Here we are, ankle deep in the story of Job and Naomi, bitterness and a complaint that God has acted unjustly. We must continue wading in, till we’re up to our knees.
The book of Ruth, in the Hebrew Scriptures, is actually the story of Naomi.
Every character introduced in the story is related to her. Naomi’s husband dies. Naomi’s sons marry and then die. Naomi’s daughters-in-law journey with her. Naomi’s kinsman redeemer is Boaz. Naomi’s son and redeemer is Obed.
It is Passover when Naomi returns to Bethlehem, crying out that God himself has gone out to war against her, and it is bitter. It is very, very bitter.
The Passover horseradish is put on the tongue to remind the children of Israel of the bitterness of the slavery God redeemed them from. The charoseth is sweet, symbolizing the mortar that held the bricks of slave labour together. The dates melt onto your tongue with this message, “even slavery is sweet when redemption is nigh.”
But Naomi, old Naomi, is blind to the redemption coming. There is no sweetness anywhere in her soul.
Yet she returns.
She is a child of Abraham and Jacob. I told you that God calls himself Shaddai only a very few times in the Torah, but I did not say when. Pay attention: when God appears to Abram and changes his name to Abraham, and changes Sarai’s name to Sarah and promises innumerable descendants, nations, and kings to the old, old couple, God begins with, “I am El Shaddai.” And for Jacob? After the death of his beloved wife Rachel, God appears to him to comfort him. God says, you will no longer be called Jacob but Israel. I am El Shaddai. Nations will come from you, nations and kings…
Do you see what Naomi is doing? Who is she but an old and worn out woman, without a family and with no descendants to carry her husband’s name. She is no patriarch. Yet she calls on God the name he calls himself in moments of changing names, of promisingly kingly descendants, and she turns that name inside out.
Is she like Jacob, wrestling yet holding close? She is a child of Israel, the people put to death by God yet brought back to life, disciplined by Shaddai yet dependant on him for every breath. Naomi lives the paradox, going home to the God who has gone out against her, whose chesed she calls on.
I wonder if she is daring God to show himself, calling Him out for not standing by His self-proclaimed name. Here, too, we must pay attention: her ancestor Abraham was visited by the angels of God at the oaks of Mamre. God said then that he chose Abraham to teach his children righteousness and justice. Next thing we know, barely a breath later in the story, Abraham is challenging God on his plan to destroy Sodom and Gomorrah. “Should not the judge of all the earth show justice?” Abraham asks.
That is the heritage of Naomi. And if your hands and your head can take one more thread for later, this moment of confronting God turned into the salvation of Lot and his daughters from the city of Sodom—Lot, from whom comes the line of Moab. Ah. Now you are getting some background on Ruth, the Moabitess. Hold on to it.
Abraham the patriarch wasn’t the only one to call out God by his names. The prophet Moses begged to see God’s glory, and God sounded out his name again, and this time it was chesed v’emet. Steadfast love and truth. Moses became the prime example of reminding God of this name, interceding for the people of Israel. You may be right and just, God, but where is your steadfast love? All the prophets asked variations of this. Jonah (memorably) asked it the other way—you’re showing Nineveh your chesed love, but where did your justice go?
But Naomi, born as she was into this lineage of humans who spoke so to God, was not a patriarch. Naomi was not a prophet. Naomi, by her own admission, was empty and old and living in the time of judges. And if you’ve forgotten what that time was like: the book of Ruth begins with a man of Bethlehem leaving. We know of two other men who left Bethlehem during the time of the judges. They were both Levites. One settled with Micah of Ephraim, to become his personal priest. No good came from that! And the second — this is a story to make grown men weep – the second left Bethlehem with his concubine. She was gang-raped to death in Gibeah. He sent pieces of her body throughout the land and for once the land was united in their intent to wipe out one of their own brothers, the tribe of Benjamin. Do you grasp the dark backdrop?
Naomi says this to the women of Bethlehem that Shaddai had been a terror to her (like Job) and she would change her own name. So she returns, at the time of Passover. She seems unaware that chesed went out to accompany her, as quietly as the whisper of a feather, as ordinary as a gray pigeon, the familiar face of her daughter-in-law Ruth.
Photo by Danie Franco on Unsplash.
A broken tulip 
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