They came into the country of Moab, and continued there.
Lessons from the conduct of Elimelech and Naomi
1. Learn from the change in the circumstances of Naomi’s husband not to trust in the uncertain possessions of this world. You may now be wealthy and respectable among your neighbours and acquaintances; a few years or months may reduce you to a condition of discomfort, if not of poverty and indigence.
2. Learn from the consequences of the step taken by Elimelech, the peril of discontentedness and impatience under adverse circumstances. Should riches make themselves wings, and poverty threaten to be your lot, beware of rashly changing your habits and connections.
3. Ye that are parents, surrounded with a family of children, learn from this history to reflect how soon these children may be taken away. And oh! strive and pray, above all things, that they may be the children of God by faith in Jesus Christ.
4. Learn from Naomi’s trials the beneficial effects of affliction; and from her resolution to return to her native land--the land of Jehovah’s worship--that the only true refuge in affliction is pure and undefiled religion. (H. Hughes, B.D.)
The wanderers
Thus the history of Ruth begins with a story of wanderers from God. It is a sad, but not a strange commencement.
I. Why did they wander, and thus leave the home of their fathers? The answer given is, “There was famine in the land.” God had sent upon them a temporary trouble, and they fled from it. But when God chastens us in His wisdom, our duty is to yield with contentment and submission. We should bear the rod and Him who hath appointed it. When we patiently yield to His merciful chastisements, they become our most precious blessings. “There was a famine in the land,” and they fled from it. Temporary sufferings made their home for a little while uncomfortable, and they could not patiently endure the will of God. It was their own land. It was their father’s land. It was the Lord’s land. Their family and friends were there. Why should they fly? The next season might be better, and more than repay them for the losses of the present. The famine might follow them to the land whither they went, and make their sufferings greater there than at home. When Socrates was urged by his friends to escape from the prison where he was condemned to die, he answered them, “Tell me of a land where men do not die, and I will escape to that.” How much better might this family have found a quiet submission to the will of God! What an illustration this is of sinful, foolish man! Adam had all the garden of Eden. One single restraint made him a voluntary wanderer from God. How easily have all who have descended from him rebelled and wandered since! But can we ever find happiness in running away from God? Is there any happiness but in a cheerful, filial submission to God? See where this wandering from God begins--in a spirit of rebellion and discontent. Oh, be ye watchful there. Be ready to hear and to do the will of God. In the midst of your trials remember His mercies.
II. But who were these wanderers whose story we have before us? They were a family of Israelites, of professed believers in the Word of God. Never does sin seem to be more dreadful than when man’s ingratitude is contrasted with God’s mercies. You are never straitened in God. You have all things and abound in Him. He is rich in His mercy to you all. Why should you wander?
III. This wandering was wholly unnecessary. These Israelites were not poor and perishing. They “went out full.” Their wandering was therefore wilful, and this made it the more rebellious and guilty. But is not all wandering from God unnecessary? Why need we ever go astray from Him? It will be always a solemn charge against us, “they went out full.” It is the wandering which makes us empty. If we go away from God our own heedlessness or choice is the fountain of our guilt and sorrow. Why need we wander?
IV. From whence did these Israelites wander? It was from the Lord’s own land, Immanuel’s land. It was from the whole company of His people. It was from the midst of the privileges of Divine revelation. It was from Bethlehem, the House of Bread. It was a hasty, foolish wandering from a happy home. We will not call every journey a wandering. It depends upon whence we came and whither we go, and under whose direction we move. Jonah wandered. When God sent him to Nineveh he fled to Tarshish. And God arrested him in the deep and brought him back. Manasseh wandered. And he was taken in the thorns and bound with fetters, till, in the day of his affliction, he sought the Lord and was forgiven. Demas wandered. From a love of this present world he forsook his Master and returned no more. Judas wandered. And how fearful was his end when he went to his own place! This is the wandering of which we have to speak. It is a wandering from God, from His Spirit, from His Word, from His Church. Whosoever goes astray from God voluntarily leaves the salvation which has been provided for him, and makes it his condemnation that he has loved darkness rather than light, because his ways are evil. But there are many wanderers from God in a very peculiar sense. They go from the very midst of His family, from Bethlehem itself, where Jesus is. They were born in His Church. They were early dedicated to Him in His holy sacrament. They were taught His Word, and named and registered among the number of His covenant people. They might have lived always at His feet and in His favour. But they left Bethlehem in rebellious discontent.
V. Whither did these Israelites wander? “To the country of Moab”; to a land of idolatry; a land of open licentiousness and crime. What a change of condition to them! What though bread was abundant there! “Fulness of bread like that in Sodom!” Man does not live by bread alone. And who that truly loved God would not rather live with a famine in Bethlehem than with sinful abundance in Moab? They went to Moab, but only “to sojourn there.” Just as Lot went to sojourn in Sodom. Just as every wanderer from God goes into the world. It is but for recreation. It is only a harmless indulgence. It is but for a season of enjoyment. They mean some time to return and never to go back to Moab again. To die in Moab, without God and without hope! Nothing is further from their thoughts than this. They will only dip in the lake, like the swallow, and they shall feel refreshed for a longer flight. Ah, how little they know of the dangers they encounter!
VI. And what were the results of their wandering? What could they be but wasting sorrow and death? Ah, how sad are the results of a life of guilt! How mournful are the consequences of a wandering from God! (S. H. Tyng, D. D.)
Spiritual advantages sacrificed to worldly gain
Were they wise in taking this step? For some reasons they were wise. There was an abundance in the land of Moab, and a scarcity in the land of Judah. Worldly prudence, then, seemed to point out some other spot as their dwelling-place. But one thing they did not sufficiently consider--they were leaving behind them many of their religious advantages. Yes, there is no doubt that Elimelech was wrong, very wrong, in leaving the land of Judah with his family, and settling in the godless country of Moab. It is a fearful thing to set little store by our religious advantages and blessings, when God has given them to us. When, for instance, a person chooses a new home, how apt he is to reckon how far he will be a gainer in a worldly point of view, putting aside altogether his gain or loss in spiritual things! How sad, if he should grow richer for this life, but poorer for eternity! Again, when a servant chooses a fresh situation, is he not apt to measure the goodness of it by the wages he is to receive, instead of thinking seriously how far his soul is likely to prosper in his new home? (Bp. Oxeuden.)
Cowardly emigration
Emigration from one’s own land can only be justified when it becomes an inevitable thing--where the population abounds more than the means of maintenance, and the people require to be thinned by the emigration of some for the comfort and advantage of all. But when people leave their country in the day of its difficulties, and thus refuse their help, they play the part of cowards who desert the army when the tide of battle rolls against its standards they act undutifully before God, unworthily as patriots, and cruelly as human beings. Our best exertions at such a crisis are always due; and instead of flinching from a sphere in which any good is possible to us, we ought to show that duty calls us wherever we can be of service. (J. Cumming, D. D.)
The godly oppressed, while the wicked have abundance
This may seem a strange thing, that the godly should be oppressed with famine, when worldlings and heathen wallow in their wealth. Of these David speaketh (Psalms 17:14; Psa 36:15; Psalms 73:4; Psalms 73:12). The like you may hear in Job (Job 21:7). But of the righteous it is said that they often cry out of their afflictions, their sorrows and nakedness, their hunger and misery; yea, our Saviour Christ pronounces Himself in His members, poor, hungry, naked. Judge now between the outward estate of the godly and the wicked; are they not contrary? That which of the world is condemned is of the Lord commended. Yet be not terrified from godliness, but rather strengthened in your profession. Then will you say, “Tell us the cause of this inequality?” Our Saviour answers (John 15:19; John 16:20). He compares us to the fruitful vine, which doth not only abide frost, snow, storm, and heat, but also at the gathering time is broken off, that the grapes may be reached. The gold must be tried in the furnace, the silver fined in the fire, the wheat purged in the floor, and, before it be meat for man, must also he ground in the mill; so must we be proved in affliction, fined in persecution, and crushed in pieces, under the burden of our own miseries, that we may be made prepared bread for the Lord’s own spending. Why, then, doth the Lord make such large promises to His Church of plenty, seeing it endures continual poverty? I answer, the Church of God must be considered after two sorts: the first, as it is cleansed in the blood of Christ, and washed pure from all outward and notorious offences, unto which estate pertain all these outward promises of liberality in the Scriptures. The second is the declined estate, or corrupted condition of every one in the Church, even unto the world’s end: unto this pertain all the punishments and tribulations which the godly endure, which the Lord sends upon them that He may by little and little scour us from our transgressions and weary us with the miseries of this life, that we may the more earnestly desire the life to come, for the Lord doth here scourge us that we should not be condemned with the world. (E. Topsell.)
Moab doomed
Moab was a doomed country. More than a hundred years before Ruth’s birth its sentence had been pronounced through the mouth of the prophet Balaam: “There shall come a Star out of Jacob; and a Sceptre shall arise out of Israel, and shall smite the corners of Moab.” “The earth also, and the works that are therein, shall be burned up.” (C. F. Hall.)
Elimelech an exile
In the “Field of Moab,” that is the upland canton bounded by the Amon on the north, the mountains on the east, and the Dead Sea precipices on the west, people lived very much as they did about Bethlehem, only more safely and in greater comfort. But the worship was of Chemosh, and Elimelech must soon have discovered how great a difference that made in thought and social custom and in the feeling of men toward himself and his family. The rites of the god of Moab included festivals in which humanity was disgraced. Standing apart from these he must have found his prosperity hindered, for Chemosh was lord in everything. An alien who had come for his own advantage, yet refused the national customs, would be scorned at least, if not persecuted. Life in Moab became an exile, the Bethlehemites saw that hardship in their own land would have been as easy to endure as the disdain of the heathen and constant temptation to vile conformity. (R. A. Watson, M. A.)