The Bitter Providence of a Sovereign God Text: Ruth 1:1-5
Introduction: When the House of Bread Has No Bread
The book of Ruth opens in a time of spiritual and moral chaos. We are told that these events transpired "in the days when the judges judged." This is not a throwaway historical marker. It is a profound theological diagnosis. The last verse of the book of Judges tells us everything we need to know about this era: "In those days there was no king in Israel. Everyone did what was right in his own eyes" (Judges 21:25). This was a time of apostasy, of covenantal unfaithfulness, of cyclical rebellion followed by brutal oppression, followed by a desperate cry for deliverance. It was a time of spiritual famine. And as is so often the case in Scripture, spiritual famine is answered by the sovereign God with a physical one.
The story begins in Bethlehem, a name which means "house of bread." The irony is thick enough to cut with a knife. The house of bread has no bread. This is not a random, unfortunate agricultural event. This is the covenant-keeping God of Israel reminding His people of the terms of the covenant they swore to uphold. In Deuteronomy 28, God promised that if they obeyed, the blessings would chase them down and overtake them. But if they disobeyed, the curses would do the same. And among those curses was this: "The heavens over your head shall be bronze, and the earth under you shall be iron" (Deut. 28:23). Famine in the promised land is a divine lawsuit. It is God's megaphone to a deaf and disobedient people.
Into this scene of covenantal judgment steps a man named Elimelech. His name means "My God is King." Here the irony is layered upon irony. A man named "My God is King," living in a time when there was no king and everyone did as he saw fit, in a town called "House of Bread" that had no bread, makes a decision. And the decision he makes is a disastrous failure of faith. He looks at the barren fields of the promised land, and he looks at the green fields of Moab, and he decides to walk by sight and not by faith. He chooses to sojourn in the land of Israel's historic enemies, a nation born of incest, devoted to the vile god Chemosh. He takes his wife, Naomi, and his two sons, and he leaves the land of covenant promise for the land of pagan compromise.
This is the setup for one of the most beautiful stories of redemption in all of Scripture. But we must not rush to the glorious conclusion without first wrestling with the grim beginning. For in these first five verses, we see the bitter consequences of faithlessness, the sovereign hand of God in tragedy, and the setting of the stage for a grace that is greater than all our sin.
The Text
Now it happened in the days when the judges judged, that there was a famine in the land. And a certain man of Bethlehem in Judah went to sojourn in the fields of Moab with his wife and his two sons. The name of the man was Elimelech, and the name of his wife, Naomi; and the names of his two sons were Mahlon and Chilion, Ephrathites of Bethlehem in Judah. Now they came to the fields of Moab and remained there. Then Elimelech, Naomi’s husband, died; and she was left with her two sons. They took for themselves Moabite women as wives; the name of the one was Orpah and the name of the other Ruth. And they lived there about ten years. Then both Mahlon and Chilion also died, and the woman was left without her two children and her husband.
(Ruth 1:1-5 LSB)
A Disastrous Decision (v. 1-2)
We begin with the historical setting and the fateful choice.
"Now it happened in the days when the judges judged, that there was a famine in the land. And a certain man of Bethlehem in Judah went to sojourn in the fields of Moab with his wife and his two sons. The name of the man was Elimelech, and the name of his wife, Naomi; and the names of his two sons were Mahlon and Chilion, Ephrathites of Bethlehem in Judah. Now they came to the fields of Moab and remained there." (Ruth 1:1-2)
As we noted, the time of the judges was a dark and bloody period. It was a time of spiritual anarchy. The famine was not an accident; it was an appointment. It was a summons from God for Israel to repent. The proper response to covenant judgment is not relocation, but repentance. When God turns off the water, you don't go looking for another well; you fix the pipes. But Elimelech, whose name professes that God is his king, decides to act as his own king. He does what is right in his own eyes.
He leaves Bethlehem, the house of bread, in Judah, the tribe of praise, the very heart of the covenant promise, for Moab. Moab was a nation under a curse. Deuteronomy 23 is explicit: "No Ammonite or Moabite may enter the assembly of the LORD. Even to the tenth generation, none of them may enter the assembly of the LORD forever" (Deut. 23:3). This was not a neutral territory. This was enemy territory. Elimelech's decision was not a pragmatic choice for his family's survival; it was an act of apostasy. He was fleeing the discipline of the Lord and seeking refuge in the arms of the world.
Notice the names. Elimelech is "My God is King." His wife is Naomi, which means "pleasant." His sons are Mahlon ("sickly") and Chilion ("pining" or "failing"). Perhaps they were born sickly, or perhaps their names are a prophetic foreshadowing of the consequences of their father's decision. They are identified as Ephrathites, another name for Bethlehem, grounding them firmly in the heritage they are about to abandon. The text says they went to "sojourn," which implies a temporary stay. But then it says they "remained there." The temporary solution became a permanent compromise. This is how faithlessness works. It starts as a small, pragmatic step away from the path of obedience, and it ends in a long-term settlement in a far country.
The Bitter Fruit of Compromise (v. 3-5)
The consequences of Elimelech's decision are swift and severe. The wages of sin is death, and the wages are paid in full.
"Then Elimelech, Naomi’s husband, died; and she was left with her two sons. They took for themselves Moabite women as wives; the name of the one was Orpah and the name of the other Ruth. And they lived there about ten years. Then both Mahlon and Chilion also died, and the woman was left without her two children and her husband." (Genesis 1:2 LSB)
First, Elimelech dies. The man who left the promised land to save his life ends up losing it. He sought to escape the famine of God's discipline only to run headlong into the finality of God's judgment. He is buried in unclean, pagan soil, far from the land of his inheritance. Naomi is left a widow in a foreign land.
The compromise continues into the next generation. Her sons, Mahlon and Chilion, compound their father's sin. They take Moabite women as wives. While the law did not have an absolute, racial prohibition on all intermarriage, marrying women from a nation so explicitly cursed, a people steeped in idolatry, was a flagrant act of disobedience. It was a spiritual compromise of the highest order. They were yoking themselves to unbelievers, ensuring that the family's heritage of faith would be diluted and ultimately destroyed.
They live there for about ten years. Ten years is a long time to be in the wrong place. It is a long time to be out of fellowship with God and His people. It is a decade of slow, spiritual erosion. And then, the other shoe drops. Mahlon and Chilion also die. The sickly and pining sons live up to their names. The family line of Elimelech is extinguished. The text is stark in its finality: "and the woman was left without her two children and her husband." Naomi, whose name means "pleasant," is now utterly bereft. She went out full, with a husband and two sons, and now she is empty. This is the bitter harvest that grows in the fields of Moab.
Sovereign Providence in the Midst of Sin
Now, it would be very easy to read this as a simple morality tale: don't be like Elimelech. And that is certainly true. But there is something far deeper going on here. We must see that even in the midst of sinful human decisions and their tragic consequences, the sovereign hand of God is never absent. God is not wringing His hands in heaven over Elimelech's bad choice. He is weaving it, sin and all, into His perfect, redemptive tapestry.
God's providence is not a soft, sentimental thing. It is a hard, rugged, and sometimes terrifying reality. God ordained the famine to discipline Israel. He permitted Elimelech's faithless flight to Moab. He decreed the deaths of Elimelech, Mahlon, and Chilion. As Naomi herself will later say, "the hand of the LORD has gone out against me" (Ruth 1:13). She rightly understands that her suffering is not random chance. It is from the hand of the Almighty.
But why? Why this litany of death and despair? Because God is about to do something astonishing. He is going to use the faithless disobedience of an Israelite man to bring a pagan Moabite woman into the covenant people of God. He is going to use the emptiness of Naomi to display the fullness of His grace. He is going to take the dead end of Elimelech's line and turn it into the royal highway for King David, and ultimately, for the Messiah, Jesus Christ.
This is the central lesson. Our sin has real and painful consequences. Disobedience leads to death. But for those who are His, God's discipline is always restorative, never merely punitive. His judgments are the severe mercies that turn us back to Him. He will strip us bare, He will empty our hands of all our worldly comforts and compromises, in order to fill them with Himself. The story of Ruth does not begin with a faithful saint making a wise decision. It begins with a faithless man making a foolish decision, and a sovereign God who is so masterful that He can take the most gnarled, twisted, and sinful threads of human choice and weave them into a garment of praise.
This is the gospel. We, like Elimelech, have all left the house of bread. We have all sought nourishment in the foreign fields of sin. We have done what is right in our own eyes, and the result has been famine, emptiness, and death. We are all spiritually destitute, like Naomi, without a husband, without a son, without a hope in the world.
But into our Moab, God sends a Redeemer. He sends one who is not from Bethlehem but who is Bethlehem's greatest son. He is the true Bread of Life, come down from heaven. And through His death, He purchases for Himself a bride from a foreign land, a bride made up of Gentiles like Ruth, and disobedient Israelites like Naomi. He takes our emptiness and fills it. He takes our bitterness and makes it sweet. He takes our death and gives us life. The story of Ruth begins in a graveyard in Moab, but it ends with a baby in a cradle in Bethlehem, a baby who is in the direct line of the King of Kings. And it all begins here, with the bitter providence of a sovereign God who is always, always working all things together for good.