“Where you go I will go” is read at weddings. Ruth said it to her mother-in-law
“Whither thou goest, I will go; and where thou lodgest, I will lodge: thy people shall be my people, and thy God my God.” Couples read these words to each other at weddings every weekend. In the Bible, they are spoken by a widow to her mother-in-law on a road out of Moab.
The speaker is Ruth. The listener is Naomi. Both have just lost their husbands, and Naomi is telling Ruth to go home.
Three funerals
The Book of Ruth opens with famine in Bethlehem. Elimelech, his wife Naomi and their two sons move to the neighbouring country of Moab to survive. The sons marry Moabite women, Orpah and Ruth. Then Elimelech dies, and about ten years later both sons die too.
Naomi is left in a foreign land with no husband, no sons and no way to provide for herself. When she hears there is food again in Bethlehem, she decides to go back, and she tells both daughters-in-law to return to their mothers’ houses, where they have a better chance of remarrying.
Two choices on the same road
Orpah weeps, kisses Naomi and goes home. The Bible does not criticise her. She does what Naomi asked and what made sense.
Ruth refuses. Her vow in chapter 1, verses 16 and 17, goes further than people usually quote: “Where thou diest, will I die, and there will I be buried: the LORD do so to me, and more also, if ought but death part thee and me.” She is giving up her country, her family, her gods and her future prospects, to follow a grieving older woman to a place where Moabites were not welcome.
Loyalty that looks like work
In Bethlehem, Ruth’s loyalty does not look like speeches. It looks like work. She goes into the fields at harvest to glean, picking up the grain the reapers leave behind, which the law of Moses allowed the poor to do. She happens to glean in the field of Boaz, a relative of Naomi’s late husband, who has heard what she did for Naomi and makes sure she is protected and fed.
Naomi then guides Ruth through the custom of the kinsman-redeemer, a relative who could marry a widow to carry on the family line. Boaz marries Ruth, and their son is Obed, the grandfather of King David. The Moabite widow who chose Naomi’s God ends up in the family line that the Gospel of Matthew traces to Jesus.
What it means for us
Loyalty is chosen, not owed. Ruth had every right to go home. She stayed anyway.
Faith can start with a person. Ruth’s words put people before God in the sentence: “thy people shall be my people, and thy God my God.” For many believers, the path to faith runs through the life of someone they love.
Faithfulness in small things matters. The turn in Ruth’s story comes in a field, during ordinary work, not in a dramatic moment.
A prayer
Father, make me faithful to the people you have placed in my life, especially when it costs me. Teach me Ruth’s loyalty and Boaz’s kindness, and let my faithfulness in small things lead others to you. Amen.
The verse still works at weddings. It works better once you know it was first said by a young widow who chose to stay when leaving would have been easier.
