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Chapter 1

Strangers in a Strange Land

Immigration has always been a social and political issue. It is also a religious issue insofar as the immigrant challenges us to see God’s presence in the wholly — or is it holy? — other. Recently, scores of demonstrators waved signs and shouted expletives at children and teenagers who had, with the encouragement of anguished parents, immigrated to the United States from Central America to seek safety from the poverty and gang violence of their homelands. Four centuries before that time, the pilgrim parents sailed to North America, seeking religious and economic freedom. They saw themselves as heirs to the children of Israel, whose exodus from slavery in Egypt took them to freedom in God’s land of milk and honey, Canaan.

Immigration means hardship and is usually undertaken as a last resort, when all other options have been explored. Immigrants, in ancient times and today, face antagonism and prejudice. They have to adapt to a new language and culture, and often have to start over again economically and professionally. In the spirit of Robert Heinlein’s novel, they are truly strangers in a strange land.

The Book of Ruth is an immigration story. Once upon a time, there was a famine in Bethlehem, “the house of bread,” and a certain man Elimelech, his wife Naomi, and their two sons, Mahlon and Chilion, sojourn to Moab. The journey must have been difficult physically, spiritually, and emotionally. Their roots and property were in Bethlehem and they were going to a land, whose relationships with the children of Israel, were complicated and conflict-ridden. In Israelite lore, the Moabites were the children of an incestuous relationship between Lot and his daughters. Moreover, they worshiped a god who sometimes demanded child sacrifice. Further, the Moabites were also known to be sexually promiscuous by Israelite standards. The children of Israel and Moabites often engaged in military conflicts. Elimelech and Naomi must have been desperate to leave their homeland and settle in such an unfriendly region, among people most Jews saw as moral and religious inferiors. It was a matter of survival.

Famine was, and still is, a matter of life and death. World Vision asserts that 2.6 million children die of hunger each year. Other relief organizations estimate that the number of hunger-related deaths among children, in a world that has enough food for everyone, may be as high as ten million. Like so many people then and now, Elimelech and Naomi left their home, property, and friends not only for a better life but also for the survival of their two children.

We don’t know how Elimelech and Naomi fared in Moab. Lacking suitable mates from their own ethnic community, the boys settled for Moabite wives. I am sure Elimelech and Naomi were initially disappointed at the son’s choices and hoped that neither bride would fit the stereotypical promiscuity of Moabite women. But, there were no other options, and so the boys married Ruth and Orpah. The family survived, but never prospered. Then, tragedy struck. One by one the males died, leaving Naomi to face the future, childless and with two childless daughters-in-law.

Naomi sets off toward home because, as an outsider in Moab, she has nowhere else to go. Naomi urges her daughters-in-law, Ruth and Orpah, to return home. She is aware that they will be strangers and perhaps looked down upon in Bethlehem. She is equally aware that they will be two more mouths to feed and that as childless, Moabite, and possibly barren, their prospects for marriage and economic security will be dim in Bethlehem.

The text notes without any sense of judgment that Orpah returns to her kinfolk. Ruth protests Naomi’s decision, and vows to be with her mother-in-law till they are parted by death.

Do not press me to leave you

or to turn back from following you!

Where you go, I will go;

where you lodge, I will lodge;

your people shall be my people,

and your God my God.

Where you die, I will die—

there will I be buried.

May the Lord do thus and so to me,

and more as well,

if even death parts me from you!

— Ruth 1:16–17

Ruth’s vow is an act of love that crosses the borders of time, place, religion, and ethnicity. It is an act, first of all, to insure their survival. Two women alone will not survive the rigors of the wilderness, nor will the elder Naomi be able to make a living or find a spouse in her homeland apart from a partner. She has a piece of property, whose ownership jeopardized by the death of her husband and sons, but no one to tend it. Perhaps, Ruth also realizes that she cannot go home again. Childless and the widow of a foreigner, she may no longer be welcome in her parents’ home. More importantly, Ruth’s vow is steadfast and loving. Ruth’s fidelity mirrors God’s unconditional commitment to humankind. God’s loving-kindness delivered the Hebrews from slavery and insured their survival in the land of Canaan, and Ruth’s vow will insure survival for Naomi and the family line of Elimelech.

Ruth and Naomi create a new kind of family. Two women are bound together by marriage, survival, and mutual respect and affection.

Ruth’s vow reminds us that relationships are holistic and multi-dimensional. Our vows take place amid the economic and relational dimensions of life. Friendships and marriages encompass more than good times and romance. They embrace the well-being of in-laws, children and grandchildren, and the day to day realities of making a living and insuring the well-being of the next generation. When my wife and I married in 1979, we had no idea that our marriage would involve the care and companionship of my mother-in-law for sixteen years and, now in our sixties, spending nearly every afternoon with two young boys, while their parents are at work. The greatest gift is love, and a deep and abiding love embraces every aspect of life from diapers to Depends!

Ruth’s vow to become an ethnic and spiritual pilgrim is filled with risk. Will she be accepted as a stranger in a strange land? Will the locals shun her, believing all the stereotypes about Moabite women? Will she have resourcefulness to make a new life economically for herself and Naomi? Will any man accept her in marriage, given her ethnicity, apparent barrenness, and widowed status? As the story unfolds, these mysteries will be revealed along with the quiet and gentle providence of God, whose love embraces the foreigner, widow, and impoverished.