As a wandering bird cast out of the nest, so the daughters of Moab shall be (Ruth 1)

The opening of the book of Ruth jumps right in, introducing us to many of the important characters and giving us an historical backdrop for the story. A man named Elimelech ("My God is King"), from Bethlehem ("House of bread", a city that later became very famous) in the tribe of Judah decides that in the face of difficult times, he needs to leave Israel and move to nearby Moab, a land peopled by the ancestors of Lot. You may or may not remember the story of how these people came to be from Genesis 19; the name Moab means "seed of the father", and according to the story, the man Moab who was the patriarch of this nation was the child of an incestuous relationship between Lot and his daughter. (This happened in the same chapter of Genesis with the story of the destruction of Sodom, so while we are leaving behind the horror of the final chapters of the book of Judges, there is still perhaps a hint here at the parallel story to Judges 19.)

Elimelech dies, and his two sons marry Moabite women, Orpah and Ruth. Then the sons die, and Naomi, alone in the world with her daughters-in-law, decides to go back to Israel, as she has heard things are looking up there. The two women try and come with her, but she urges them to go their separate ways. Orpah ("deer") kisses her mother goodbye and leaves, but Ruth ("friendship") refuses to leave her, giving one of the most beautiful speeches in the Bible to her. Naomi takes Ruth back to Bethlehem with her, where she is recognized. She insists that people no longer call her Naomi ("pleasant"), but rather Mara ("bitter"), "for the Almighty hath dealt very bitterly with me."

So if this is an allegory (and let me say again that while I believe it to be an allegory, it's also a telling of a story that actually occurred in Israel's history) what is it meant to symbolize? Naomi/Mara represents the nation of Israel. Throughout their tumultuous history, the nation of Israel has been forced many times - even in famine specifically - to leave their land and go away for a time. Rarely is that time a pleasant one, and they often return with bitterness, wondering why, if they are indeed God's "chosen people", they seem to have been "chosen" for suffering. From Pharaoh's attempt to eradicate them around the 15th century B.C. to Germany's attempt in the 20th century A.D., they just don't seem to be able to get a break, and Naomi's time in Moab follows this. Pretty much her entire family is dead, all her earthly possessions lost and no children to support her in her old age, we can understand Naomi's bitterness, and the lingering bitterness of many Jews about their own history.

But what small comfort is there for Naomi? Her gentile daughters-in-law, who clearly love her very much, although one with more dedication than the other. These young women represent gentile nations that seem to have some respect and love for Israel. It's an interesting thing to me that from the days of Abraham, God seems to make it pretty clear that one of the main purposes of the nation of Israel is to become a blessing to the nations around them and bring them into a relationship with God, but Israel has tended to isolate themselves from the world, perhaps asking, like Naomi, "why will ye go with me?" Many nations, like a wild deer, wander back their own way, but a few people will insist on friendship with God's chosen people, hoping to find a way to be a blessing to them so that they may take part in the blessings of their God.

It repenteth me (Gen 6:6-10)

Okay, I've got to tell you this is one of the more difficult things to deal with in the Bible. Jewish theology takes a very hard-line stance that God does not change, period. (It's actually for this very reason that many Jews reject Christian theology, as they view the incarnation of Christ to be a "changing" of God's essential nature, which is easy to understand.) If God doesn't change, and indeed, even Christians believe that God doesn't change His mind at least, then what does it mean here and in a number of other places that God "repents" of something?

Probably, you have to look at the nature of the word itself. Interestingly enough, in the Hebrew this is a word with the same root that Noah's name comes from, and Noah's name means "rest" or "comfort". Actually, this word is translated most often as either "comfort" or "repent", and slightly more often the former. But enough Hebrew, I need to get to the point, or at least a point. What can we say about a word that can be translated as either "repent" or "comfort"? What do these terms have in common? I think the operative idea behind both senses of the word is "This has gone on long enough, so we will put a stop to it."

On a personal note, I myself have been doing a study of the concept of repentance, both for my personal spiritual walk, and for my understanding of theology. When a person becomes a Christian, theologically it is understood that one's salvation comes from the Lord, and only from the Lord. There is nothing one can do to earn it, one merely accepts it from God. Yet somewhere in the midst of this, there is a call for the believer to repent from sin. Is repenting from sin something one does in order to become a Christian, or is it something one does as a result of becoming a Christian? In either case, even if one has been a Christian for some time, repentance is something one has to deal with over and over, since becoming a Christian does not imply immediate perfection. So what is repentance? Repentance is deciding that the bad situation in one's life has gone on long enough, and it's going to stop. That may be repenting from a life separated from God, or it may be repenting from a particular habitual sin. A person probably never made a conscious decision to have habitual sin, nor did they purposefully separate themself from God, but they decide it's time to do something about it.

Here, God is looking at the world He created, and He's saying, "Alright, this has gone on long enough. The world is now so much of an evil place that something needs to be done, and I will comfort the good men of this world by ending the existence of the bad men." And I think, but I can't say for sure without reading through the list, that that's what God means whenever He "repents": that He is going to stop something from continuing.

The SAB goes onto say that the flood as a very concept is "cruel and violent". I actually agree. This is one of the first of many times in the Bible that God does something that I find quite shocking. The real question in the end is whether such an act was warranted. I think verse 5 was trying to hint at that, that evil had reached epidemic proportions, and there was really nothing left to do.

Was Noah perfect, though? The SAB quotes the KJV as saying "Noah was a just man and perfect." However, this is somewhat of a misquote. The KJV does not have a period there, and the rest of the sentence is important in two ways. The full sentence: "Noah was a just man and perfect in his generations, and Noah walked with God."

What does "...perfect in his generations..." mean? Here's a thought I have heard that makes sense in light of yesterday's post: Noah had a clear genealogy going back to Adam that didn't include any Nephilim. One of the things that God may have been trying to do is rid the world of the polluted genetic material of these "giants", and Noah, as well as being a pretty good guy, was also someone whose family was 100% human. It may have simply meant that he was a good guy in comparison to everyone else in the world, too.

I think the thing that really sets Noah apart is that he "walked with God" however. It seems pretty clear from the Bible as a whole that the thing God esteems most in a person is their devotion to Him. Noah is a person who wants to do right in the eyes of the Lord, so he spends time devoted to Him. That's what really makes him the right person for the job.

Final note before I wrap this up: I don't think Shem, Ham, and Japheth are triplets, and I've heard it suggested that in fact they may not have been born in that order, either, but were listed according to the importance of their descendants, Shem being the father of the Middle Eastern people, including the Jews, Ham being the father of the Canaanites, whose land eventually becomes Israel, and Japheth, whose descendants don't play a big role in the events of the O.T.