How Did Ruth Become the Model Convert?

The Book of Ruth tells the story of an Israelite woman named Naomi who goes to live in neighboring Moab during a time of famine in her own land of Judah. In the course of ten years her husband dies and her two sons marry women of Moab, but then they die as well: Naomi and her childless daughters-in-law Orpah and Ruth are left alone. Having no reason to stay in Moab (the famine has ended), Naomi decides to return home to Bethlehem. The two younger women propose to set out with her, but Naomi urges them to remain among their own people: Orpah agrees to turn back, but Ruth insists on continuing the journey. As her last attempt to persuade Ruth to remain at home, Naomi points out that Orpah has "returned to her people and her Elohim,"¹ but Ruth will not relent; in fact her answer, a firm declaration of loyalty, has justly become one of the most famous lines in the Bible: "Do not urge me to leave you. . . . Your people will be my people and your Elohim will be my Elohim."²

Ruth's declaration has for centuries been taken to express a religious conversion: Ruth has now abandoned the gods (plural, small g) of her youth and attached herself to the God (singular, capital G) of Israel. In fact, however, things are not so clear. The word Elohim is famously ambiguous: in the Bible it can equally well denote the majestic creator, God of Israel, and the plural deities whom other nations worship. This ambiguity can be conveyed in written English by placing s in parentheses after the word "god," but that isn't practical in spoken English, and it's not possible at all in Hebrew. As for the upper or lower case of the initial G, of course Hebrew doesn't have to face that problem at all but written English does.

Granted that Naomi and Ruth are literary characters, what is the reader to understand when they are made to speak those words? Nearly every recent English translation of the Bible (not all, to be sure) indicates that Naomi is speaking of Orpah's plural gods, but nearly every translation (again, not all) also suggests that Ruth has only one God in mind, capital G and all, when she uses exactly the same word. The Hebrew word Elohim is plural in form. It usually takes a singular verb when the reference is clearly (or presumably) to the One God of the Israelite covenant, but a plural verb otherwise; the same consideration helps determine how the word is to be translated into other languages. However, clearness (or presumption) is in the eye of the beholder, and in any case Naomi and Ruth, in keeping with normal Hebrew syntax, use no verbs here at all. How then can their supposed intentions be clarified?

Ruth and Orpah are young Moabite women, with a shared cultural background; this background presumably includes the worship of the national god(s) of Moab.³ Both have married Israelite men, brothers in fact, but we know nothing about the religious practices and attitudes in the households they shared with those men, and for that matter we know nothing at all about their husbands' religious attitudes. These two brothers, after all, married foreign women, and there isn't the slightest hint in the text that their parents objected.⁴

It therefore seems wise to assume that Ruth and Orpah use words like Elohim in similar ways, and that Naomi understands this. There seems to be no hint in the text that either woman has ever associated Israel with monotheism, and there is surely no hint that either does so more than the other; indeed, there is no hint that they see Israelite religious beliefs as significantly different from the Moabite beliefs with which they have grown up.⁵ The difference that ultimately distinguishes Ruth from Orpah does not concern the existence or the number of various divinities but rather the religious and ethnic loyalties that will shape the rest of their lives. Their conversations with...