And Naomi took the child, and laid it in her bosom, and became nurse unto it.
Ver. 16. And Naomi took the child, and laid it in her bosom.] Next her heart, to show her great love and tender affection, though she were but mother-in-law to his mother. What, then, may we think of Ruth, own mother to Obed? There is an ocean of love in a parent's heart.
“ φιλτρω μεν συνεδησε θεος γονεας τε τοκους τε .”
Grandfathers and grandmothers oft love their grandchildren better than their own, for love descendeth.
And became his nurse.] A dry nurse no doubt, a foster nurse, a faithful nurse, as the Hebrew word importeth, not a milk nurse, for she was too old to give it suck. That was a miracle, if true, that is reported of the old woman of Bolton in Lancashire, who, when that town was plundered by Prince Rupert in our late unnatural wars, took up a child that lay pitifully crying at the breasts of her slain mother, and having neither food for herself nor for the infant in that common calamity, to still the child, laid it to her breast: and although she were aged above seventy years, and had not given suck above twenty years before, yet the child sucking, milk came into her breasts wherewith she nourished it, to the admiration and astonishment of all beholders. This, saith my reverend author, a is attested by three godly ministers, and various others of good credit, who were eyewitnesses of the same.
a Mr Clark's Mirror, edit. 2, p. 16.