There came a time, when famine spread across the land like a silent shadow, leaving the fields of Bethlehem dry and cracked beneath the sun.
A man named Elimelech, from Bethlehem in Judah, took his wife Naomi and their two sons, Mahlon and Kilion, and crossed the border to Moab—a land of foreign gods but fertile ground.
There, they sought bread… and found sorrow.
Elimelech died, leaving Naomi a widow in a strange land.
Her sons married Moabite women—Orpah and Ruth—and for ten quiet years they lived there.Then, as suddenly as before, both sons also died and Naomi was left alone—no husband, no sons, only two daughters-in-law who had also lost everything.
But one day, word reached Naomi:
"The Lord has visited His people and given them bread."
So, Naomi prepared to return home, and her daughters-in-law walked beside her on the dusty road that led back to Judah.
After a while, Naomi stopped and turned to them, tears glimmering in her eyes.
"Go back, each of you, to your mother's home.May the Lord show kindness to you, as you have shown to the dead and to me.
May He grant that you find rest in the house of another husband."
She kissed them, and they wept loudly.
"We will go with you," they said, "to your people."
But Naomi shook her head.
"Return, my daughters. Why would you come with me? Even if I could bear sons tonight, would you wait for them to grow?
No, my daughters. My bitterness is greater than yours, for the Lord's hand has gone out against me."
At these words, they wept again.
Orpah kissed Naomi goodbye and turned back toward Moab but Ruth—silent and steadfast—clung to her.
Naomi tried once more.
"See, your sister-in-law goes back to her people and her gods. Go with her."
But Ruth raised her face, her voice trembling yet resolute:
"Don't urge me to leave you or to turn back from you. Where you go, I will go; and where you stay, I will stay. Your people will be my people, and your God my God. Where you die, I will die, and there I will be buried.
May the Lord deal with me, be it ever so severely, if anything but death separates you and me."
Naomi, seeing her determination, said no more and together they journeyed on—the weary widow and the faithful foreigner—walking the long road back to Bethlehem.
When they arrived, the town was stirred. Whispers passed through the streets:
"Is this Naomi?"
But she said, her voice cracked with grief,
"Don't call me Naomi—pleasant. Call me Mara, for the Almighty has made my life bitter. I went away full, but the Lord has brought me back empty."
So Naomi returned from Moab with Ruth the Moabite, her loyal daughter-in-law and as they entered Bethlehem, the barley harvest had just begun—a new season of hope rising quietly from the soil of sorrow.