Redeeming Grace: Ruth's Story

by Jill Eileen Smith

  Orpah’s eyes narrowed the slightest bit, but she did not scowl. The truth had come out to all in the past year, even sooner, once the brothers had separated themselves from their brides.

  “Do not blame yourself, Ruth. It was my unfortunate curse to carry a child before you did. If Chilion had not given that offering to the priests . . . if I had not coaxed him to do so—” She stopped abruptly, looking again at the rushing waters. “I wanted a child to love, to love me.”

  “We all love you,” Ruth said, her words forceful, willing Orpah to believe her. “A child would be a blessing for both of us, but even Naomi’s god has not seen fit to allow it. Look how long it took for you even with all our prayers.”

  “And now without our husbands it is impossible.” Orpah’s bitter tone matched the feelings in Ruth’s heart.

  “If only we could find a better place that would allow them to be fruitful and gain wealth without having to return to the land of famine.” Ruth spoke mostly to herself, but Orpah absently nodded, her gaze still on the river. Would she really throw herself into the rushing waters and allow her life to be swept away? A shiver rushed down Ruth’s spine at the very thought.

  “I will speak to Mahlon again,” Ruth promised, though her stomach twisted at his possible response. Did he not miss spending time at her side? “Perhaps this night.” She could seek divorce from a man who deprived his wife of such rights. Though the thought of reminding him of that fact drew another shiver from her.

  “That might help.” But Orpah’s tone had returned to its numb state . . . the one that she had carried since her child’s death. As though it didn’t really matter what happened to her the rest of her life.

  Ruth stood and filled her water jar, and Orpah did the same. But their return home was not nearly as talkative, and all Ruth could think about was how to approach her moody husband with such a difficult topic.

  Ruth poured wine from a flask into the clay cup Mahlon held out to her as he sat eating with his brother in the courtyard. The women would dine after the men were fed, something they had taken to doing for lack of conversation when the men were near. The house had grown so quiet in the past two years that Ruth ached for human connection.

  She shook herself as she capped the flask. “And how was your day in the fields, my husband?” She looked Mahlon’s way, waiting for him to glance up at her.

  He wiped his mouth on a linen towel and met her gaze. “The same as it always is.” He placed the towel beside the clay bowl and stood.

  “May we walk together before the sun fully sets?” It was a bold thing to ask, but he had been more distant these past few weeks than ever before. Was he seeing a prostitute in the city? The thought brought a sick feeling to her gut. It had been so long since they were together.

  Mahlon cleared his throat and grunted. “If you want to,” he said, though he did not sound happy.

  Ruth glanced at Naomi, who bid her go. She quickly followed Mahlon through the gate into the fields beyond the little house, which was as unprotected by the city’s walls as her heart felt without her husband’s love. They walked in silence for several moments until they came to a large rock where they used to meet during the late morning, when Ruth would bring him fresh goat’s milk or a slice of fresh cheese. How long had it been since she had done such things?

  “What did you want to talk about?” he asked, his tone clipped. He sat on the rock and looked up at her. No invitation for her to sit beside him.

  “I wondered . . .” She paused. How best to frame the words, to help him understand?

  “Wondered what?”

  She looked at her feet, finding it more and more difficult to meet his gaze. Had their love grown so cold?

  “I wondered if you had given any more thought to moving away from here . . . so that we all could live as husbands and wives again and not fear bearing children.” She blew out a breath, released of the weighty words.

  Silence lingered between them.

  At last she spoke again, longing for some closeness. “I miss you, Mahlon. Orpah misses Chilion. We long for families. But we know it is not safe here.”

  He looked beyond her as though ashamed. He had promised her. Two years ago. And still he had not kept his word.

  “Are you not interested in remaining married to us? Has someone else come along to take your affection?” The questions came despite the urge to stop them. Why was her tongue suddenly so loose?

  “No.” His words were quiet but firm. “There is no one else for either myself or Chilion.” He looked into her eyes. “At least there is no one else for me. Chilion would have to speak for himself.”

  “And the other?” She implored him with a look. “Can we not go back to being husband and wife?”

  He looked away, and she saw the pain in his expression. “I want to,” he admitted. “I’ve been so caught up in the yields. The fields here have been so fruitful—” He stopped.

  “And I am not fruitful.”

  “We had over seven years to try, and so I thought . . .”

  “You think I am barren, so you would work the land and leave things be.”

  He shook his head. “No, beloved. No.”

  Tears stung and she turned away.

  He stood. Cupped her shoulders. “I will do something to make it right. Tonight we will sleep again as husband and wife. If you should come to be with child, we will move before anyone in town can become aware of it.” He turned her to face him. “Will that solve the struggle between us?”

  She nodded, though she did not know if she truly agreed. She would be grateful to have her husband again. But she was not so sure he would move if the land remained so fruitful. Especially when she knew he didn’t think she ever would be.

  18

  Shebat (January) 1283 BC

  Naomi looked up from her weaving at the sound of heavy footfalls entering the courtyard. She glanced at Ruth and Orpah, then let the loom rest and hurried to see who it was. Chilion stumbled toward her, and she barely reached him before he fell to his knees on the hard stones.

  “Ima. Help me.” His words were a mere breath, and Naomi stared at him.

  “Orpah, Ruth, come quickly!” She tried to help him stand, to get him into the house, but until the girls aided her she was not able to lift his large frame.

  “Chilion!” Orpah’s cries sounded like a wounded she-cub, causing the pulse in Naomi’s throat to throb. No. It couldn’t be.

  They managed to carry him to his pallet, and Ruth ran to get water while Orpah dipped cloths into the tepid water already there. She wrung them out and placed them on his forehead.

  “What’s wrong, my son?” Naomi felt Chilion’s neck to count the thready beat of his heart, her mind whirling with memories.

  “Your sons are very sick, Naomi,” the town’s physician had said. “How long have their throats burned and this rash covered their chests?” He’d held his ear to their chests and pressed on their bellies, then stood and shook his head. “Very sick,” he repeated as though she had not heard him the first time.

  “Will they live?” She heard Elimelech ask the question, his tone too pragmatic. Of course they would live! They had to live!

  The old man, who understood the way of herbs and healing remedies, just shook his head again and walked from the room. Elimelech had followed him, but Naomi would not leave her sons’ sides. Please, Adonai, she had pleaded.

  This could not be the same thing, but she felt for fever, asked Chilion if anything hurt, and checked his chest just the same. No rash, no burning throat. But when Naomi felt for his heartbeat, it seemed slower than it should be, and Chilion’s color had paled even in the short time he had been home.

  “Where is your brother?” Could the same malady have afflicted Mahlon and he be lying in a field somewhere?

  Chilion’s closed eyes fluttered. Naomi bent close to his ear. “He is well, Ima. I . . . I just felt very weak today.”

  Naomi wiped her brow. Why today? It was not abnormally hot, nor was
the work of harvest yet upon them. Why then would Chilion grow so suddenly weak . . . as he had as a child?

  Fear gripped her as she stared down at her son. She glanced at Orpah, who knelt at his side, her eyes wide, disbelieving. Orpah continually draped cool cloths over Chilion’s brow, and Naomi slipped from the room.

  She found Ruth in the sitting room, a fresh cup of water in her hand. “Take it to Orpah to give to him,” she said softly. “Then I want you to go to the fields and find your husband.”

  Ruth rushed from the house, heart pounding. Dear gods . . . which god? What was wrong with Chilion? She had never seen a man so weak, so listless on his bed, in the middle of the day. Had he found some poisonous root or drank from a stale pond rather than the life-giving rushing waters of the Arnon?

  Many a Moabite had learned the hard way to avoid waters near the places of sewage, and children were taught from childhood to avoid certain plants. But did such plants grow in Bethlehem? Were her husband and his brother aware of the dangers?

  Her mind raced, and she tripped and righted herself again as she ran across the fields toward the standing barley where Mahlon and Chilion were supposed to have worked that day.

  “Mahlon!” She called out his name as she drew nearer the place he was supposed to be. But she did not see him. “Mahlon!” She stopped and bent forward, her breath coming fast, hands on her knees.

  She glanced about, then began a slow walk, looking down each row for some sign of him. Please, god of Naomi, where is he?

  “Mahlon!” She reached the edge of the barley field and headed toward the wheat field, where the stalks were not as high. Much easier to see across the expanse of the land. She stopped, looked from side to side. No sign of him.

  Her heart skipped a beat, then began to race again with a fear she dare not name. They could have both eaten something poisonous, and Mahlon might not have had the strength to even make it home.

  Please, god.

  “Ruth?”

  She whirled at the sound of his voice and fairly flew into his arms, weeping.

  “What is it, beloved?” He stroked her veil at the back of her head and pulled her close.

  “I thought . . .” She glanced up at him and released a shaky breath. “Your brother came home so weak and sick and your mother said to find you, and when I couldn’t, I feared . . .”

  He pulled her to his chest and rubbed her back. “Hush now. Stop and breathe a moment.”

  She obeyed, but too soon he held her at arm’s length. “My brother has come home sick?” His brows knit, and she could see he was trying to assess whether or not her alarm was justified.

  She nodded. “Very sick, my lord. So weak we had to help him to his bed. Your mother seems as though she is trying to remain calm but . . . is quite frightened.” Ruth met his gaze, and his own calm suddenly shattered.

  “This is not the first time,” he said, his tone carrying much more worry than he had exhibited moments before. “When we were small, both of us contracted something . . . No one knows what it was, but we nearly died. My mother would naturally fear it happening again.” He looked at her. “Come. We must comfort her and see what is to be done for him.”

  He grasped her hand and ran with her back toward the house.

  19

  They arrived at the house, but Mahlon remained only long enough to check on Chilion and run into Dibon to seek a physician. Ruth ran to the garden to find herbs to make into a poultice, though she had no idea where to put such a thing, for Chilion had no boils or rashes or anything to show them where a poultice might help. And Ruth had no knowledge of what types of herbs might heal the slowing weakness of a person’s beating heart.

  “Is he going to die?” Orpah whispered to Naomi in the hall outside of the room, where the three women stood waiting for Mahlon to return. “I have never seen such a thing. I have tried to ask him if he ate or drank something, for then perhaps we could give him something to coax it out of him.” Tears filled her eyes, and she did not swipe them away. “But he can barely speak. All he could do was shake his head no.”

  “Mahlon did not think Chilion would have drunk water from a stale source, and he knows which plants to avoid,” Ruth said, placing a hand on Orpah’s shoulder. She looked to Naomi. “Mahlon said they were both sickly when they were very young. Could this be the same malady? Has such a thing happened to others in your family?”

  Naomi did not speak for many breaths. She looked from one daughter-in-law to the other. “They were very sick in childhood. There was nothing to be done for them but pray.”

  Ruth saw fear fill Naomi’s dark eyes, the lines along her brow grow deeper. “He does not have the symptoms he had then,” Naomi said softly, glancing at the room where Chilion lay. “I do not understand it.”

  The three women stood in silence until Orpah returned to Chilion’s side, and Naomi followed her. Ruth went to the courtyard to look for Mahlon’s coming. She spotted him in the distance, hurrying toward her with a man and woman in tow.

  He arrived at the gate out of breath, sweating profusely. Ruth hurried to retrieve a cup of water for him as the couple pushed past him and into the house toward the sickroom.

  “The physician and his wife,” Mahlon said between gulps of water. “They work together preparing and growing the herbs.”

  Ruth nodded, took the empty mug from Mahlon, and refilled it. “You ran so hard, my lord. Won’t you sit?” She had never seen him so flushed.

  He looked at her, seeming to want to argue, but sank onto the stone bench of the court instead. He accepted the second cup of water and drank slowly.

  A loud cry from down the hall carried to them. Mahlon’s hand trembled, the cup slipping from it and breaking on the stone floor.

  “Chilion!” Orpah’s loud cries split the air, and Ruth knew in an instant that her brother-in-law was beyond the help of the two who had just arrived.

  She turned, thinking to go to them, but a moment later whirled back just in time to see Mahlon slump to the ground at her feet. A scream escaped—was that her voice? She knelt down and quickly rolled him to his side, feeling his forehead, his neck, his arms.

  “Mahlon,” she whispered, for her voice seemed stuck within her. “Mahlon.” She bent close, feeling his chest, searching his neck for the thumping of his pulse.

  Naomi appeared and knelt on the stones beside her. She took Mahlon’s head in her hands, probing. But one look into the man’s face told both of them what they could not, dare not, believe. Mahlon’s eyes were blank and rolled back, his chest did not lift, and no air came from his nostrils. His sweating skin now felt clammy to the touch, and his once flushed face had drained of color.

  “He’s gone,” Naomi said, her voice flat, lifeless. “They are both gone.” She looked at Ruth and met her gaze. “In one swift moment God has taken both of my sons.”

  Ruth glanced at the prone form of her husband. She did not need to see Chilion to know that Orpah’s keening was for the same purpose. How was this even possible? Men did not just drop dead in the finest years of their lives. They died in battle or during blight or years apart from each other. Brothers did not go to work in the morning and die together in the middle of the day.

  But they had.

  And no explanation on earth or among the gods made any sense for it.

  This isn’t real. The phrase turned over in Ruth’s mind as she stared at the bier holding her husband’s body. The words followed her like a relentless shadow from Naomi’s home, past the barley and wheat fields, past the wailing women and forlorn shopkeepers who had come to line the path to the outskirts of town, where burial caves lined the incline that led westward toward the Dead Sea.

  Ruth trudged behind a weeping Naomi, the woman who had become like a mother to her in the past ten years. How often had the woman tried to convince her sons to return to Israel? If only they had listened.

  Did Naomi resent her, resent Orpah, who represented everything Naomi despised? Everything Moabite as her sons’ reason
for staying?

  Ruth glanced at Orpah, who clung to her arm, dead weight that it was, weeping like a caring wife should, like Ruth should . . .

  Orpah stumbled once, twice, and nearly dragged Ruth to the ground. “Chilion! How could you leave me?” Her high-pitched voice carried fierce emotion.

  Ruth squeezed her hand. She could find no words to comfort her sister-in-law. Orpah’s losses were greater than Ruth’s, and yet if Orpah had not encouraged Chilion in the festivals of Chemosh . . . the worship that had taken their child . . . Had Naomi’s god struck both men because her sons had disobeyed some commandment of their god?

  This isn’t real.

  The thought held the acrid taste of bile. She stopped, put a hand to her middle. She could not be sick. Not here. Tears stung and filled her eyes as she swallowed the bitterness, hating every step. To lash out at Orpah—it would do no good. She could not blame Orpah for believing in the gods of their people. She had thought her actions would do them good, give them children.

  Had Ruth and Orpah been cursed the moment they joined the Israelite family? Or had the family been cursed by their presence?

  The sun’s heat created beads along her brow and dampened the ashes she had poured over her head. Stones crept into her sandals. She stopped. Brushed them away. Orpah released her hold and stumbled after Naomi as the caves drew nearer. Ruth stared at the wide mouth of the cave, aware of every sound, of the grunts and whispers of the men and women on the fringes of the circle they made—she, Naomi, and Orpah.

  This is not happening. I will awaken soon, and Mahlon will laugh at my foolish nightmares. Hadn’t she feared and sometimes dreamed such things on more than one occasion? Though she had rarely spoken of it to anyone, she feared loss—had feared it since her father’s death those many years ago in battle. Had feared it with every yearly sacrifice to Chemosh. And feared doubly so when Chilion convinced Mahlon to attend those festivals.

  She jolted at Naomi’s bitter cry. The squeal of the heavy boulder being moved from the burial cave grated harshly on her ears. Tears blurred her vision as she placed one arm around Naomi’s shrunken shoulders. The poor woman had lost everything. First her husband, now her two sons.