Naomi and Ruth

The book of Ruth is one of the most brilliant Jewish short stories in all of Scripture. Perfectly structured, developed, balanced, and nuanced, it demonstrates all the literary features of a story honed and polished over hundreds of years of community storytelling.

Two women (initially three) are united in grief through the death of their husbands. Bitter, poverty-stricken, bereaved and vulnerable, they help each other negotiate all that comes at them as women struggling to stand in a patriarchal male world.

The story is deeply feminine, womanly and narrated from the perspective of women; indeed, in all the library of scripture’s books, this was most likely to have been written by a woman.

We watch as the bitterness of tragic bereavement is ameliorated through kindness – kindness from a man. We watch the pattern of the women talking together and planning together before each event, and then, talking and reflecting together after each event, as slowly step by step through their wisdom and courage and trust in the Lord romance is birthed, and Ruth is once again married and her little son Obed arrives in the world.

Here is mentoring of a different kind. A sort of joint mentoring involving both women that calls for wisdom from both women, with the result that ‘bitterness’ – for that is what Naomi called herself, turns to joy, ‘Naomi has a son’, and the vulnerable loneliness of bereavement turns to membership in the covenant of Israel, where the outsider is brought into the genealogy of king David the forerunner of the Messiah.

While it is true that Naomi, a generation older than her daughter-in-law, is the lead character in the narrative, it is Ruth who is the heroine. So we watch a movement from the older to the younger, from the first to the second, from the Jew to the Gentile, from the far country to a new home in Bethlehem, as Ruth slowly and bravely takes centre stage.

Mentoring is about seeking that the mentee becomes greater than the mentor. Here is a ‘mentoring’ involving friendship and trust and companionship, and deep sharing. We watch both women ‘win’. We watch life birthed both literally in the person of little Obed, but also in the Bethlehem community, indeed in God’s people.

We could even say we see life birthed as the Jew and Palestinian cooperate.

And once again, we see in ‘mentoring’ the inherent power to change the destiny of nations.