In every life there are certain defining moments, key crossroads along the way. On the one hand, there are certain times when a person consciously chooses his or her destination. On the other hand, though, there are also times in life when it seems your destination had chosen you. These are the occasions when life gives us no choice at all, but thrusts us willy-nilly down a path that, however well or little traveled, we would never have chosen for ourselves. No one chooses to have her husband die, leaving her a widow with young children. No one chooses to have a crippling accident or a life-threatening disease with permanent consequences. These too can be defining moments in a life. But all of us – whether defined by choices we have made or the choices life has made for us – are on a journey through life, a road that is heading toward some destination or other. Where are you going?

The first chapter of the Book of Ruth is the story of choices made and choices seemingly thrust upon people, about roads traveled or left untraveled. It is about the long-term consequences of the decisions we make. Often the consequences are not those we expected and anticipated, but our lives nonetheless bear the mark of the decisions we have made and the defining moments we have faced. The Book of Ruth shows us that our actions have consequences. However, our lives are not simply the consequence of the various decisions we have made and events that have occurred, as if the universe were a giant supercomputer into which we feed all of the variables and come out with a predictable answer.

There is a mysterious X-factor that is evident in the Book of Ruth – a variable that has the power to change everything. It is the grace of God, which directs the outcomes of those decisions and events according to His sovereignty and good purpose for His people. That grace is not always evident to the players in the game at the time. But it is always there, whether acknowledged or unacknowledged. Ultimately, for Christians, the grace of God is always the defining element of our lives.

The Book of Ruth starts with a description of the times in which the events took place (v. 1). It is a theological description of the character of the times in which these events take place. During the days of the judges, everyone did as seemed best in his own eyes, for there was no king in the land (Judg. 21:25).

There is a repeated cycle (or, more precisely, a downward spiral) of events in the Book of Judges. At the beginning of each cycle, God’s people rebelled against Him and sinned. Next, God acted in judgment against them. Then the people repented and cried out to the Lord. At least they did this the first few times they passed through the cycle. Later on, in the Book of Judges, though, this step of repentance is missing. Finally, at the end of each cycle, the Lord sent a deliverer to rescue His people, and they experienced some measure of rest. The final chapters of the Book of Judges (Judg. 17-21) stand outside this downward spiral and show us in graphic detail a nation that had comprehensively lost its way, becoming every bit as bad as the pagan nations that were previous inhabitants of the Promised Land.

It was in these difficult days that a man moved his family out of Israel (v.2). Unfaithfulness to God had once again resulted in a famine in the land. The ultimate irony had occurred: Bethlehem, whose very name means “House of Bread,” was a place of no food. In that situation, Elimelech had a choice to make, a road to choose. He could stay in Bethlehem, the empty breadbasket of Judah, mourning the sin that surrounded him and trusting God to provide for him. Alternatively, he could leave the Promised Land behind in search of greener fields, in this case the fields of Moab, where food was more abundant.

The road to Moab turned out to be the road to nowhere. That reality was not immediately apparent, of course. But then it rarely is. At first it seemed as if Elimelech had made the sensible choice. While his kinsmen back home were suffering and hungry, there was food in Moab. Like the prodigal son in the story Jesus told (Luke 15L11-32), Elimelech’s stay in the far country went well at the outset. He was able to support his wife and two sons in comfort, and after a while Moab became home. Perhaps there never was a conscious decision to settle there permanently. Like so many, they now seemed simply to be drifting through life without any grand plan.

Somewhere along the road, however, being in Moab took on a more permanent cast (vv. 3-4). Now after Elimelech’s death the remnant of the family had a decision to make. They could repent and go back home to their own land and their own God, or they could stay where they were in exile. Tellingly, their choice was to stay. They still rated their prospects more highly in Moab than in Judah; they felt more at home in the land of compromise than in the land of promise. As a result of that road not taken, Naomi’s sons then took Moabite women as wives (v. 4), even though the law of Moses had commanded them not to do so (Deut. 7:3). Once entered upon, the road to continued and deepened disobedience is often smoothly paved and provides little resistance.

This too is often the way it is for us. Choosing to step outside God’s revealed will may come at the end of a lengthy period of wrestling with our consciences. Yet remaining on the outside may well require less effort. The prodigal’s decision to leave home was a deliberate one; remaining in the far country after all his money had been squandered required only an absence of thought. Indeed, sometimes the biggest obstacle to returning home is our pride. We hate the thought of having to return to our homes and our families with our lives in tatters and having to admit that our previous choice was wrong.

Even after Elimelech had died, though, Naomi was still reasonably well situated in life. She had her sons, after all. They were young and married and had every prospect of providing future descendants to take care of her in her old age. For ten years, everything seemed to be proceeding sufficiently according to plan, although the barrenness of both of her son’s wives ought surely to have been recognized as a sign that God was not blessing the family.

Worse was to come for Naomi (v. 5). In the space of half a verse, Naomi’s whole world came crashing down around her, and she was left alone, a remnant of one under the judgment of God. Who would support a foreign widow in her declining years? So, Naomi faced another defining moment in her life. It was time to make another choice – though this time, it hardly seemed like much of a choice at all. She would have to swallow her pride and go back to God’s people, in Bethlehem, where she had heard that there was now food again (v. 6).

The Book of Ruth addresses us as people who are just like Elimelech and Naomi. Like them, we often find that the grass seems greener in the fields on the Moabite side of the fence. The temptation to abandon the bread of heaven for this world’s provisions is very strong, especially during times when the bread of heaven seems scarce. The option of choosing the land of compromise (in this case Moab) instead of faithfully persevering by faith in the land of promise is a constant theme in the Old Testament. The food that the unpromised land offers seems very real, very tangible, and easily available in contrast to the promises of God, which constantly test our faith and our trust.

God is committed to save for Himself a people of His own. He does this not by searching for perfect paragons of virtue, but rather by reaching down to rebellious sinners and transforming them from the inside out. This is usually a slow work, as it was in Naomi’s case, but God is not in a hurry. This slow work often involves painful paths, as God strips away the things in which we have placed our trust instead of Him. All along the hard road to heaven, though, the love of God draws us and drives us to Himself and will not let us go. What an awesome God He is! How great are His mercy and grace!

Ruth 1:1-5 Study Questions:

How might verse 1 provide not only a historical setting for the story of Ruth but also a theological setting for these events? Why might the intentional mention of the “judges” ruling be so significant for our understanding of this account?

While the narrator doesn’t comment on the morality of Elimelech’s decision to move his family to Moab, what might we assume about this choice (v. 2)? Why might that have been a dangerous, if not a sinful, move for Elimelech to make?

Even after the death of her husband, Naomi would have been well cared for with her two sons still alive. Why would their deaths, then, have been such a crushing blow for her (v. 5)? What seems to awaken in her a desire to return to the land of Israel?