop using her name, because it meant pleasant.

Naomi leaves Bethlehem with a husband and two sons and comes back with neither, and one foreign daughter in law she had tried to send away. When the town turns out and asks if this is Naomi, she tells them not to call her that any more but to call her Mara, because the Almighty has dealt very bitterly with her. She says she went out full and came back empty. Then she does the one thing she can still do: she knows the law, she knows who her relatives are, and she tells Ruth exactly where to go and what to say.

Where it appearsRuth 1 to 4

Ruth

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The movements, in the order the text gives them.

The story of Naomi

01
Ruth 1:1-7
Out of Bethlehem in a famine
The house of bread has no bread. Ten years later Elimelech, Mahlon and Chilion are all dead, and she hears that the LORD has visited his people and gets up to go back.
02
Ruth 1:11-13
Go back, my daughters
She argues it out loud: she has no more sons, and even if she did, would they wait. It is affection making the case for being left, and Orpah accepts it.
03
Ruth 1:19-21
Call me Mara
The whole town is stirred and she refuses her own name. I went out full and the LORD has brought me home again empty. The chapter ends noting it was the beginning of barley harvest.
04
Ruth 3:1-4
Shall I not seek rest for you
She names Boaz as a relative, names the night, the place and the words. Everything that happens at the threshing floor is her plan, executed by someone else.

Why it matters

Naomi is the book’s grief and the book’s strategist, and the text never asks her to stop being either. Nobody corrects her complaint, and her assessment of her own situation is allowed to stand for two chapters. The ending belongs to her as much as to Ruth: the women say a son has been born to Naomi, and the child is laid in her lap, and the full and empty of chapter one are answered without a word of comment.

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