Commentaria in Ruth
AND TO HER GODS.—From this it is clear that Orpha had not been converted to God, but had always clung to the religion of her country and its idols; but Ruth, because she changed her country with Noemi, changed her religion also and passed into the colony and synagogue of the Israelites. Learn here how harmful it is to live among unbelievers, heretics and the impious; how good, on the other hand, among the faithful and the pious: for the former remain or become unbelievers, heretics, impious; the latter faithful, orthodox and pious, according to that of Psalm xvii: “With the holy thou wilt be holy, and with the perverse thou wilt be perverted.” So Orpha, returning to her unbelieving kin, remained an unbeliever: but Ruth, passing over to the faithful, became faithful.
16. BE NOT AGAINST ME, THAT I SHOULD LEAVE THEE.—The Chaldee: do not provoke me, do not compel me. Hence it is clear that Ruth was initiated into the Jewish rites by baptism, not one that was a sacrament, but a washing of the body, as males were initiated by circumcision. Hear the Talmudists describing the rite of this initiation: He who wishes to be a proselyte needs three things, if he is a male; namely, that he bring either a beast, or a pair of turtle-doves or pigeons; but if it be a woman, she is to do only the last two, that is, be baptized and offer the victim of a holocaust.
THY PEOPLE SHALL BE MY PEOPLE, AND THY GOD MY GOD.—Great was this love, respect and fidelity of Ruth toward Noemi, her mother-in-law, by which she steadfastly resolved to exchange her country for a foreign land, and the faith of her home for the strange religion of the Jews; because she saw her so wise and upright, and endowed with so many virtues and graces, that she was certainly persuaded that she had the true faith and religion, and that her God was the true God. Hence Origen, book I on Job, sets this example before daughters-in-law to imitate, saying: “Blessed Ruth showed so much devotion to her aged mother-in-law that she would not suffer herself to leave her even until death. Therefore she is ever magnified in Scripture; and with God she is blessed for infinite ages. Nevertheless he will judge and condemn in the resurrection all wicked and impious daughters-in-law who have heaped insult or injury on their fathers-in-law or mothers-in-law: not remembering that these begot and nourished their husbands, and gained for them by labour their substance and their sustenance.” From which he draws this conclusion: “If then thou lovest thy husband, O woman, love also those who begot him and nourished him as a son for themselves, but as a husband for thee. Do not separate the son from his father or mother.
Do not compel a son to dishonour his father or mother, lest thou fall into condemnation before the Lord God, in the day of terrible inquiry and judgment. Let it suffice thee, O woman! that thou possessest a husband whom thou didst not nourish, and a substance which thou didst not acquire; that thou comest into a house which thou didst not build, and shalt be mistress and have power over the labours of others, for which thou hast in no way laboured. Do not therefore repay with evil those who prepared for thee, and by their labour acquired, all things, both husband and substance. O woman, let no curse come upon thee from the Lord God.”
Again St. Jerome (or whoever the author is, for the style is discordant, though it be lofty) in tome IX, in the tract On True Circumcision, asserts that Ruth by this so courageous and pious answer deserved to become the mother, that is, grandmother, of Christ; whence he exclaims: “O virtue to be preferred even to men! A woman of an uncircumcised nation imitates the faith of Abraham, whom manly circumcision has left behind, and by the footsteps of others she enters upon the merit of justification, from which the blind inheritance of her forefathers has strayed. The Moabitess despises her gods, while thou, Israel, longest for strange ones; she, forgetful of her own, swears allegiance to the one God; and thou after a multitude of idols committest fornication: hence she is chosen by the Lord; hence she becomes an Israelite in mind, not in race; in faith, not in blood; in virtue, not in tribe: hence she is so blessed that she is called the mother of thy prophets and kings.”
THE LORD DO SO AND SO TO ME, AND ADD MORE ALSO—that is, let him send me sickness, poverty, persecutions, and add worse than these. For these are understood in this oath of the Hebrews; for they by euphemism leave them unspoken for the sake of good omen, lest what they call down upon themselves should really come to pass. Such was the oath of the Romans in a treaty, which Festus relates, book XI: “Those about to swear by Jupiter the Stone, holding a flint, use these words: If I knowingly deceive, then may Diespiter cast me out from my city and citadel, safe as they are, and from all my goods, as I cast out this stone. And then they cast the stone from the hand.”
Allegorically, Ruth here was a type of the Church passing over from the Gentiles to Christ. Hear St. Chrysostom, Homily 3 on Matthew: “Consider that what was done in Ruth suits our case. For she was both a foreigner and fallen into extreme poverty; but Booz, seeing her, neither despised her poverty nor abhorred the lowliness of her birth: just as Christ, receiving the Church, a foreigner too and suffering from the want of great goods, took her as his consort.” He then adds the manner: “But as Ruth, unless she had first left her parents, unless she had despised her house, and her nation, and country and kindred, would never have been joined in such a marriage; so the Church also does not become lovable to her Bridegroom before she has left her fathers’ customs and rites. Which the Prophet, speaking to her, also says in Psalm xliv: Forget thy people and thy father’s house, and the king shall greatly desire thy beauty. This Ruth also did, and therefore, like the Church, became the mother of kings. For David is of her stock.”
Hear also St. Ambrose, book III on Luke, after the middle: “How did Ruth enter into the Church, unless she was made holy and immaculate in morals above the law? For if the law is laid down for the impious and sinners, surely Ruth, who went beyond the definition of the law, and entered the Church, and was made an Israelite, and deserved to be numbered among the elders of the Lord’s flock, chosen for kinship of mind, not of body, is a great example to us; because in her was prefigured the entering into the Church of the Lord of all of us who have been gathered from the Gentiles. Let us therefore emulate her, that as she by her morals deserved this prerogative of being admitted to its society, as the history teaches, so we too, by our choice of morals, with merits to support us, may be enrolled in the Church of the Lord.”
20. CALL ME NOT NOEMI (that is, beautiful, likewise comely, pleasant, sweet, cheerful); BUT CALL ME MARA (that is, bitter), FOR THE ALMIGHTY HAS FILLED ME WITH BITTERNESS.—For he has deprived me of my husband and both my sons, and made me a widow and bereaved. The Blessed Virgin could say the same, seeing her son crucified and dead.
Tropologically, when we are praised for some endowments, let us look at our defects, and so turn praises into lamentations, as St. Gregory did, following the example of Noemi, book II, epistle 64, when he had been praised by Narses: “Your most sweet charity,” he says, “has spoken to me in its letters much in praise of good works; to all which I briefly answer: Call me not Noemi, that is, beautiful, but call me Mara, that is, bitter, for I am full of bitterness.” And in book I, epistle 6, to the same, grieving that he had been raised from the quiet of the monastery to the Pontifical charge: “You call an ape a lion. In which way I see you act, as we often call mangy puppies leopards or tigers. For I, good man, have as it were lost my sons; because through earthly cares I have lost right works. Call me not therefore Noemi, that is, beautiful; but call me Mara, for I am full of bitterness.”
He answered St. Leander the same, book VII, epistle 195. The same did St. Digna, virgin and martyr, in Spain in the year of the Lord 853, under the Saracen Mahomad, of whom St. Eulogius, her contemporary and a martyr in the same persecution, writes thus in the Memorial of the Saints, book III, chapter vii: “This maiden, since in her great humility and obedience she judged herself the last among her fellow virgins, and was an incomparable servant, never suffered herself to be called worthy, and said with tears: Do not call me worthy, but rather unworthy, because I ought to be marked even by the name of what my merit is.”
For Almighty the Hebrew is Saddai, which signifies both a horn of plenty, or a God abounding in all good things, bountiful, and also one who chastises and lays waste: both suit this place, as if to say: God who, as Saddai, that is, bountiful, once heaped upon me the honour of marriage, children, and wealth; now, as Saddai, that is, laying waste, has stripped me of the same and laid me waste; yet the same, as I hope, having pity on me, will again, as the former Saddai, kindly console, enrich and bless me. For he himself leads his own out. See what I have said of Saddai on Genesis xvii, 4.
22. SHE RETURNED TO BETHLEHEM, WHEN FIRST THE BARLEY WAS REAPED—namely at the Pasch. For on the second day of the Pasch the Hebrews offered to God the first-fruits of the ears of corn, and then on the third day reaped them. Hence the Chaldee renders: She (Noemi and Ruth) went up to Bethlehem when the Paschal day was at hand, and on that day the children of Israel began to reap the gomer or sheaf, which was wont to be lifted up, or offered before the Lord, and was of barley.
In like manner Josue, bringing the Hebrews back from the Egyptian servitude, entered into the promised land at the Pasch, Josue chapter iii.