Lives of Scripture

Elimelech of Bethlehem in Judah opens the book of Ruth with a decision: when a famine struck the land during the era of the judges, he took his wife Naomi and their two sons, Mahlon and Chilion, and left the promised land to live as a sojourner in the country of Moab (Ruth 1:1-2). Scripture records nothing of his character beyond this choice and its outcome -- while the family was in Moab, Elimelech died, leaving Naomi a widow with two sons in a foreign land (1:3). His sons went on to marry Moabite women, Orpah and Ruth, before they too died, leaving all three women widowed (1:4-5). Elimelech never appears again in the narrative, but his decision to leave Bethlehem for Moab is the hinge on which the entire book turns: his death, and his sons' deaths, are what set Naomi on the road back to Bethlehem with her devoted daughter-in-law Ruth, leading to Ruth's meeting with Boaz, a kinsman of Elimelech's, and ultimately to the birth of Obed, grandfather of David (4:17-22). Whether Elimelech's move to Moab reflected a lack of trust in God's provision during famine, as some later readers have inferred, or was simply a hard necessity of survival, Scripture does not say outright -- it lets the consequences of leaving speak for themselves.