would you wait for them to grow up? Would you refrain from having husbands? No, my daughters, it is much more bitter for me than for you, because the hand of the LORD has gone out against me.”
Naomi asks whether they would wait for unborn sons to grow, then says her lot is more bitter because the LORD’s hand has gone out against her.
It joins practical reasoning to Naomi’s interpretation of her suffering.
6When Naomi heard in Moab that the LORD had attended to His people by providing them with food, she and her daughters-in-law prepared to leave the land of Moab. 7Accompanied by her two daughters-in-law, she left the place where she had been living and set out on the road leading back to the land of Judah. 8Then Naomi said to her two daughters-in-law, “Go back, each of you to your mother’s home. May the LORD show you loving devotion, as you have shown to your dead and to me. 9May the LORD enable each of you to find rest in the home of your new husband.” 10And she kissed them as they wept aloud and said, “Surely we will return with you to your people.” 11But Naomi replied, “Return home, my daughters. Why would you go with me? Are there still sons in my womb to become your husbands? 12Return home, my daughters. Go on, for I am too old to have another husband. Even if I thought there was hope for me to have a husband tonight and to bear sons, 13would you wait for them to grow up? Would you refrain from having husbands? No, my daughters, it is much more bitter for me than for you, because the hand of the LORD has gone out against me.” 14Again they wept aloud, and Orpah kissed her mother-in-law goodbye, but Ruth clung to her. 15“Look,” said Naomi, “your sister-in-law has gone back to her people and her gods; follow her back home.” 16But Ruth replied: 17Where you die, I will die, 18When Naomi saw that Ruth was determined to go with her, she stopped trying to persuade her.