After Naomi’s husband and both of her sons die, she prepares to leave Moab and return to her home in Israel, around Bethlehem. Her son’s widows have a decision to make. Will they return with Naomi to Israel, or will they stay in Moab? One stays, and one goes. Orpah eventually makes the decision to stay in Moab. The text says Naomi advises Ruth to follow Orpah’s example. In Ruth 1:15, Naomi says to Ruth, “See, your sister-in-law has gone back to her people and to her gods; return after your sister-in-law.” It seems apparent that both of the widows had professed faith in their husband’s God. But Orpah returned to her previous god. On the other hand, Ruth, in one of the most famous verses in the Bible, says in verse 16, “Do not urge me to leave you or to return from following you. For where you go, I will go, and where you lodge, I will lodge. Your people shall be my people, and your God my God.”
The two widows had both professed faith in Yahweh, but that faith had never really been tested. God tested their faith. God tested Abraham’s faith. It can be demonstrated that God tests the faith of all those who profess their trust in Him. In Genesis 22, we read, “And it came to pass that God tested Abraham…” In Ruth, we might read, “So it came to pass that God tested Ruth and Orpah’s faith.” Gingrich explains it well: “Now they were faced with a decision which would reveal whether their faith was spurious or genuine. Would they go back or go on? If they went back to the Moabites’ god, the Moabites’ land and the Moabitish people to receive a husband and rest for the flesh, then their faith in Jehovah was spurious. If they went on to a strange land, to a strange people, and into a future which held forth no prospects of a husband and rest for the flesh, then their faith in Jehovah was genuine.”
The point is that no faith is real until it has been tested. When the trials come, will we keep going, or will we go back? We can go back to what’s comfortable. We can go back to what’s familiar. If we keep going, we face the unknown, the uncertain, and the unfamiliar. Max Lucado says, “When a potter bakes a pot, he checks its solidity by pulling it out of the oven and thumping it. If it sings, it’s ready. If it thuds, it’s placed back in the oven. The character of a person is also checked by thumping. Been thumped lately?” Orpah went back, but Ruth remained and became a heroine in the Hall of Fame of Faith. She was a real fighter. Paul Simon wrote about the fighter, the boxer; “In the clearing stands a boxer and a fighter by his trade, and he carries a reminder of every blow that laid him down or cut him till he cried out in his anger and his shame—‘I am leaving, I am leaving!’ but the fighter still remains.” It appears to me that Ruth was a fighter.