{"content":[{"text":"in law, but Naomi considered the situation of Orpah and Ruth, they were both still very young \n widows (in a culture where it was normal for women to marry around 15, they could have only \n been between 25-30 years old). If they stayed in their own families’ homes, they had a better \n chance at finding a new husband and having children and a future of their own than if they \n came with poor old Naomi, who was in the deepest grief. As “foreigners” their chances of \n finding husbands in Bethlehem would be minimal, as foreign women were often viewed with \n suspicion. Naomi offers them each a blessing in vs. 8-9 “May the Lord deal kindly with you, \n as you have dealt with the dead and with me. The Lord grant that you may find security, \n each of you in the house of your husband.” At first, they were determined to stay with her, but \n Naomi continued to urge them to go, as she was no longer able to provide sons for them to \n marry (echoing the tradition of the Levirite marriage, where widows would marry the next \n available brother of their deceased husband to raise up sons in his name). Naomi assumed \n what her culture had taught her –that the foundation of her relationship with her daughters in \n law was in her own ability to provide sons for them to marry. Orpah obeyed Naomi and \n returned to her own family so that she could become a wife again, but Ruth was stubborn and \n refused. For to Ruth, Naomi’s love and kinship was worth more than her ability to provide her \n with an eligible bachelor. Rather than seeking to become a wife again, Ruth felt called to \n remain a daughter to Naomi. She loved her mother in law and was determined to stay by her \n side and faithfully care for her. The two women essentially created their own countercultural \n family unit in this passage, with Ruth’s pledge of loyalty in vs. 16-17 functioning as the new \n covenant between the two women. Ruth promises to stay with her, to follow her, to take on \n her people, her customs, and even her faith in the one God of Israel. Through this covenant of \n love and loyalty, Ruth pledged herself to remain not as Naomi’s daughter in law, but as her \n own daughter, and she pledged her conversion to Judaism.","bbox":{"left":0.058824,"top":0.045298,"width":0.881206,"height":0.447444}},{"text":"When the women arrived in Bethlehem, “the whole town was stirred up” and Naomi \n continued to mourn and weep and changed her name to Mara –bitter. Everywhere else in the \n Bible, the verse goes “I went away empty and returned full.” What Naomi is describing in her \n current circumstance is the opposite of how God normally operates. You can tell through her \n theological wrestling that she’s angry with God over the losses she’s sustained. This is a \n normal reaction to loss.","bbox":{"left":0.058824,"top":0.503088,"width":0.87529,"height":0.111649}},{"text":"Chapter 2","bbox":{"left":0.058824,"top":0.624932,"width":0.091981,"height":0.01859299999999997}},{"text":"Fortunately for Ruth and Naomi, they arrived in Bethlehem late March/early April, just in \n time for the barley harvest. Ruth asked Naomi’s permission to go out into the fields and glean, \n to provide food for the two of them. It was an important part of the law of Moses for the \n owners/workers of the fields to leave some grain behind in the fields so that the poor and \n disenfranchised (widows and resident aliens) could come and glean that section of the food \n for their survival. This was one of the expected social safety nets in ancient Israel. Ruth \n understood how humiliating it would be for Naomi –the former mistress of Elimelech’s \n manor- to be reduced to gleaning for survival, so Ruth (who was both a widow and a resident \n alien) asks permission from her elder to go out and glean. Ruth hopes to “find favor” so that \n she may earn extra grain to provide for the two of them. She is literally “trying her luck.” But, \n with God there’s no such thing as coincidence or “luck.” It just so happens that she ends up in \n Boaz’ field –one of the closest male relatives to Naomi’s husband. And Ruth just so happened \n to end up in that field, just as Boaz was coming out to supervise the harvest. God was \n watching her and providing for her. Boaz noticed Ruth immediately, as she was a woman who \n didn’t fit in among the normal crowd in the field. When he asked where she’d come from, his \n foreman gave an account of her appearance. It seems that she –a Moabite, not fully","bbox":{"left":0.058824,"top":0.653871,"width":0.878283,"height":0.298323}}],"images_bbox":[],"images_bbox_not_text_overlap":[]}