Bible stories -- Old Testament; Bible. Old Testament -- Biography -- Juvenile literature; Children in the Bible -- Juvenile literature
When the little child grew up this good princess took him into her
lovely palace to be her son; and she called him Moses, because that
name meant that he was taken out of the water. And there is a pretty
story told about this same princess by an old Jewish writer, though it
is not to be found in our Bible.
He says that the princess was so proud of the boy that one day she
brought the little fellow to her father the king, that he might see how
beautiful he was. The king took off his golden crown and put it on the
child's curly head; but the little boy took it off again, and putting
it upon the ground, tried to stand upon it, which amused the king and
his courtiers very much. The old Jewish writer says that this showed
how the little boy would one day force this king to set free the
Hebrews, which indeed he did, as the Bible tells us. For Moses became,
when he grew up, the great leader of the Israelites, who led them out
of Egypt to the promised land of Canaan, where in time, after much
fighting, they founded a kingdom of their own.
RUTH THE GLEANER.
In the days before there was a king in Israel a woman called Naomi,
whose name means "the pleasant," lived in the little village of
Bethlehem; and when at one time food was scarce, she left the place
with her husband and two sons, and went over into the land of Moab,
where there was plenty of food to eat.
For ten years she lived in that land, and there her sons married
Moabite girls. Then heavy trouble came upon Naomi, for she lost not
only her husband, but her two sons also. In her sorrow Naomi's heart
turned to Bethlehem, with its cluster of white houses among the hills
of her own country. But before going back she bade her
daughters-in-law return to their mothers' houses, where they would be
happy. They both wept, and Orpah, the elder, kissed Naomi and went
away; but Ruth clung to her and refused to go.
"Entreat me not to leave thee, or to return from following after thee,"
she said; "for whither thou goest, I will go; and where thou lodgest, I
will lodge: thy people shall be my people, and thy God my God; where
thou diest, I will die, and there will I be buried: the Lord do so to
me, and more also, if aught but death part thee and me."
So they went back together to the village of Bethlehem, and Naomi in
her sorrow said to her old friends, when she met them once more, "Call
me not Naomi 'the pleasant,' but Mara 'the bitter;' for God hath dealt
bitterly with me."
Ruth wore the dress of the village girls, of deep green and bright red,
with a white veil streaming over her shoulder, and a row of coins upon
her brow; and she was pleasant to look upon as she went up and down the
stony path which ran from the gate in the wall to the women's well,
carrying her pitcher to get water. As she moved along the path her
eyes often strayed over the plains of dry grass and the fields of
golden grain; for it was the rich harvest time, and she was very poor.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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