Commentaria in Ruth
Here is woven the genealogy of Judah the Patriarch, from Phares his son as far as David, from whom was born Christ, to this end, that Christ (at whom the whole of Holy Scripture aims, as at its mark and end) might be shown to be born of Juda, as Jacob had promised and foretold when blessing his son Juda, Gen. xlix, 10. Now Ruth the Moabitess, a Gentile, but soon made a believer and a proselyte, is introduced into this genealogy, and by a wondrous chance, or rather by the providence of God, entered it just as Rahab the Chanaanite did: “That he might show,” says St. Jerome, “that he did not disdain to be born of sinners, who had come to blot out the sins of all, and that the calling and election of the Gentiles, with the Jews cast off, to be brought about by Christ, might be signified in Ruth, a Gentile and grandmother of Christ.” Tropologically, that in Ruth there might be given the ideal and pattern of a pious, modest and holy wife. Symbolically, to show that nobility of birth is given by God, who took Ruth, a Gentile, lowly and poor, into the family of Abraham and Juda, and made her the mother of David and his descendants, and even of Christ himself. Hence Ruth is called “the Mother of the kingdom and of kings.” For all the kings of Juda descended from her.
This book is an appendix to the book of Judges, and so the Hebrews attach it to that book; for its history happened under the Judges, as is clear from chapter 1, verse 4. And it is a prelude and, as it were, an introduction to the book of Kings; for in it the deeds of David and of the other kings born of Ruth are described. Therefore this book is rightly placed between the book of Judges and that of Kings. Moreover this book was held to be a canonical book of Holy Scripture by all, Catholics and heretics alike (I except the Manichees, who rejected and blasphemed the whole Old Testament, and consequently the book of Ruth, as having proceeded from an evil god, as St. Augustine testifies in his books Against Faustus), although in some Arabic copies, namely those in manuscript only, it does not appear.
The author of the book is uncertain; for some think it was King Ezechias, others Esdras, but most think it was Samuel, and this seems more probable, both because Samuel lived about this time, and because he himself wrote the first book of Kings, to which this book leads.
Those who have written on Ruth are Rupert, Abulensis, Lyranus, Hugh, Dionysius, Cajetan, Serarius, and Fevardentius, who draws from this book many fine lessons of conduct.
Chapter 1. Synopsis of the Chapter
Elimelech of Bethlehem, pressed by famine, sojourns with his wife Noemi and his two sons in Moab; there, all having died, Noemi alone, a widow, returns to Bethlehem with Ruth her daughter-in-law.
1. In the days of one of the judges, when the judges ruled, there was a famine in the land. And a certain man of Bethlehem Juda went to sojourn in the land of Moab with his wife and his two sons. 2. He was called Elimelech, and his wife Noemi, and his two sons, the one Mahalon, and the other Chelion, Ephrathites of Bethlehem Juda. And they went into the country of Moab, and abode there. 3. And Elimelech the husband of Noemi died, and she remained with her sons. 4. And they took wives of the women of Moab, of whom one was called Orpha, and the other Ruth. And they dwelt there ten years; 5. and both of them died, to wit, Mahalon and Chelion: and the woman was left alone, bereaved of her two children and her husband. 6. And she arose to go into her native country, with both her daughters-in-law, from the land of Moab: for she had heard that the Lord had visited his people, and had given them food. 7. She went forth therefore from the place of her sojourning, with both her daughters-in-law, and being now in the way to return into the land of Juda, 8. she said to them: Go ye home to your mother’s house: the Lord deal mercifully with you, as you have dealt with the dead and with me. 9. May he grant you to find rest in the houses of the husbands which you shall take. And she kissed them. And they lifted up their voice and began to weep, 10. and to say: We will go on with thee to thy people. 11. To whom she answered: Return, my daughters, why come you with me? Have I any more sons in my womb, that you may hope for husbands of me? 12. Return, my daughters, and go your way: for I am now worn out with age, and not fit for wedlock, although I might conceive this night, and bear sons, 13. if you would wait till they were grown, and had passed the years of puberty, you would be old women before you marry. Do not so, I beseech you, my daughters: for your distress weighs more heavily on me, and the hand of the Lord is gone out against me. 14. Then they lifted up their voice and began to weep again: Orpha kissed her mother-in-law and went back; Ruth stayed with her mother-in-law. 15. And Noemi said to her: Behold, thy kinswoman is gone back to her people and to her gods, go thou with her. 16. She answered: Be not against me, that I should leave thee and depart: for whithersoever thou shalt go, I will go; and where thou shalt dwell, I also will dwell. Thy people shall be my people, and thy God my God. 17. The land that shall receive thee dying, in the same will I die: and there will I be buried. The Lord do so and so to me, and add more also, if aught but death part me and thee. 18. Noemi therefore seeing that Ruth was determined in her mind to go with her, would not be against it, nor persuade her any more to return to her own people; 19. and they went on together, and came to Bethlehem. And when they were entered into the city, the report was quickly spread among all, and the women said: This is that Noemi. 20. And she said to them: Call me not Noemi (that is, beautiful), but call me Mara (that is, bitter), for the Almighty has filled me with bitterness. 21. I went out full, and the Lord hath brought me back empty. Why then do you call me Noemi, whom the Lord hath humbled, and the Almighty hath afflicted? 22. So Noemi came with Ruth the Moabitess, her daughter-in-law, from the land of her sojourning, and returned to Bethlehem, when first the barley was reaped.
1. IN THE DAYS OF ONE OF THE JUDGES.—You will ask: who was this Judge under whom this famine and the marriage of Ruth with Booz took place? First, Josephus; Zonaras and the Master of Scholastic History think it was Heli the High Priest. But this cannot be said; for Heli judged forty years, then Samuel and Saul as many: to these David succeeded immediately, in the thirtieth year of his age. Now David was begotten of Jesse, he of Obed, he of Booz, and all these generations could not have come to pass in so few years, namely eighty, over which Heli and Saul ruled. Second, the Rabbis and Lyranus think this Judge was Abesan, of whom Judges xii; and therefore that Abesan is Booz. For the letters of the two names are almost the same. But the reckoning of time is against it; for Abesan became Judge in the year 272 after the capture of Jericho by Josue, chapter vi, when Salmon married Rahab, who had received the spies of Josue, and by her begot Booz, who was the husband of Ruth; wherefore Booz, if he is the same as Abesan, would have been about 279 years old, which was unusual and impossible in that age; for no one then lived so long.
Third, Seder Olam thinks it was Aod, the second Judge.
Fourth, Abulensis on chapter iv of Ruth, Question XC, thinks it was Barac, in whose last years this famine happened. Torniellus agrees, except that he thinks it happened about the twentieth year of Barac.
Fifth, our Salianus, very suitably, thinks that this famine happened under Abimelech, the son of Gedeon; and the marriage of Booz with Ruth under his successor Thola, of whom more in chapter iv, verse 22.
AND THERE WAS A FAMINE IN THE LAND—not in the whole earth, but in Israel, as the Chaldee has it; for Elimelech went away into Moab to avoid it, because there was no famine there. It is likely that this famine was sent by God because of the sins of the people; for God is wont to punish public crimes with public famine or plague. Such were the parricides and idolatry committed by Abimelech and the Sichemites.
The Rabbis fable that another standing still of the sun, such as there was under Josue, preceded this famine, and was its cause, and that Elimelech, as a holy man, obtained this standing still from God by his prayers, and that he is therefore the one of whom it is said in 1 Paral. iv, 22: “Who made the sun stand still.” Where I shall treat of this matter at length.
2. HE WAS CALLED ELIMELECH.—Josephus, Zonaras and Theodoret wrongly call him “Abimelech.” Elimelech in Hebrew is the same as my God the king, or king of my God, or king of my strength. He was a leading and wealthy man, being of the family of Salmon, prince of the tribe of Juda, and a kinsman of his son Booz.
EPHRATHITES—that is, sprung from Bethlehem, which was called by another name Ephrata. So David too is called the son of an Ephrathite man, that is, of a Bethlehemite, book I. But elsewhere he who was of the tribe of Ephraim is called an Ephraimite, as in Judges xii, verse 5, and 1 Kings.
AND HIS WIFE NOEMI.—Noemi in Hebrew is the same as beautiful, sweet, pleasant, such as she was in words and deeds alike. R. Simon says she was called Noemi because of that verse of Psalm lxxxix, 17: “Let the brightness of the Lord our God be upon us;” for there, for brightness, the Hebrew has noam.
The Rabbis hold that she was the daughter of the brother of Salmon, and therefore a granddaughter of Nahasson, who was prince of the tribe of Juda. For Nahasson begot Salmon and his brother, who was the father of Noemi. Moreover Serarius gathers these heroic virtues of Noemi from this book. First, her constancy in the true worship of God shines out here, even when she had gone into a land of idolaters. Second, zeal, when she led her daughter-in-law Ruth to the same worship. Third, prudence, when she so skilfully probed and strengthened her mind. Fourth, endurance in adverse and hard circumstances, above all in famine, want, and a sort of exile. Fifth, love of country, when, old and decrepit as she was, she wished to return to it. Sixth, wisdom in keeping, guiding, and at last bringing Ruth to a most happy marriage, from which Christ Jesus was born, the salvation of the world, the joy of the earth, the gladness of the heavens.
AND HIS TWO SONS, THE ONE MAHALON, AND THE OTHER CHELION.—Mahalon in Hebrew is the same as weakness, or chorus; Chelion, failure or failing. Aptly, because both died prematurely in Moab. The Rabbis hold that these two are those who in 1 Paral. iv are called in the Hebrew Joas and Saraph, which our Vulgate renders “secure” and “burning,” because, despairing of Israel’s deliverance from the famine, they lived too securely and negligently in Moab, that is, in the land of idolaters, and took Moabite wives there; and therefore, they say, they were given over by God to destruction and burning. But these are, as is their way, inventions, or rather fictions.
4. AND THEY TOOK WIVES OF THE WOMEN OF MOAB.—The Rabbis, as I have said, say that they sinned gravely in this. Nor is there any need to excuse them from sin, says Abulensis. Yet they can be excused partly by necessity, because in Moab they did not find Israelite women to marry; and for them, being young men, in the heat of youth, celibacy would have been hard and dangerous. Again, because Noemi, their mother, seems a pious woman, and directed them to this marriage by the instinct of God, who was destining David to be born through Ruth, and from him Christ. Some add that Orpha and Ruth had been converted from idols to the true God, wherefore they could lawfully be taken by Mahalon and Chelion, Hebrews, as Salmon took Rahab the Chanaanite, converted to Judaism, Josue ii; for it was lawful for Hebrews to marry Chanaanite women if they were converted to Judaism.
But this answer has no place here; for Orpha went back to her idols, and Ruth was converted only when she followed Noemi and migrated with her from Moab to Bethlehem, as is clear from what follows: