Ruth 1:6–18

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,^a 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.”

And she kissed them as they wept aloud ¹⁰and 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:

“Do not urge me to leave you

or to turn from following you.

For wherever you go, I will go,

and wherever you live, I will live;

your people will be my people,

and your God will be my God.

¹⁷Where you die, I will die,

and there I will be buried.

May the LORD punish me,

and ever so severely,

if anything but death

separates you and me.”

¹⁸When Naomi saw that Ruth was determined to go with her, she stopped trying to persuade her.