Exegetical and Hermeneutical Commentary of Ruth 1:4

And they took them wives of the women of Moab; the name of the one [was] Orpah, and the name of the other Ruth: and they dwelled there about ten years.

4. took them wives ] The idiom is a late one, 2Ch 11:21, Ezr 9:2; Ezr 9:12, Neh 13:25 etc.; see Introd. p. xv. It is uncertain whether the names of the two wives have any bearing upon the parts which they play in the story. The Midrash Rabbah on this Book explains that Orpah was so called ‘because she turned her neck ( ‘oreph) on her mother in law’; possibly the name may=‘obstinacy’ (cf. stiffnecked, Exo 32:9 etc.). Equally doubtful is the significance of Ruth; if the name is shortened from re‘uth, as it is written in Syriac, it will be the fem. of Re’u (Gen 11:18 ff.), and may mean ‘friendship.’ We cannot, therefore, feel sure that the writer invented the names; he may have derived them from tradition.

Fuente: The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges

Marriages of Israelites with women of Ammon or Moab are nowhere in the Law expressly forbidden, as were marriages with the women of Canaan Deu 7:1-3. In the days of Nehemiah the special law Deu 23:3-6 was interpreted as forbidding them, and as excluding the children of such marriages from the congregation of Israel Neh 13:1-3. Probably the marriages of Mahlon and Chilion would be justified by necessity, living as they were in a foreign land. Ruth was the wife of the older brother, Mahlon Rth 4:10.

Fuente: Albert Barnes’ Notes on the Bible

Rth 1:4

They took them wives of the women of Moab.

Sinful marriages

The sin of these young men in marrying strange women is not expressly denounced as a sin in the story, although it is denounced in the Targum, which commences Rth 1:4 thus: They transgressed the commandment of the Lord, and took foreign wives from among the daughters of Moab. But no one can read the Old Testament without feeling that they sinned against the law, for to the Hebrews marriage was a religious covenant; and St. Paul does but utter an admitted and familiar truth when he asks, What fellowship has light with darkness, or Belial with God? The reason of the law is given in the passage just cited from Deuteronomy–they will turn away thy children from Me, and they will serve false gods. The daughters of Moab were specially obnoxious to the faithful Israelites. They appear to have been among the most fascinating, and the most wanton and profligate, women of antiquity. Their gods–Chemosh, Moloch, Baal-peor–were incarnations of lust and cruelty. They demanded human sacrifices. Children were cast into their burning arms. In their ritual sensuality was accounted piety. True, Mahlon and Chilion were exceptionally fortunate in their wives. They were not turned to the service of false gods, though there was grave reason to fear that they might be; but, on the other hand, neither did they turn their wives to the service of the only true God. It was not till after her husbands death that Ruth learned to take shelter under the wings of the Lord God of Israel (Rth 2:12); and Orpah, as we are expressly told (Rth 1:15), went back to her people and her gods.(S. Cox, D. D.)

In the country of Moab

It is wonderful how soon and how easily one gets used to a change of circumstances when the change itself is brought about gradually. The country of Moab, into which Elimelech and his family had journeyed, had of course its own language, its own fashions, and its own religion too, and these were as dissimilar as possible from those of the country which they had just now left. Yet the new-comers were in no serious sense shocked by what they saw and heard–had they so been they would have retraced their steps without delay; but each day brought its own novelty, and they managed to accustom themselves to the new things of to-day before it became necessary to face those of the morrow. Looking calmly at our fashion of living and way of acting now, some of us are compelled to admit how much we have changed in recent years; we never guessed that the alteration was so great or so complete; we never meant to have come so far. Worst of all, we never thought we should have felt the change so little. We remember well the qualms of conscience by which we were troubled when first we commenced to wander: we recollect now how the protests of our heart became fainter and fainter day by day until they ceased to be anything more than a hardly audible whisper. We went to sojourn in the country of Moab: we came into the country of Moab, and continued there. To begin with, our intentions were purely selfish, as selfish as were those of Lot when he elected to pitch his tent toward Sodom. We were going to get what we could out of Moab; they who lived there had something that we coveted, and we determined to make them share it with us. And, moreover, we had no serious intention of giving Moab anything in return. It is, indeed, just possible that at one time we may have possessed the Quixotic idea of remodelling life in Moab to suit our own ideas, but if so we soon abandoned the idea; for on the one hand we found that Moab was not willing to be remodelled–indeed, when we faintly suggested something of the kind, they said to us, as Sodom had said to Lot, and with not a little point, Stand back; this one came in to sojourn, and he will needs be a judge; and on the other hand, our own opinions were neither sufficiently clear in our own minds nor dear to our own hearts to enable us to graft them upon others. We were somewhat surprised, it may be, and a little pained, at the way in which our new neighbours received our well-meant attempts, in the early days of our life in Moab, to bring before them the advantages of a life of obedience and surrender to God. If Bethlehem was such a charming place, and the life there so delightful, why did you exchange it for our country? they not unnaturally inquired; if Bethlehem did not satisfy you, how can you suppose that it will satisfy us? Nor may we forget that in leaving the land of promise the wanderer never intends to be absent for other than a short period. If, on parting from our true home, any one had suggested that we should have been found in Moab to-day, we should have denied the imputation with indignation. Yet here we are still; and here in His great mercy the Good Shepherd has found us, and hence He desires to carry us home again–to our home and His. So they came into the country of Moab, and appear to have been received there with courtesy and hospitality. The world is always glad when those who have been making a somewhat definite profession of devotion to God show signs of a desire to relax the strictness of their behaviour; it is always willing to meet such persons more than half-way, and to do its best to enable them to quiet the still struggling conscience with as little delay as possible. If the world would only persecute us when it finds us on its own ground, there would be some hope that our stay in Moab would prove short indeed. Not that the world is any more prompted by unselfishness in its reception of us than were we ourselves in our journey to Moab; our new friends rejoice that, by our change of front, another protest against their way of life has died a natural death, and they are only too glad to be present and assist at its obsequies; they are, moreover, clear-sighted enough to see without being told that our surrender is a tacit victory for the world and indifferentism, and pro tanto a defeat for the gospel and a discredit to the life of faith in Christ. (H. A. Hall, B. D.)

Alternation of shadow and sunshine in life

And thus the world moves on–deaths and marriages, marriages and deaths. The household which to-day mourns as though all joy had taken flight for ever to-morrow resounds with the laughter of many voices at a newborn happiness. The faces all tear-stained yesterday are bright with smiles to-day. The bell which slowly tolled the funeral knell an hour ago now rings out the joyous wedding chime. So it must be, so it ought to be. Probably life would lose half its beauty but for this alternation of shadow and sunshine; at least, this we know, that human hearts need both the darkness and the light, or they will not grow to that perfection of truth and purity which God has designed they shall attain. Elimelech died, the sons married. It is a simple statement, yet a whole world of change is involved in it for that small household. (W. Braden.)

Fuente: Biblical Illustrator Edited by Joseph S. Exell

Verse 4. And they took them wives] The Targum very properly observes, that they transgressed the decree of the word of the Lord, and took to themselves strange women.

Fuente: Adam Clarke’s Commentary and Critical Notes on the Bible

Of the women of Moab; either these were proselytes when they married them, which may well be doubted, from Rth 1:15, or they sinned in marrying them, as appears from Deu 7:3; 23:3; Ezr 9:1,2; Ne 13:23, and therefore were punished with short life and want of issue, Rth 1:5,19,21.

About ten years; as long as the famine lasted.

Fuente: English Annotations on the Holy Bible by Matthew Poole

And they took them wives of the women of Moab,…. Not before they were proselyted to the Jewish religion, as Aben Ezra thinks, and which seems plainly to be the case of Ruth; at least she was so afterwards, if not before; and also of Orpah, as the same writer concludes from Ru 1:15 though others are of a different opinion, and some excuse their marriage, and others condemn it as unlawful, among whom is the Targumist, who paraphrases the words,

“and they transgressed the decree of the Word of the Lord, and took to them strange wives of the daughters of Moab;”

however it was so permitted by the Lord, and ordered in Providence, that from one of them the Messiah might spring:

and the name of the one was Orpah; she was married to Chilion; and Alshech gathers from hence that the youngest was married first before his brother:

and the name of the other Ruth the Targum adds,

“the daughter of Eglon, king of Moab;”

and that she was his daughter, or the daughter of his son, is a notion commonly received with the Jews y though without any just foundation; she was married to Mahlon, Ru 4:10, one Philo z asserts these two women to be own sisters, for what reason does not appear; and a Jewish writer a says they were both daughters of Eglon, king of Moab: and they dwelt there about ten years; that is, Mahlon and Chilion, who married these women; which is to be reckoned either from the time they came into the land, or from the time of their marriage; the latter seems to be the case from the connection of the words.

y T. Bab. Nazir, fol. 23. 2. Sotah, fol. 47. 1. Sanhedrin, fol. 105. 2. Horayot, fol. 10. 2. Zohar in Deut. fol. 109. 2. z Apud Drusium in loc. a Shalshalet Hakabala, fol. 8. 1.

Fuente: John Gill’s Exposition of the Entire Bible

(4) They took them wives.This seems to have been after the fathers death. The fault of settling on a heathen soil begun by the father is carried on by the sons in marrying heathen women, for such we cannot doubt they must have been in the first instance. The Targum (or ancient Chaldee paraphrase) says: They transgressed against the decree of the Word of the Lord, and took to themselves strange wives. This act was to incur a further risk of being involved in idolatry, as King Solomon found.

Ruth.This name will mean either comeliness or companion. according to the spelling of which we suppose the present name to be a contraction. The Syriac spelling supports the latter view. Ruth was the wife of Mahlon (Rth. 4:10), apparently the elder sou. The Targum calls Ruth the daughter of Eglon, king of Moab, obviously from the wish to exalt the dignity of Ruth.

Fuente: Ellicott’s Commentary for English Readers (Old and New Testaments)

4. They took them wives “A kind of phrase,” says Kitto, “which usually occurs in a bad sense, as done without the concurrence of their parents, or not left so entirely to them as custom required.”

Of the women of Moab The law condemned intermarriages with the Canaanitish tribes, but, inasmuch as Israel and Moab were descended from kindred ancestors, Abraham and Lot, not with the daughters of the Moabites, (Deu 7:3😉 it commanded, however, that no Moabite, even to the tenth generation, should enter the congregation of the Lord. Deu 23:3. In the days of Ezra and Nehemiah the law was so construed as to prohibit all intermarriage with foreigners. Exodus 9, and Nehemiah 13.

But it was a distinguishing feature of the age of the Judges that every man did that which was right in his own eyes, (Jdg 17:6😉 the law was not enforced, and men forgot the commandments of the Lord and indulged in such looseness as even to intermarry with the idolatrous Canaanites. See Jdg 3:5-6.

In this marriage of Ruth, the Moabitess, and Mahlon, the Beth-lehemite, we may now see the overruling hand of Providence, by which a Gentile woman is adopted into the family from which Christ had his human lineage, thus typifying the reception of the Gentiles into the kingdom of the Messiah, and the elevation, by the Gospel, of different nations above narrow sectional prejudices and partition-walls into feelings of a common brotherhood. “The story of Ruth has shed a peaceful light over what else would be the accursed race of Moab. We strain our gaze to know something of the long line of the purple hills of Moab, which form the background at once of the history and of the geography of Palestine. It is a satisfaction to feel that there is one tender association which unites them with the familiar history and scenery of Judea that from their recesses, across the deep gulf which separates the two regions, came the Gentile ancestress of David and the Messiah.” Stanley.

Fuente: Whedon’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments