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 she appearsRuth 1 to 4

Ruth

Scroll down to the account

The movements, in the order the text gives them.

The Account 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.
The opening keeps counting who is left. First Naomi is left with her two sons; then she is left without either son or husband. The repeated word does the work that an elaborate description of grief would only get in the way of. A family went abroad to survive a famine. Three graves later, its surviving relationships are between women.
The Book of Ruth does not say these deaths punished the move to Moab. It gives no cause of death and delivers no charge against Elimelech. The first action explicitly attributed to the LORD is giving bread to his people, and news of that provision gets Naomi moving. She arose. That small physical verb matters after so much subtraction. Nor have the marriages become meaningless because the husbands have died: the two women accompanying her are still called her daughters in law.
Verse by verse
1. 1:1
  The days when the judges ruled locates the events in a period, not under a named judge or in a specified year.
2. 1:4
  About ten years is approximate. The verse does not establish that each marriage lasted ten years.
3. 1:5
  Neither the causes of the three deaths nor a divine sentence against the family are supplied.
4. 1:6
  Visited describes divine intervention on behalf of the people, specified here as giving them food.
Worth knowing
Bethlehem means "house of bread," from the Hebrew words bayith and lechem. Ruth 1:1 begins with famine there, while 1:6 reports that the LORD has given his people bread. The place-name and the ordinary food share the same word. Naomi's departure and return are framed by bread missing and bread available again.
Ruth 1:1-7
King James Version · 7 verses
1:1Now it came to pass in the days when the judges ruled, that there was a famine in the land. And a certain man of Beth-lehem-judah went to sojourn in the country of Moab, he, and his wife, and his two sons.
1:2And 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 Beth-lehem-judah. And they came into the country of Moab, and continued there.
1:3And Elimelech Naomi’s husband died; and she was left, and her two sons.
1:4And 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.
1:5And Mahlon and Chilion died also both of them; and the woman was left of her two sons and her husband.
1:6Then she arose with her daughters in law, that she might return from the country of Moab: for she had heard in the country of Moab how that the LORD had visited his people in giving them bread.
1:7Wherefore she went forth out of the place where she was, and her two daughters in law with her; and they went on the way to return unto the land of Judah.
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.
Naomi carries the proposed solution all the way to its impossible arithmetic. Even a husband tonight, even sons immediately, would leave these women waiting for boys to grow into husbands. She is not withholding a promising arrangement. She is explaining why she cannot produce one.
And she keeps saying my daughters. The argument that sends them away is spoken in the language of belonging, not dismissal. Her concern is an actual future for them, not a ceremonial demonstration of their attachment to her. The last sentence changes register: the practical calculation becomes an accusation about the hand of the LORD. That is Naomi's account of her suffering. The chapter records it without supplying an offense for which these deaths were punishment. Her losses are explicit. Their explanation is not.
Verse by verse
1. 1:11
  The imagined sons would be brothers of the dead husbands, explaining why Naomi brings them into the argument.
2. 1:12
  Naomi describes herself as too old to marry; the passage supplies no numerical age.
3. 1:13
  The hand of the LORD is gone out against me is Naomi speaking about her affliction, not a separate declaration that names her guilt.
Worth knowing
Deuteronomy 25:5-6 provides for a dead man's brother to marry his childless widow and preserve the dead man's name. Naomi's hypothetical sons evoke that family logic. Boaz, however, is later identified as a wider relative, not a surviving brother of Ruth's husband. The two arrangements should not be treated as identical legal cases.
Ruth 1:11-13
King James Version · 3 verses
1:11And Naomi said, Turn again, my daughters: why will ye go with me? are there yet any more sons in my womb, that they may be your husbands?
1:12Turn again, my daughters, go your way; for I am too old to have an husband. If I should say, I have hope, if I should have an husband also to night, and should also bear sons;
1:13Would ye tarry for them till they were grown? would ye stay for them from having husbands? nay, my daughters; for it grieveth me much for your sakes that the hand of the LORD is gone out against me.
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.
Naomi comes home and argues with her own name. Pleasantness no longer sounds to her like a description that can be said honestly; bitter does. This is not a polite answer to the town's surprise. She names the Almighty twice and the LORD twice, bringing every part of the loss directly into her speech about God.
Full is an especially sharp word for a woman who left during a famine. She is not remembering plentiful bread. Husband and sons made up the fullness she has lost. Yet Ruth stands within the scene that Naomi calls empty. That contrast need not turn Naomi into an ungrateful woman or make bereavement disappear under a correction. The Book of Ruth simply preserves both facts: the devastating absence she names, and the living daughter-in-law beside her. The following verse gives the season, too. Barley harvest has begun.
Verse by verse
1. 1:20
  Naomi is associated with pleasantness; Mara means bitter. The Hebrew verb translated dealt very bitterly reinforces the sound and sense of Mara.
2. 1:20
  Almighty translates the divine title Shaddai. The passage uses the title without explaining its etymology.
3. 1:21
  Full and empty contrast her family circumstances before and after Moab, not simply the amount of food she carried.
Worth knowing
Mara is the name Naomi requests in Ruth 1:20, but the Book of Ruth never adopts it as her ordinary name. The very next verse of narrative, 1:22, calls her Naomi, as do 2:1, 3:1, and 4:16. Her proposed renaming is preserved as speech, not installed as the book's designation for her.
Ruth 1:19-21
King James Version · 3 verses
1:19So they two went until they came to Beth-lehem. And it came to pass, when they were come to Beth-lehem, that all the city was moved about them, and they said, Is this Naomi?
1:20And she said unto them, Call me not Naomi, call me Mara: for the Almighty hath dealt very bitterly with me.
1:21I went out full, and the LORD hath brought me home again empty: why then call ye me Naomi, seeing the LORD hath testified against me, and the Almighty hath afflicted me?
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.
Naomi has moved from explaining why nothing can be arranged to specifying where, when, and how. The woman who once urged Ruth to find rest elsewhere now takes responsibility for seeking it herself. Her information is exact: the family connection, the winnowing, the night's location, the place where Boaz will lie down. This is a plan, not a wistful blessing.
The instructions also leave something unresolved. Naomi ends by saying that Boaz will tell Ruth what to do, but in 3:9 Ruth herself names the request: spread therefore thy skirt over thine handmaid; for thou art a near kinsman. She gives the encounter its explicit family claim. Washing, anointing, and going to the threshing floor do not by themselves authorize an account of intercourse that the passage never records. The situation is intimate and vulnerable. Its stated aim is a settled home.
Verse by verse
1. 3:1
  Rest refers here to the security of a household, as it does in Naomi's blessing about marriage in 1:9.
2. 3:2
  The family connection has already been identified in 2:20. Naomi is not introducing an unrelated prospective husband.
3. 3:3
  The text specifies washing, anointing, and clothing, but does not describe a bridal outfit.
4. 3:4
  The instruction concerns uncovering his feet and lying down; the account does not state that intercourse occurred.
Worth knowing
Washing, anointing, and changing clothes also occur together in 2 Samuel 12:20, when David rises after his child's death and ends his fasting. That comparison makes an end to mourning a possible dimension of Ruth's preparations. Ruth 3:3, however, never explicitly calls her former clothes mourning garments, so the connection remains an interpretation.
Ruth 3:1-4
King James Version · 4 verses
3:1Then Naomi her mother in law said unto her, My daughter, shall I not seek rest for thee, that it may be well with thee?
3:2And now is not Boaz of our kindred, with whose maidens thou wast? Behold, he winnoweth barley to night in the threshingfloor.
3:3Wash thyself therefore, and anoint thee, and put thy raiment upon thee, and get thee down to the floor: but make not thyself known unto the man, until he shall have done eating and drinking.
3:4And it shall be, when he lieth down, that thou shalt mark the place where he shall lie, and thou shalt go in, and uncover his feet, and lay thee down; and he will tell thee what thou shalt do.

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.

9 songs

The music

Every song in the catalogue whose passage falls inside these chapters.

Ruth 1:1-7
Call Me Mara
Play here
Open song page Read lyrics
Ruth 1:1-4:22
Ruth, Redeemed in the Harvest
Play here
Open song page Read lyrics
Ruth 1-4
Where You Go
Play here
Open song page Read lyrics
Ruth 1:8-22
Where You Go, I Will Go
Play here
Open song page Read lyrics
Ruth 2:14-23
Handfuls on Purpose
Play here
Open song page Read lyrics
Ruth 2:1-13
Under His Wings
Play here
Open song page Read lyrics
Ruth 3:1-9
Spread Your Covering
Play here
Open song page Read lyrics
Ruth 3:10-4:12
The Redeemer at the Gate
Play here
Open song page Read lyrics
Ruth 4:13-22
A Son Has Been Born
Play here
Open song page Read lyrics

Nearby

All the people

Report an error on this page

Naomi

The Account of Naomi

Out of Bethlehem in a famine

Verse by verse

Ruth 1:1-7

Go back, my daughters

Verse by verse

Ruth 1:11-13

Call me Mara

Verse by verse

Ruth 1:19-21

Shall I not seek rest for you

Verse by verse

Ruth 3:1-4

Why it matters

The music

Call Me Mara

Ruth, Redeemed in the Harvest

Where You Go

Where You Go, I Will Go

Handfuls on Purpose

Under His Wings

Spread Your Covering

The Redeemer at the Gate

A Son Has Been Born

Nearby