John Kitto Morning Bible Devotions: July 4

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John Kitto Morning Bible Devotions: July 4

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Rth_1:3-17

At the end of ten years, of the four persons who went to the land of Moab to preserve their existence, one only remained alive, and that one was Naomi. They died amidst the plenty of Moab. They could but have died amid the dearth of Israel. The Jewish writers generally think, that they did wrong in leaving their own country to go and live among idolaters. It was a privilege to dwell in the chosen land, and among the chosen people, under the ordinances of religion, which was justly highly esteemed by the Israelites, and which they deemed as not to be lightly abandoned. Was famine a sufficient reason? If it were a sufficient reason for one, it was for another; and therefore under its full operation, the land would have been forsaken of its people. Observing that the law of the old covenant contained promises of unfailing subsistence to those who trusted in God, it is held that it had been the more faithful part for them to have remained, trusting to the Lord for their sustentation. The Jewish feeling on this subject is well expressed by the Psalmist—“Abide in the land, and verily thou shalt be fed.” As it is, these persons went to avoid famine from the land of the Lord’s inheritance, and in the land of their choice they found death, which the Jewish writers believe to have befallen them as a judgment. First the father died, and then the two sons, leaving Naomi alone; and yet not wholly alone, for these sons had espoused in the country two of the daughters of Moab, whose names were Orpah and Ruth. Some venture to suggest that the judgment of premature death, and that childless, was inflicted upon them partly on account of these marriages, which were affirmed to have been unlawful under any circumstances; while others allow that it was not unlawful, although not commendable, in case they were proselytes, as there is little doubt that both these damsels became.

Intermarriages with the condemned nations of Canaan only, were forbidden by the law (Deu_7:3); and from the case before us, as well as from others, it appears not to have been at first considered to extend to other nations, unless as idolaters; though in a later age, when the people were few, the law was more stringently interpreted, and intermarriages with the Moabites and Ammonites were decreed to have been as unlawful as with the women of any other nation. This is clearly seen in Ezr_9:1-2; and Neh_13:23; Neh_13:25-26. It seems, indeed, that the two sons of Naomi carried the matter with a high hand. In respect of persons so young as they appear to have been, and entering into their first marriage, it is usually intimated that the father or the mother provided wives for them, as Hagar did for Ishmael; but here it is said that “they took them wives,”—a kind of phrase which usually occurs in a bad sense, as done without the concurrence of their parents, or not left so entirely to them as custom required. The inference is, that they acted against the wishes of Naomi, who contemplated a return home with them, and their marriage in the land of their nativity, among the daughters of their own people; a matter which the Israelites justly deemed of great concern—whereas they seem to have deemed it as well to establish themselves in a strange country, and to that end married in the land of Moab, which the lapse of years had rendered a home to them. The nine or ten years, which appear but as a short portion—too short to deaden the love of home and country in persons of advanced years, is half of life, the more conscious half, to persons of twenty or thereabout; and beyond that age marriage was rarely deferred among the Israelites. To one of that age, the ten last years—seeing that his past has so little (a part of which was unremembered infancy) beyond that period for him to look back upon—is by much the most vital portion of his existence; and Moab, rather than Israel, may very well have been regarded by these young men as their real home. Parents do not always apprehend the essential difference between their own ideas and those of their children in this respect. The offence of the sons of Naomi, if they offended at all, seems to have lain rather in this, than in their marriages considered in themselves. We are not, indeed, able to urge the fitness of these marriages in this instance, from the fact that a pious man like Boaz afterwards became the husband of Ruth, which, it is alleged, he would not here done, had such marriages been wrong. Ruth had been already married to an Israelite, and was no longer to be regarded as a Moabitess, but as one who had already been introduced into the house of Israel, and had thence acquired certain rights which had not belonged to her in that condition from which her first marriage had removed her. Boaz had not to regard her as a woman of Moab merely, but as the widow of a near relation, towards whom he had certain duties to discharge.

The death of her sons, however disastrous, enabled the widow to gratify her heart’s longing to return home. To account for her being able to return, it is stated that she had heard “the Lord had visited his people in giving them bread.” It does not follow that the famine had lasted all the ten years. Ten successive years of famine would, we think:, destroy any nation. Yet even this is not incredible. Herodotus Note: Clio, 95. records a scarcity in Lydia, that lasted eighteen years; and that, even then, the famine not abating, the king divided his people into two parts, and cast lots for one to tarry at home, and for the other to quit the country, himself retaining the command of those whose lot it was to stay. This fact is worth noticing, as pointing to emigration as an ancient resource against famine at home. Indeed, it is more ancient than this, as we find not only by the case before us, but by that of the patriarchal family going down into Egypt from the same cause. The natural operation of such emigration to cause a country to be depopulated, was in this cases sagaciously obviated by restricting the emigration to a moiety of the population.

Neither does the instance imply that, although the famine had ceased, ten years had elapsed before she heard of it. It is very true that intelligence travels with wonderful slowness in the East—a slowness incredible to us with our newspapers, railways, and telegraphs. Letter-writing was but little practised. Indeed, in all the Scripture history, so far as we have advanced, no instance of epistolary communication on any subject has occurred. Intelligence was principally conveyed by travellers. A person hearing that some one was going to, or would pass through, a certain place, would desire him to say so and so to a particular person residing there, with, perhaps, a further intimation that he was, when opportunity offered, to send the same communication on to persons in other places. Travellers were glad to be the bearers of such messages, for it gave them a kind of claim to the hospitable attentions and friendly offices of the persons to whom they were delivered, whose anxiety to learn something more of places and persons, by questioning the stranger, gave to him the pleasant consciousness that he was conferring a favor, not receiving one, in accepting their hospitable solicitudes. But the land of Moab, although not distant, being on the other side of the Dead Sea, and lying altogether out of the lines of route which the inhabitants of Southern Palestine might take to any place beyond, north, south, or east, would be very rarely visited by such travellers, and intelligence would reach it but slowly.

Nevertheless, we take not this resort; for the phraseology will very well imply that “she had heard” of this some time before, although now only, in consequence of the death of her sons, enabled to act upon the information she had received. The statement of the fact seems to be made in order to account for the circumstance that, having now concluded to return home, the famine which had occasioned the departure of the family no longer, offered any obstacle, seeing that it had sometime before ceased. Certain it is, that when she does return, there are no signs of recent scarcity, but rather of such prosperity as would hardly have existed had the harvest then in progress been the first good harvest of the ten years.

It was the intention of Naomi to return alone. But, as friends and relations were wont to do, and as is still the custom in the East, her two daughters-in-law went part of the way with her to see her off. But when the moment of parting came—when they kissed each other and wept together—they both declared that they could not return, but would go to the land of Israel with her. Like a wise woman, she declined to take advantage of the impulse of passionate regret, which seemed adverse to their temporal welfare, and which their cooler judgment might not sanction, and urged them, by many strong arguments, to return to their parents, and leave her to pursue her bereaved course alone. Once more they wept, but Orpah was prevailed upon, and gave Naomi the farewell kiss. Ruth remained, and once more Naomi renewed her arguments with her. But poor Ruth realized, in her affectionate heart, a keen sense of her mother-in-law’s forlorn condition. She knew that Naomi could not but most acutely feel how, when last she passed that way, she had been accompanied by a worthy husband and two hopeful sons; but had left them behind her in a foreign grave, and was returning alone—alone to her once prosperous, but now desolate home. Ruth could not consent to abandon her under these circumstances. The reply is beautiful beyond expression, in the tenderness with which the firm purpose of an affectionate heart is expressed: “Intreat me not to leave thee, or to return from following after thee: for whither thou goest, I will go; and where thou lodgest I will lodge: thy people shall be my people, and thy God my God. Where thou diest, will I die, and there will I be buried; the Lord do so to me, and more also, if aught but death part thee and me.”

Surely, the simple eloquence of the mouth that speaks out of the abundance of the heart, never found more beautiful and touching expression than in these words of this young widow.