Now, it came to pass, in the days when the judges ruled, some hundred and fifty years before the reign of David, that there was a famine in the land, an affliction threatened by the Lord, Deuteronomy 28:22-24, and sent from time to time as a punishment of Israel's iniquity in committing idolatry. And a certain man of Bethlehem-judah, the town afterward famous as the birthplace of our Lord, went to sojourn, to live as an alien, in the country of Moab, literally, "in the fields"; for the entire territory was conceived to have been divided into fields for agricultural purposes, he, and his wife, and his two sons. It may well have been that importations of grain from Egypt were cut off by the hostility of the Philistines, and that the inhabitants of Judah, therefore, were almost obliged to turn to the country east of the Dead Sea, although the Moabites belonged to the ancient enemies of Israel.
Related Commentaries of Ruth 1:1
Ruth 1:1
1 Now it came to pass in the days when the judges ruled,a that there was a famine in the land. And a certain man of Bethlehemjudah went to sojourn in the country of Moab, he, and his wife, and his two sons.