Page 194 - Bible History

VI. THE STORY OF RUTH
It happened when the Judges were ruling that there was a famine in the land. A man by the name of Elimelech, who lived at Bethlehem in the territory given to the tribe of Juda, went to the country of Moab, where there was food, and his wife and his two sons went with him. His wife's name was Noemi.
Coming to the land of Moab, they stayed there a long while, and Elimelech, the husband of Noemi, died, leaving her alone with her two sons.
The sons married Moabite women. One of them married a woman named Orpha. The other married a woman named Ruth. For ten years they all dwelt together happily, and then the two sons died.
Then it was that Noemi, having heard that God had been good to His people in Juda and given them bread, decided to return home. She set out with her two daughters-in-law from the place where they lived and went along the road to return to the land of Juda.
After they had gone a short distance, Noemi spoke to her daughters-in-law and said, ''Go, return each to your mother's house, and may God have mercy upon you for all you have done for, our departed ones and for myself." Orpha and Ruth replied, "No, for we shall go back with thee to thy people."
But Noemi would not listen to this. She told them that she had nothing to o er them among her people -that they were poor-and she had neither a husband
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Noemi returns to Juda