Naomi
She left Bethlehem full and returned empty, and asked to be called Bitter — but God was not finished with her story.
Full and Then Empty
The book of Ruth opens with a famine in Bethlehem. A man named Elimelech took his wife Naomi and their two sons to Moab to survive. They were Ephrathites — people of standing in Bethlehem. They left because necessity drove them, not because they chose exile. In Moab, Elimelech died. The two sons married Moabite women — Orpah and Ruth — and then both sons also died. Naomi was left with two daughters-in-law and no husband, no sons, and no future in Moab.
When she heard that the famine in Bethlehem had ended, she made ready to return. She released her daughters-in-law from any obligation: go back to your mothers’ houses; find new husbands; the Lord deal kindly with you as you have dealt with the dead and with me. It was a generous release, spoken by a woman who had nothing left to offer them. Orpah kissed her and turned back. Ruth clung to her.
Naomi tried again to send Ruth away: her sons were dead, she could have no more, there was no hope of a husband for Ruth through her. She named her own condition without flinching: “the hand of the Lord is gone out against me.” She did not sugarcoat her theology. She had lost her husband and both sons, and she believed God’s hand was in it. She said so. Ruth’s response — the most famous speech in the book — was a flat refusal to leave her.
Call Me Mara
When Naomi returned to Bethlehem with Ruth, the whole city was stirred. The women said: is this Naomi? And she answered them with words that carry the weight of everything she had endured:
Ruth 1:20–21
“Call me not Naomi, call me Mara: for the Almighty hath dealt very bitterly with me. I went out full, and the Lord hath brought me home again empty: why then call ye me Naomi, seeing the Lord hath testified against me, and the Almighty hath afflicted me?”
Naomi means pleasant. Mara means bitter. She was asking her community to mark her grief publicly — to call her by a name that told the truth about what had happened to her. She did not hide her suffering behind a pleasant face. She named what God had done to her, and she named it accurately and without self-pity: I went out full, I came back empty.
This is the lament tradition of the Hebrew Bible in miniature. From the Psalms to the book of Job, the scriptures give permission to name affliction for what it is, to bring grief before God without dressing it up. Naomi did not deny God’s hand in her suffering. She named it. And she returned to the land of the Lord anyway.
The Strategist Behind the Story
The book of Ruth is often read as Ruth’s story, and it is — but it is equally Naomi’s. Naomi is the one who recognizes the significance of Boaz when Ruth comes home from the field with an abundance of grain. Ruth says she gleaned in the field of a man named Boaz. Naomi’s response is immediate and filled with theological recognition:
Ruth 2:20
“And Naomi said unto her daughter in law, Blessed be he of the Lord, who hath not left off his kindness to the living and to the dead. And Naomi said unto her, The man is near of kin unto us, one of our next kinsmen.”
Naomi understood immediately what the law of the kinsman-redeemer meant. A near kinsman could marry the widow of a relative and preserve the family name and property. Boaz was that man. Naomi had not sought this, had not planned it — but she recognized it when God placed it before her. She moved with it.
She instructed Ruth precisely: wash, anoint yourself, put on your best clothes, go to the threshing floor at night, uncover Boaz’s feet and lie down there. When he asks, tell him who you are. The plan was delicate and risky — a woman approaching a man at night in ancient culture carried real social danger. But Naomi had thought it through. Ruth executed it faithfully. Boaz was more than willing.
The Restoration
Boaz settled the legal question of kinsman redemption at the city gate — the other nearer kinsman declined the obligation when he understood it included Ruth — and took Ruth as his wife. Ruth conceived and bore a son. The women of Bethlehem came to Naomi with a blessing that names what had happened:
Ruth 4:14–15
“And the women said unto Naomi, Blessed be the Lord, which hath not left thee this day without a kinsman, that his name may be famous in Israel. And he shall be unto thee a restorer of thy life, and a nourisher of thine old age: for thy daughter in law, which loveth thee, which is better to thee than seven sons, hath born him.”
The community that had watched Naomi return empty now declared her restored. The baby — named Obed by the women — was laid in Naomi’s arms. The text says she became his nurse. The woman who called herself Mara now held a son.
Obed became the father of Jesse, who became the father of David. Naomi, who returned to Bethlehem empty and bitter, ended up holding the grandfather of the greatest king of Israel. The women who saw her come back hollowed out now watched God fill her again with more than she had left with.
What Her Story Teaches
Naomi is the Bible’s portrait of loss that does not destroy faith, and of faith that does not deny loss. She named her emptiness honestly — call me Mara, not Naomi — and she still returned to the land of her God. She did not pretend things were better than they were. She also did not stop paying attention, stop recognizing God’s hand when it moved, stop guiding and caring for the people around her.
The Lord’s kindness — the Hebrew word is hesed, covenantal lovingkindness — runs through the whole book and is named three times by Naomi and Boaz. This is the word of the covenant: steady, loyal, not withdrawn when circumstances are bitter. Naomi experienced it as loss. She named it as loss. And then she lived to see it as restoration. Both were true at different moments in the same story.
Key Scriptures
Key Scriptures