Ruth 1: 7 Commentary

Naomi is now heading back
a. To her God
b. To her people
c. To her land
2. Ruth and Orpah may have been experiencing
a. Excitement and trepidation
b. In going to a new but strange land
3. It is ALSO very possible
a. This procession was more like a funeral dirge
4. How would you feel to return home
a. After you left there with those you loved dearly
b. Yet come back home without them

By Tractorman (wrote 2560 Bible Commentaries - permalink to this Commentary)
Posted on: 4/29/2011 13:53 pm

In Ruth 1:6, the word is “arose,” in Ruth 1;7, the words are “went forth.”

First the decision is shown and then its implementation. In Ruth 1:7, the place of leaving must be the place of living. No body would start a journey for a permanent return just from the field, the place of working. It should naturally be the place of living, one’s home.

Yes, it is a description of movement and progression, and there is no redundancy.

By Jayant Christian (wrote 287 Bible Commentaries - permalink to this Commentary)
Posted on: 5/22/2009 17:47 pm

Many scholars are fond of saying, that if a thing is not written then it did not happen. Just the same, many scholars also dispute what is written, making much of the past a concoction of what would seem reasonable in their preferred point of view. While some people might see a repeat of an expression as a point of emphasis, as if using underscoring or bold print, others see it as a mar or blemish in the story. The story teller either stuttered or someone writing simply wrote it wrong.

Sometimes the scholars see patterns in Scripture passages that have to deal with the works of multiple authors being stitched together (redacted or edited). Julius Wellhausen was famous for finding different traditional stories “braided” together into the coherent whole that we have today. Aulikki Nahkola touches on several aspects and introduces the venerable biblical scholar Robert Alter as seeing indications of story telling devices in Bible passages (64). From either perspective, whether there were multiple authors (perhaps an old and then a rewriting by a comparatively new writer several hundred years later), or whether it was written to help the narrator tell the story in a then-contemporary fashion, we have a repeat. Verse six says Ruth got up to leave with the implication she was going to Judah, and verse seven says she ‘hit the road’ and began to leave for Judah.

In my mind, she was in the fields in verse six, probably receiving the eviction notice from the landlord, and she is on the road to home in verse seven. The redundancy might be a convenience for the story teller, but then it appears to show a progression, a sense of actual motion. She hears good news of home, and then she actually starts on the trip. If she “returned from the fields” with her daughters-in-law in verse six, she returns to her homeland in verse seven, with her daughters-in-law.

The reiteration of verse seven reinforces another societal matter. As the mother of the husbands of her daughters-in-law, she has a place of responsibility. In our current society, a woman leaves home to start her separate adult life either on her own or as the wife of a man she married. If things become difficult, the independent daughter may, or may not, return home for support. If the married daughter is widowed or divorced, she may, or may not, return home for support. The daughter has a maternal tie from our current perspective. This indicates, further, the paternal aspect of Naomi’s family and social connections of that day. The sons are under the father’s authority, the wife is under the husband’s authority, the sons maintain a supporting relationship to the mother when their father dies. These passages illustrate that the wives of the sons also have supportive and socially connected relationship to the mother of their husbands.

If Naomi left the fields of Moab in hope of returning or under pressure of eviction, either way, the daughters-in-law were going with her in verse six. If Naomi stepped out on the highway to Israel in verse seven, the daughters-in-law were going with her. In our current American culture, the daughters would have merely said their “farewells” and been about the business of working there in Moab, or going home to their mothers.

This is not a place of writer or editor error for the duplication. The two verses are different and show a motion, a direction and progress toward it. The verses also so the significance of relationship, something that will be affirmed and explored in still further detail later.

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Nahkola, Aulikki. 2001. Double Narratives in the Old Testament: Foundations of Method in Biblical Criticism. New York: Walter de Gruyter.

By Larry Swinford (wrote 15 Bible Commentaries - permalink to this Commentary)
Posted on: 5/22/2009 15:53 pm