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Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.comKeil and Delitzsch Commentary - Ruth 1:1 - 1:1
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Elimelech's Emigration (Rth 1:1, Rth 1:2). - By the word וַיְהִי the following account is attached to other well-known events (see at Jos 1:1); and by the definite statement, “in the days when judges judged,” it is assigned to the period of the judges generally. “A famine in the land,” i.e., in the land of Israel, and not merely in the neighbourhood of Bethlehem. The time of this famine cannot be determined with certainty, although it seems very natural to connect it, as Seb. Schmidt and others do, with the devastation of the land by the Midianites (Judg 6); and there are several things which favour this. For example, the famine must have been a very serious one, and not only have extended over the whole of the land of Israel, but have lasted several years, since it compelled Elimelech to emigrate into the land of the Moabites; and it was not till ten years had elapsed, that his wife Naomi, who survived him, heard that Jehovah had given His people bread again, and returned to her native land (Rth 1:4, Rth 1:5).Now the Midianites oppressed Israel for seven years, and their invasions were generally attended by a destruction of the produce of the soil (Jdg 6:3-4), from which famine must necessarily have ensued. Moreover, they extended their devastations as far as Gaza (Jdg 6:4). And although it by no means follows with certainty from this, that they also came into the neighbourhood of Bethlehem, it is still less possible to draw the opposite conclusion, as Bertheau does, from the fact they encamped in the valley of Jezreel (Jdg 6:33), and were defeated there by Gideon, namely, that they did not devastate the mountains of Judah, because the road from the plain of Jezreel to Gaza did not lie across those mountains. There is just as little force in the other objection raised by Bertheau, namely, that the genealogical list in Rth 4:18. would not place Boaz in the time of Gideon, but about the time of the Philistian supremacy over Israel, since this objection is founded partly upon an assumption that cannot be established, and partly upon an erroneous chronological calculation. For example, the assumption that every member is included in this chronological series cannot be established, inasmuch as unimportant members are often omitted from the genealogies, so that Obed the son of Boaz might very well have been the grandfather of Jesse. And according to the true chronological reckoning, the birth of David, who died in the year 1015 b.c. at the age of seventy, fell in the year 1085, i.e., nine or ten years after the victory gained by Samuel over the Philistines, or after the termination of their forty years' rule over Israel, and only ninety-seven years after the death of Gideon (see the chronological table). Now David was the youngest of the eight sons of Jesse. If therefore we place his birth in the fiftieth year of his father's life, Jesse would have been born in the first year of the Philistian oppression, or forty-eight years after the death of Gideon. Now it is quite possible that Jesse may also have been a younger son of Obed, and born in the fiftieth year of his father's life; and if so, the birth of Obed would fall in the last years of Gideon. From this at any rate so much may be concluded with certainty, that Boaz was a contemporary of Gideon, and the emigration of Elimelech into the land of Moab may have taken place in the time of the Midianitish oppression. “To sojourn in the fields of Moab,” i.e., to live as a stranger there. The form שְׂדֵי (Rth 1:1, Rth 1:2, Rth 1:22, and Rth 2:6) is not the construct state singular, or only another form for שְׂדֵה, as Bertheau maintains, but the construct state plural of the absolute שָׂדַיִם, which does not occur anywhere, it is true, but would be a perfectly regular formation (comp. Isa 32:12; 2Sa 1:21, etc.), as the construct state singular is written שְׂדֵה even in this book (Rth 1:6 and Rth 4:3). The use of the singular in these passages for the land of the Moabites by no means proves that שְׂדֵי must also be a singular, but may be explained from the fact that the expression “the field (= the territory) of Moab” alternates with the plural, “the fields of Moab.”
Rth 1:2-4
אֶפְרָתִים, the plural of אֶפְרָתִי, an adjective formation, not from אֶפְרַיִם, as in Jdg 12:5, but from אֶפְרָת (Gen 48:7) or אֶפְרָתָה (Rth 4:11; Gen 35:19), the old name for Bethlehem, Ephrathite, i.e., sprung from Bethlehem, as in 1Sa 17:12. The names - Elimelech, i.e., to whom God is King; Naomi (נָֽעֳמִי, a contraction of נָעֳמִית, lxx Νοομμείν, Vulg. Noëmi), i.e., the gracious; Machlon, i.e., the weakly; and Chilion, pining - are genuine Hebrew names; whereas the names of the Moabitish women, Orpah and Ruth, who were married to Elimelech's sons, cannot be satisfactorily explained from the Hebrew, as the meaning given to Orpah, “turning the back,” is very arbitrary, and the derivation of Ruth from רְעוּת, a friend, is quite uncertain. According to Rth 4:10, Ruth was the wife of the elder son Mahlon. Marriage with daughters of the Moabites was not forbidden in the law, like marriages with Canaanitish women (Deu 7:3); it was only the reception of Moabites into the congregation of the Lord that was forbidden (Deu 23:4).
Rth 1:5
“Thus the woman (Naomi) remained left (alone) of her two sons and her husband.”