Study 1 – The Lord gives ‘food’

Read Ruth 1.1-7

Consider: what are your thoughts about Elimelech taking his family to Moab?

V1            In the days when the judges ruled –see Judges 21.25. These were days of mass turning away from the Lord. They were times of big-dipper rides – spiritually up and spiritually down – resulting in apostasy, a turning away from the Lord. It is with that sad fact the book of Judges closes and provides the backdrop for the book of Ruth.

Vv2-3     …they went to the country of Moab. Our God is a God of great reversals. When all seems lost and hopeless – as someone said, “When we are at our tether’s end, he is at the other end” – the Lord God steps in and brings good out of evil. It is into that dark picture with which Judges closes that the light of the God-of-reversals shines so clearly with the continuing plan of redemption in the book of Ruth. It shone for them in BC14thC and it shines for us in AD21stC.

What of Elimelech’s leaving his people? Surely, we must not view Elimelech’s action of migrating as entirely blameless.

·       He was right to care for his family but wrong in how he did it. Did he pray? Did he seek counsel from friends, family, and neighbours? The end does not always justify the means. Does this challenge you when faced with important decisions?

·       He fled the land of promise because of the famine yet many more must have stayed and seen it through as the rest of the story testifies.

·       He did what others before him had done. Abraham went to Egypt (Gen 12.10), Isaac moved into Gerar (Gen 26.3), and Jacob lived and died in Goshen, Egypt (Gen 47.4). In each case some sort of trouble followed the migration – the worst, of course, was Israel’s slavery in Egypt.

·       He went to sojourn in the country of Moab. This was hardly the place to go for a man of the covenant, a member of the Lord’s people. This was surely a backward step to make. We need to watch ourselves and make sure we do not make backward steps and get sucked into our pre-Christian way of life. There is no help in saying it is only for a while – as perhaps Elimelech did[1] – you may regret it! The grass is not greener on the other side.

Elimelech decided that when the going got tough he and his family would get going – but they went in the wrong direction. When we translate this man’s name, it gives us pause for thought. Elimelech means ‘my God is king’ and he yet he did not seem to be expressing full trust in the Lord at this time. Are you?

V6            …the Lord had visited his people. A message arrives about food available in Bethlehem, which means ‘the house of bread’. It was the Lord’s doing – always was and always will be. The book of Ruth is rich in its revelation of the sort of God Yahweh is. Our author is anxious that the character of the Lord will shine out of the story.

This was the Lord’s providence. He it was who took away the provision of food in the Promised Land, by whatever means, and he it was who restored it. The Bible is filled with references to God’s providence – his overseeing care of all things. Here, as Naomi and her two daughters-in-law heard about food, they knew it was the Lord’s provision.

Now we know that bread is food for the body yet it is also a picture of food for the soul. Recall our Lord Jesus’ words, It is written, ‘Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.’ Matthew 4.4.

In Elimelech and Naomi’s day they had a famine of bread; of food. There are many places in the world that experience this in our day from time to time. How blessed we are not to experience famine in our land – our cupboards and freezers are stuffed with food. That is the physical meaning of ‘bread’.

However, there is a famine today, in much of the United Kingdom and in many parts of the world. It is a famine of the hearing the words of the Lord, as the prophet Amos declared (8.11). That is the spiritual meaning of ‘bread’.

Yet let us note something important. There is not a famine of the word of the Lord – it is in plenty, all around: preaching and teaching, unrestricted availability of the Bible. It is a famine of hearing or reading the words of the Lord. It is the Lord who sends the famine.

Consider: could it be that the dearth of serious Bible reading and study and lack of attendance in churches to hear God’s word faithfully preached and taught is a judgment of God on a godless and wicked society? Is this not what Paul teaches in Romans 1, how God gives up people who wickedly supress the truth? If people are not feeding upon the provision that God has made for them in his book, the Bible, they are starving themselves to a spiritual death. How we need to pray!

The simple solution to spiritual malnutrition is to have a good meal of the Lord’s words every day! There is an urgent need to return to Bethlehem – the house of bread – and feast upon God’s truth!

Pray: Heavenly Father, thank you that you provide all things needful for life and godliness. Help me to be content with such things as I have and not to go out of your way in seeking for things in the wrong place. Thank you, also, that you feed my soul with the living word. Help me to feed upon your truth daily and live out my life in the light of it. I ask these things that I might grow to be more like my Saviour, Jesus. Amen.

Michael S. Bostock, October 2020.

[1] The word in v2 “dwell” (NKJV) or “sojourn” (ESV, RSV) means to live among people who are not related and therefore to be dependent upon the hospitality of the host people. NIV has “dwell for a while” which may well be inferred.