Ruth 1:16-22 - Ruth Stays With Naomi

¹⁶ But Ruth replied:

Do not persuade me to leave you
or go back and not follow 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.
¹⁷ Where you die, I will die,
and there I will be buried.
May Yahweh punish me,
and do so severely,
if anything but death separates you and me.

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

¹⁹ The two of them traveled until they came to Bethlehem. When they entered Bethlehem, the whole town was excited about their arrival and the local women exclaimed, “Can this be Naomi?”

²⁰ “Don’t call me Naomi. Call me Mara,” she answered, “for the Almighty has made me very bitter. ²¹ I went away full, but the Lord has brought me back empty. Why do you call me Naomi, since the Lord has pronounced judgment on me, and the Almighty has afflicted me?”

²² So Naomi came back from the land of Moab with her daughter-in-law Ruth the Moabitess. They arrived in Bethlehem at the beginning of the barley harvest.