“Where sin abounded.” That is the key to the first chapter of Ruth. The glory of God’s grace shines out against the dark background of the ruin sin has brought in. The last verse of Judges tells us that “every man did that which was right in his own eyes”; the first verse of Ruth gives us in the shortest, simplest way the double effect of man’s will at work.
“There Was a Famine in the Land”
The first time man ever did his own will, it was in trying to do better for himself than God had done for him. Instead of being a gainer, he lost everything and had to be turned out of the Garden. In his pride, man thinks he can get on without God, but famine comes quickly, and, although man is very wise and has sought out many inventions, he has never invented anything to take the place of bread. When our wills are working and God breaks the staff of bread, we may eat but cannot be satisfied (Lev. 26:2626And when I have broken the staff of your bread, ten women shall bake your bread in one oven, and they shall deliver you your bread again by weight: and ye shall eat, and not be satisfied. (Leviticus 26:26)). If I had the whole world at my will to do as I liked with, my heart would still be empty. Nothing in the world can satisfy the hunger of the famine that man’s will has caused.
But the famine at first only drives man’s heart further away from God, and that is the next thing we have in the first verse of Ruth.
The Fields of Moab
The effect of the famine is to send Elimelech, his wife Naomi, and his two sons, Mahlon and Chilion, away from the house of bread, away from the land where God still dwelt (although forgotten by foolish man), right over the Jordan into the land of Moab. Moab was the land of lust (see the story of Moab’s sad parentage; Genesis 19:36-3736Thus were both the daughters of Lot with child by their father. 37And the firstborn bare a son, and called his name Moab: the same is the father of the Moabites unto this day. (Genesis 19:36‑37)).
When we first feel the misery and emptiness caused by sin, our hearts turn eagerly for relief to the lusts of sin, the pleasures of sin for a season, but the story of that sojourn is soon told. “When lust hath conceived, it bringeth forth sin: and sin, when it is finished, bringeth forth death” (James 1:1515Then when lust hath conceived, it bringeth forth sin: and sin, when it is finished, bringeth forth death. (James 1:15)).
First Elimelech, whose name means “God is King,” dies. God’s authority is gone; the link between Him and poor, willful man is broken. Then the two sons, whose names tell something of the bitter fruit of sin (Mahlon means “sickness” and Chilion “pining”), both die. Naomi, whose name means “my pleasantness,” is left alone and turned into emptiness and bitterness. And so, in five verses, the Spirit of God gives us a picture of a scene where sin has abounded, such a scene as the earth must have presented when the waters of the flood first ebbed from it — a scene of barrenness, desolation and death.
Such is the fruit of man’s will, and how often have poor hearts in misery been brought to such a place, from Naomi to Marah, pleasure to bitterness, and bitterness that knows no relief, nothing left — “the woman was left.” Nothing could be more eloquent than that little word, of the state of soul that first brings us to a sense of our need of God.
God Has Visited His People
She was left of everything but God, and He, always the same, causes the good news to reach the fields of Moab and the ears of the desolate widow that He had visited His people with bread. How blessed! God has visited His people — come Himself to meet the need that man’s proud will had caused. That is the gospel. Man’s extremity is God’s opportunity. God’s delight is to give, but we are too proud to receive until so broken, “left” of everything, that the news of His grace touches our deep sense of need. Then we come, to find that He has given Christ to meet the need of a poor empty heart that all the world could never satisfy.
But from this point the Spirit of God occupies us with the one who is to be the vessel of this grace. First showing us God’s way of emptying in Naomi, He shows us God’s way of filling in Ruth. In order that He may be fully glorified, all that is of man must be set aside. Naomi had some claim; Ruth had none. So He passes over Naomi, and in order that all may be of Himself, He draws the heart of a poor Moabite maiden, who was by His own decree shut out forever from the place where His presence dwelt in blessing among His people (Deut. 23:33An Ammonite or Moabite shall not enter into the congregation of the Lord; even to their tenth generation shall they not enter into the congregation of the Lord for ever: (Deuteronomy 23:3)). We find then, as is always God’s way, that His grace superabounds. He acts in a way wholly unexpected. Instead of merely bringing Naomi back and blessing her, as He fully intended to do, and setting that before us as the picture of His grace, He picks out an alien without claim or title of any sort, brings her out of her fields of Moab, the only place she had ever known, and actually makes her the vessel of His grace, to reach out worldwide in Christ, to be the channel of blessing to Naomi and to me.
That is the kind of grace we have set out in this wonderful little book. She comes to the point where by death she had nothing left. Then God draws in spite of Naomi’s wretched testimony; He draws Ruth out of the fields of Moab. And then what? “Ruth ... bare a son. And the women said unto Naomi, Blessed be the Lord, which hath not left thee. ... He shall be unto thee a restorer of thy life” (Ruth 4:13-1513So Boaz took Ruth, and she was his wife: and when he went in unto her, the Lord gave her conception, and she bare a son. 14And the women said unto Naomi, Blessed be the Lord, which hath not left thee this day without a kinsman, that his name may be famous in Israel. 15And he shall be unto thee a restorer of thy life, and a nourisher of thine old age: for thy daughter in law, which loveth thee, which is better to thee than seven sons, hath born him. (Ruth 4:13‑15)).
A. H. Burton (adapted)