After all the men have died, Naomi is left with her two daughters-in-law. Then, while abroad, she hears that there is food available again in the land, and she decides to return to Judah.
Ruth 1
6 So she arose with her daughters-in-law and returned from the country of Moab, for she heard in the country of Moab that the LORD had visited his people to give them bread.
7 So she went out from where she was, and her two daughters-in-law were with her, and they set out to return to the land of Judah.
Return from the Diaspora
In the return of Naomi and her daughters-in-law, we can see a picture of our time, in which part of the Jewish people, and proselytes, are returning to the land from the Dispersion. After a period of trouble and suffering, they returned to Judah, but they were without a husband and without a redeemer. Just as Israel returns to the land in unbelief today.
8 Then Naomi said to her two daughters-in-law, “Go, return each to her mother’s house. The LORD will show you mercy, as you have shown to the dead and to me.
9 The LORD will grant you that each of you may find rest in the house of her husband.” And she kissed them, and they lifted up their voices and wept.
Naomi calls on Orpah and Ruth to return to “their mother’s house.” We would say: to the motherland. She promises them that God will be good to them, because they were good to their husbands, who are now dead, just as they were good to Naomi herself. This is reminiscent of what we read in Matthew 25, that the nations will be judged by their attitude toward Israel (Matt. 25:31-46).
10 And they said to her, “We will return with you to your people.”
11 And Naomi said, “Return, my daughters. Why should you go with me? Do I still have sons within me, whom you could have as husbands?
12 Return, my daughters. Go, for I am too old to have a husband. If I were to say, ‘There is hope for me,’ even if I spend the night with a man, even if I bear sons,
13 would you wait until they grow up? Will this then keep you from having husbands? Certainly not, my daughters, for it is much more bitter for me than for you: the hand of the LORD has been stretched out against me.
14 And they lifted up their voices and wept again. And Oprah kissed her mother-in-law, but Ruth clung to her.
Clinging
Orpah is sometimes criticized for not wanting to go with Naomi, but here we read that she did intend to. It was because of Naomi’s insistence that she did not go with her to the land. Even in our time, we see that a (large) portion of the Jewish people has not returned to the land. Ruth did go. Her name means companion, and it says that Ruth clung to Naomi (:14). A word often used for unification (Gen. 2:24), servitude, and subordination (Deut. 10:20).
Forgetting the Redeemer
Israel returns to the land. Embittered (:13) by the suffering and sorrow they endured during the dispersion. Without a husband and without faith. Naomi was unable to produce offspring, but there was another way to perpetuate the lineage, which she did not know or had forgotten: that of the Redeemer. She could have known that if she had known God’s word. But she is a representation of unbelieving Israel, so she doesn’t know the closest relative, the redeemer.