She Chose the Older Woman's God and Not Only Her Country

There is a question a person cannot answer about themselves and it keeps them awake.

The question is whether they believe any of this, or whether they are simply a loyal person who was born into a family and would have been just as loyal to whatever that family happened to be carrying.

It is not a cynical question. It comes from an honest place, and it comes most often to the ones who are actually the most faithful, because they are the ones who have never once given the family a reason to doubt them and therefore have no evidence of their own to look at.

He goes. He has always gone. He would carry a chair for any old woman in that building without being asked. And he cannot tell, from the inside, whether that is God or whether that is simply what a good son does, and there is no experiment he can run to find out.

There is a woman in the Old Testament whose most famous sentence is quoted at weddings by people who have not noticed it has two halves, and the two halves are exactly this question.

She was released, three times, by somebody who loved her

The setup matters, because it removes the usual explanation.

Naomi is not holding on to her daughters-in-law. She is releasing them, repeatedly, at cost to herself, and she means it. She tells them to go back three separate times and she gives them her blessing to do it.

And Naomi said unto her two daughters in law, Go, return each to her mother's house: the LORD deal kindly with you, as ye have dealt with the dead, and with me. (Ruth 1:8, King James Version)

So whatever Ruth does next is not pressure and it is not obligation. The door is standing open and the older woman is the one holding it. Orpah goes through it and the book does not say one critical word about her.

That is the situation Ruth is in when she says the sentence, and it means the sentence is a choice rather than a duty.

You are able to make a choice that nobody is watching for, and the door being open is what makes it one. Ruth 1:8 has Naomi releasing them with a blessing, and it is by the Spirit, Romans 8:14, that a person is led rather than pushed.

The sentence has two halves and the order is the point

Here is what she says, and I want to slow down at the join.

And Ruth said, Intreat me not to leave thee, or to return from following after thee: for whither thou goest, I will go; and where thou lodgest, I will lodge: thy people shall be my people, and thy God my God. (Ruth 1:16)

Count them. Where you go. Where you stay. Thy people shall be my people. And then, last, as its own clause: and thy God my God.

The loyalty is real and it comes first and it is not disparaged. She commits to the country, the household, the language, the whole social world, and Scripture treats that as beautiful rather than as beside the point.

And then she adds the fifth thing, which does not follow automatically from the other four. A person can move country and take a family's food and language and never once take their God. Orpah presumably kept loving Naomi from a distance for the rest of her life.

So the sentence is not one commitment. It is a commitment, and then a second one, said separately, by somebody who noticed they were two.

You are looking at somebody who separated the two things out loud, which means they can be separated. Ruth 1:16 puts them in two clauses rather than one, and it is the Holy Spirit, Romans 8:16, who bears witness with a person's spirit about which of them is true of them.

Naomi had nothing to offer and Ruth was told so

The other thing that clears the ground here is that Naomi is not an advertisement.

She has lost her husband and both sons. She is going home empty. She says so herself in the plainest terms available.

Call me not Naomi, call me Mara: for the Almighty hath dealt very bitterly with me. I went out full, and the LORD hath brought me home again empty. (Ruth 1:20-21)

That is the woman whose God Ruth just signed up for. Not a woman whose life looks like a reason. A woman openly saying that things have gone badly and naming God as the one who allowed it.

So Ruth's choice cannot be explained by the benefits, and it cannot be explained by an impressive display, and I think that is exactly why the book keeps it. A faith adopted because the household is prospering is very difficult to distinguish from a preference. This one has no such cover.

You are not disqualified by having seen the hard version of it in your own house. Ruth 1:20 records Naomi's own bitter account and the book still calls what follows faith, and it is the Spirit who searches all things, 1 Corinthians 2:10, rather than a person judging by the surface of a family.

Boaz names the thing precisely

The confirmation comes later, from a man who had no reason to flatter her, and he names it as two things rather than one.

It hath fully been shewed me, all that thou hast done unto thy mother in law since the death of thine husband... The LORD recompense thy work, and a full reward be given thee of the LORD God of Israel, under whose wings thou art come to trust. (Ruth 2:11-12)

All that thou hast done unto thy mother in law. That is the loyalty, and he honors it.

Under whose wings thou art come to trust. That is the other thing, named separately, as a movement toward a Person.

He does not treat the second as the meaning of the first. He treats it as a distinct thing she did, and the picture he uses is a bird's wings, which is an image of somebody who ran to shelter rather than of somebody who inherited a position.

You are able to have come to trust, and it is described as a place a person arrives at. Ruth 2:12 says under whose wings thou art come to trust, and it is by the Spirit of adoption, Romans 8:15, that anybody cries out from under those wings rather than merely standing near them.

How this actually gets answered

Let me say the practical thing, because the question at the top of this article does not get answered by an argument.

It does not get answered by feeling. Feeling comes and goes and a person who tries to settle this by checking their emotional temperature will be settling it again every Thursday for the rest of their life.

It gets answered the way Ruth answered it, which is by saying the second half out loud, on purpose, as its own sentence, with nobody requiring it.

That is the whole reason this site keeps asking people to say things with their mouths. Not because saying it makes it true. Because a person who has only ever said it in a room, in unison, in a language that arrived with the furniture, has never once heard themselves say it alone, and until they do they have no way of telling the two apart.

You are able to say the second half by yourself, and nobody has to be in the room. Ruth 1:16 has her saying it out loud as a separate clause, and it is the Spirit who bears witness with your spirit, Romans 8:16, which is the only testimony that settles this.