The Third Widow Walked Away

Ruth 1: 14

The saga of Ruth, just four chapters, is the second of the five scrolls of the Hebrew Bible, coming right after the pastoral scenes of the Song of Songs, this story that begins with burial ends with a birth, and happens mostly in the fields of Judah, celebrating loyalty and love, while also highlighting one of the most enduring controversies in the Jewish world - what are the boundaries of love and loyalty to the tribe?

The most dramatic of the opening scenes is a border moment, a crossroads where three women, three widows, have to make critical decisions about their future and their fate.

These three women are Naomi, Ruth and Orpah - and the meanings of their stories have been the subject of countless speculation over the centuries. A recent reflection, by Australian author and literary critic Emily McAvan traces the story’s “movement in the narrative between mourning and melancholia” and suggests that

“The Book of Ruth is ripe for feminist and queer re-appropriation, being one of the few books of the Hebrew Bible named after a woman. Unlike Esther, however, who is defined only in relation to the men in her life, Ruth involves a community of women. Even so, it is not easily understood as a feminist or female-friendly text. Even in their explicit textual presence, women are still remarkably shadowy.In the light of this, texts like Ruth require an active, attentive form of close reading to their ambivalences.”

This first of four chapters of Ruth will be focused on the least central character of the story - Orpa, who shows up briefly in chapter one and recedes from the scene but not from the imagined Jewish mythology that will fill in the gaps in her eventual history. In the three following chapters we’ll focus on the three other main characters - Naomi, Ruth and Boaz. Each of them will help us better understand the story, why it was inserted into the Bible, why it is placed among the five scrolls and what its message may mean for us at this complex and complicated time.

But we begin at the border.

Three women, all of them recently widowed, need to decide their fate.

The introduction to the story is found in the first verse:

וַיְהִי בִּימֵי שְׁפֹט הַשֹּׁפְטִים וַיְהִי רָעָב בָּאָרֶץ וַיֵּלֶךְ אִישׁ מִבֵּית לֶחֶם יְהוּדָה לָגוּר בִּשְׂדֵי מוֹאָב הוּא וְאִשְׁתּוֹ וּשְׁנֵי בָנָיו׃

In the days when the judges ruled, there was a famine in the land; and a man from Bethlehem in Judah, with his wife and two sons, went to reside in the country of Moab.

Ruth 1:1

The famine fugitives are Elimelch and his wife Naomi, Judeans who immigrate to Moab, across the mountains, as asylum seekers and migrants have always done and continue doing today, with increasingly hostile and harmful attitudes by the wealthy nations that refuse to welcome them.

Moab seems to have been kind to these Judean refugees, and the two sons of Naomi and Elimelech, Mahlon and Kilyon, marry local women - Ruth and Orpah.

Names matter here. Mahlon means ‘sickly’ and Kilyon is another word for ‘death’. And indeed, this ominous note echoes in the following verses that describe the death of all three men due to disease.

Three widows in a male-centric society have to determine their survival. For Naomi, the elder one among them, the only option is to return to her native Judah, where, even is disgraced, she will be taken care of.

And that’s the opening scene.

What should the young widows do? Join their mother in law in Judah - where it will be their turn to be strangers? Or return to their familial and familiar homes to begin their lives again?

This dilemma has been seen for centuries as symbolic of the choices many of us make not only at major milestones in our lives but also on more mundane levels. What is our loyalty connected to? When do we look backwards and when do we dare risk the unknown?

While we don’t get to hear their conversation we are privy to this one moment that tells their decision - and moment of separation:

וַתִּשֶּׂנָה קוֹלָן וַתִּבְכֶּינָה עוֹד וַתִּשַּׁק עׇרְפָּה לַחֲמוֹתָהּ וְרוּת דָּבְקָה בָּהּ׃

They broke into weeping again, and Orpah kissed her mother-in-law farewell. But Ruth clung to her.

Ruth 1:14

What happens next becomes the stuff of legend. Ruth clings on to Naomi with what have speculated as same-sex love and others see as human kindness and deep friendship. Famously, Ruth declares not only her devotion to Naomi but also to Naomi's people and deity. Ruth’s words will become the hallmark of what it means to join the tribe, as she will be honored as one of the first to formally join the Jewish people - a pioneer and ‘patron saint’ of what will one day be known as conversion - or the Hebrew term that means both ‘stranger’ and ‘convert’ - Giyuyr.

וַתֹּאמֶר רוּת אַל־תִּפְגְּעִי־בִי לְעׇזְבֵךְ לָשׁוּב מֵאַחֲרָיִךְ כִּי אֶל־אֲשֶׁר תֵּלְכִי אֵלֵךְ וּבַאֲשֶׁר תָּלִינִי אָלִין עַמֵּךְ עַמִּי וֵאלֹהַיִךְ אֱלֹהָי׃ בַּאֲשֶׁר תָּמוּתִי אָמוּת וְשָׁם אֶקָּבֵר כֹּה יַעֲשֶׂה יְהֹוָה לִי וְכֹה יוֹסִיף כִּי הַמָּוֶת יַפְרִיד בֵּינִי וּבֵינֵךְ׃

But Ruth replied, “Do not urge me to leave you, to turn back and not follow you. For wherever you go, I will go; wherever you lodge, I will lodge; your people shall be my people, and your God my God.

Where you die, I will die, and there I will be buried. Thus and more may GOD do to me if anything but death parts me from you.”

Ruth 1:16-17

Naomi and Ruth make their way to Judah, to the city known as ‘House of Bread’ or ‘Bethlehem’ - likely for the fertile wheat fields it was famous for, it being the breadbasket of the region.

But what of Orpah?

This is where names matter too. While Naomi’s name is linked to ‘noam’ or ‘grace’ and Ruth’s name may be linked to ‘reut’- Hebrew for ‘Friendship’ - Orpah’s name may be connected to the word ‘oref’ - as in the human nape or ‘back of the head’.

She is named for the one role she has in this story, seen from Naomi and Ruth’s point of view: She walks away. All they end up seeing is her nape.

And while that is not a condemnation it is telling of the author’s choice to name her as the one who turned her back on ‘our people’, even if her choice is sensible -- unlike the real heroine who joined Naomi back in Judah, come what may. The rabbis in the Midrash on the Scroll of Ruth name this quite clearly - She is named Orpha “for she turned her back on her mother-in-law.”

In a tribal context where loyalty is most treasured, this act of betrayal is seen as harsh. Orpah’s story will continue through the ages - in a fascinating and infuriating way of mythic meaning making that tries to define clear lines between us and them even when those are only fear-based theories.

According to several legends and early traditions, Orpah goes right back to Moab and becomes the mother of her own nation. A few generations later one of her descendants will be a Philistine giant named Goliath. When this giant meets the young Bethlehem born David, Ruth’s great -great grandson, on the battlefield - the futures of Ruth and Orpah meet again, face to face.

The earliest recorded source for this expanded mythology is the obscure Jewish work Biblical Antiquities, written in Egypt during the 1st Century CE, possibly by Philo of Alexandria that never made it into the classical canon of Jewish Midrash texts. When it retells the David and Goliath saga, the author inserts a long speech by David in which he mocks Goliath, and names him kin:

“Hear this word before you die. Were not the two women from whom you and I were born sisters?

And your mother was Orpah and my mother Ruth. And Orpah chose for herself the gods of the Philistines and went after them, but Ruth chose for herself the ways of the most powerful and walked in them. And now there were born from Orpah you and your brothers. And because you have risen today and have come to destroy Israel, behold I who was born from your own blood have come to avenge my people. For after your death your three brothers too will fall into my hands. Then you will say to your mother, “he who was born from your sister has not spared us.”

There is of course no evidence for this lineage beyond the oral traditions. Before she becomes the mythic mother of the epic enemies of Judah, Orpah simply turns her head on one chapter of her life and goes back to the life she knew, hoping to begin again. For that choice other readers of Ruth over the ages imagined her betrayal in much harsher terms that include hostile pornographic images and vindictive devaluing of her humanity in ways that I will not even entertain by mentioning or quoting.

In more recent generations, with more feminist, critical and kinder reading of this text for its multiple meanings, other readers find more favor in this character’s choices, honoring the way she honored boundaries and raised her head high as she walked away to find her future.

In his article The Defamation of Orpah, Dr.Barry Dov Walfish brings several classical and modern interpretations, including a Hebrew poem by Tamar Biala, translated by Yehudah Mirsky, published in 2015 by Biala in an article named “It’s Okay to Leave.” This is an excerpt:

Orpah’s Letter to her Parents – Found by her Granddaughter, Chayah, after her Death

“Orpah’ you called me, your baby daughter, as soon as I first opened my eyes, looking curiously at the world. ‘Orpah’ you explained, when I cried, with eyes flooded with pain, so you would learn from our experience, not to turn back.

Never, you would insist, never turn back, never think “what if” and do not regret. Whoever turns around, hesitates, and keeps contemplating his past, becomes a pillar of salt, you would warn me. Just keep moving forward, with head held high, open to the future! Always start over, lend a hand, believe!

When I turned and started to go, I felt right away that something was not right.

I heard footsteps walking away, but not just those of Naomi. Two sets of footsteps I heard, soft, getting farther away, and I did not understand what was happening.

I wanted to turn around, to cry out to Ruth, call out, clarify, understand, but your voice, warning, and sharp blew on my neck and pushed me forward, forward, with painful force: “never turn back, never think ‘what if’ and do not regret. Whoever turns around, hesitates, and keeps contemplating his past, becomes a pillar of salt. Just keep moving forward, with head held high, open to the future! Always start over, lend a hand, believe!” And I, as my tears fell and vanished into the hot sand on the way to Moab, kept moving forward, forward, forward.”

How are we to welcome strangers? What is our human responsibility to those who chose to turn their backs on us - not from scorn or with hatred? Between tribal and universal loyalties, local and global tensions, Orpah’s imagined fate and future gives us a glimpse to the spectrum of ways with which we see the other and reflect on different ways with which we can bridge and honor cultural divides. That’s also what the Scroll of Ruth is all about.

Three widows part ways at the border. Ruth and Naomi head to Bethlehem to seek refuge, as all heads turn, and the story continues.

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