Ruth 1:6–22

RUTH’S LOYALTY TO NAOMI

⁶She and her daughters-in-law set out to return from the territory of Moab, because she had heard in Moab that the Lord had paid attention to his people’s need by providing them food.^{e 7}She left the place where she had been living, accompanied by her two daughters-in-law, and traveled along the road leading back to the land of Judah.

⁸Naomi said to them, “Each of you go back to your mother’s home.^f May the Lord show kindness to you as you have shown to the dead and to me. ⁹May the Lord grant each of you rest^g in the house of a new husband.” She kissed them, and they wept loudly.

¹⁰They said to her, “We insist on returning with you to your people.”

¹¹But Naomi replied, “Return home, my daughters. Why do you want to go with me? Am I able to have any more sons who could become your husbands?^{h 12}Return home, my daughters. Go on, for I am too old to have another husband. Even if I thought there was still hope for me to have a husband tonight and to bear sons, ¹³would you be willing to wait for them to grow up? Would you restrain yourselves from remarrying?^C No, my daughters, my life is much too bitter for you to share,^D because the Lord’s hand has turned against me.”^{i 14}Again they wept loudly, and Orpah kissed her mother-in-law, but Ruth clung to her. ¹⁵Naomi said, “Look, your sister-in-law has gone back to her people and to her gods.^j Follow your sister-in-law.”

¹⁶But Ruth replied:

Don’t plead with me to abandon you

or to return and not follow you.

For wherever you go, I will go,

and wherever you live, I will live;

your people will be my people,

and your God will be my God.

¹⁷Where you die, I will die,

and there I will be buried.

May the Lord punish me,^k

and do so severely,

if anything but death separates you and me.

¹⁸When Naomi saw that Ruth was determined to go with her, she stopped talking to her.

¹⁹The two of them traveled until they came to Bethlehem. When they entered Bethlehem, the whole town was excited about their arrival^Al and the local women exclaimed, “Can this be Naomi?”

²⁰“Don’t call me Naomi. Call me Mara,”^B she answered, “for the Almighty^m has made me very bitter.^{n 21}I went away full, but the Lord has brought me back empty.^o Why do you call me Naomi, since the Lord has opposed^C me, and the Almighty has afflicted me?”

²²So Naomi came back from the territory of Moab with her daughter-in-law Ruth the Moabitess. They arrived in Bethlehem at the beginning of the barley harvest.^p