A modern English translation drawn directly from the original Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek texts. Translated word-for-word where possible, by a committee with scholarly oversight.
Uses the same source texts as the ESV, NASB, and most academic Bibles, including the Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia and the Nestle-Aland critical edition.
Ruth 1
Ruth 1 is the opening chapter of the eighth book of the Bible. The 22-verse chapter sets up the situation that drives the entire short story: a family from Bethlehem moves to Moab during a famine, suffers a series of deaths, and a widowed Moabite daughter-in-law refuses to leave her widowed mother-in-law.
The chapter opens with a famine in the days of the judges. A man named Elimelech, with his wife Naomi and their two sons Mahlon and Chilion, leaves Bethlehem and moves to Moab. Elimelech dies. The two sons marry Moabite women, Orpah and Ruth, and live there about ten years. Both sons die. Naomi is left a widow in a foreign land with two widowed daughters-in-law.
Naomi hears that the famine in Israel has ended. She decides to return to Bethlehem and tells her daughters-in-law to go back to their own families. After resistance, Orpah agrees and returns. Ruth refuses.
Ruth's refusal contains the chapter's most famous lines: "Where you go I will go, and where you stay I will stay. Your people will be my people, and your God will be my God."
Naomi accepts Ruth's decision and the two return to Bethlehem together. Their arrival causes a stir in the town. Naomi tells the women not to call her Naomi (which means pleasant) but Mara (bitter), because the Almighty has dealt bitterly with her. The barley harvest is just beginning.
Verse 1. In the days when the judges ruled, there was a famine in the land. And a certain man from Bethlehem in Judah, with his wife and two sons, went to reside in the land of Moab.
Verse 2. The man’s name was Elimelech, his wife’s name was Naomi, and the names of his two sons were Mahlon and Chilion. They were Ephrathites from Bethlehem in Judah, and they entered the land of Moab and settled there.
Verse 3. Then Naomi’s husband Elimelech died, and she was left with her two sons,
Verse 4. who took Moabite women as their wives, one named Orpah and the other named Ruth. And after they had lived in Moab about ten years,
Verse 5. both Mahlon and Chilion also died, and Naomi was left without her two sons and without her husband.
Verse 6. When Naomi heard in Moab that the LORD had attended to His people by providing them with food, she and her daughters-in-law prepared to leave the land of Moab.
Verse 7. Accompanied by her two daughters-in-law, she left the place where she had been living and set out on the road leading back to the land of Judah.
Verse 8. Then Naomi said to her two daughters-in-law, “Go back, each of you to your mother’s home. May the LORD show you loving devotion, as you have shown to your dead and to me.
Verse 9. May the LORD enable each of you to find rest in the home of your new husband.” And she kissed them as they wept aloud
Verse 10. and said, “Surely we will return with you to your people.”
Verse 11. But Naomi replied, “Return home, my daughters. Why would you go with me? Are there still sons in my womb to become your husbands?
Verse 12. Return home, my daughters. Go on, for I am too old to have another husband. Even if I thought there was hope for me to have a husband tonight and to bear sons,
Verse 13. would you wait for them to grow up? Would you refrain from having husbands? No, my daughters, it is much more bitter for me than for you, because the hand of the LORD has gone out against me.”
Verse 14. Again they wept aloud, and Orpah kissed her mother-in-law goodbye, but Ruth clung to her.
Verse 15. “Look,” said Naomi, “your sister-in-law has gone back to her people and her gods; follow her back home.”
Verse 16. But Ruth replied: “Do not urge me to leave you or to turn from following 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.
Verse 17. Where you die, I will die, and there I will be buried. May the LORD punish me, and ever so severely, if anything but death separates you and me.”
Verse 18. When Naomi saw that Ruth was determined to go with her, she stopped trying to persuade her.
Verse 19. So Naomi and Ruth traveled until they came to Bethlehem. When they entered Bethlehem, the whole town was stirred because of them, and the women of the town exclaimed, “Can this be Naomi?”
Verse 20. “Do not call me Naomi,” she replied. “Call me Mara, because the Almighty has dealt quite bitterly with me.
Verse 21. I went away full, but the LORD has brought me back empty. Why call me Naomi? After all, the LORD has testified against me, and the Almighty has afflicted me.”
Verse 22. So Naomi returned from the land of Moab with her daughter-in-law Ruth the Moabitess. And they arrived in Bethlehem at the beginning of the barley harvest.
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