World of Chaos

[Ruth 1:2] And the name of the man was Elimelech, and the name of his wife Naomi, and the name of his two sons Mahlon and Chilion, Ephrathites of Bethlehemjudah. And they came into the country of Moab, and continued there.
Elimelech – his name highlights the pride that led to his ultimate punishment: “Eli” “to me,” “melech” “the kingship,” that is “to me shall the kingship come!” This man, acknowledged by the Rabbis as a notable leader in the tribe of Judah, “one of the sustainers of the generation,” abandoned his fellows in a time of despair. “Now all of Israel will come knocking at my door for help.” So he ran from them; his sons accompanied him to Moab, the fertile plateau on the far side of the Dead Sea. There, Machlon was “blotted out” “nimchu” and Chilion was destroyed.
Naomi as the survivor of a double disaster: a famine in Judah that made her family refugees among a people not their own, and the death in Moab of her husband and two sons. In patriarchal society, a widowed and childless woman was automatically marginalized by society.
The family of Elimelech took the backsliding step of going down into the land of Moab in search of food and stayed there. Trouble upon trouble followed this downward step.
Elimelech and his family are identified as ‘Ephrathites from Bethlehem in Judah”. The significance of Ephrathah in the story of Ruth becomes clear when we note that the only other occurrence of the phrase “Ephrathites from Bethlehem in Judah” in the OT is the description of David as the “son of an Ephrathite of Bethlehem in Judah” (1 Sam. 17:12).
His sons married Moabitic women and they died too.
The story of Ruth is specific as to time: the chaotic and violent period of the judges, that is, after the death of Joshua, the successor to Moses, and before the appearance of Samuel, who anointed David as the future king of Israel.
In the days when the judges ruled …is this: when violence against women, vengeance, idolatry, death, and disintegration were widespread as in the days of the judges, G-d’s hidden hand was at work preparing a future for the survivor, her family, and her people.
Ten years later this Narrator describes Naomi as neither wife, nor mother, but simply the woman, alone and vulnerable in an alien world. She was bereaved and barren, exiled and put away…left all alone.
The phrase was left presents Naomi as the last remaining remnant of Elimelech’s family. The Hebrew verb translated left is the root of the noun translated remnant. Naomi was like the widow who lamented that the death of her son would quench my one remaining ember, and leave to my husband neither name nor remnant on the face of the earth (2 Sam. 14:7). Naomi was not only the sole survivor of her family, she was also a sign of hope that the remnant who will return. She was one of the weak…low and despised in the world (1 Cor. 1:27-28) chosen by G-d to be a part of the events and relationships which will shape history.
To rise up out of a condition of sorrow, and discouragement. Naomi’s response to the disasters was not passive acceptance, but a resolute initiative of faith. Naomi was beginning her own exodus journey from death in Moab to life in Bethlehem.