1:13. If you would wait till they were grown up, and come to man's estate, you would be old women before you marry. Do not so, my daughters, I beseech you: for I am grieved the more for your distress, and the hand of the Lord is gone out against me. 1:14. And they lifted up their voice, and began to weep again: Orpha kissed her mother in law, and returned: Ruth stuck close to her mother in law. 1:15. And Noemi said to her: Behold thy kinswoman is returned to her people, and to her gods, go thou with her. To her gods, etc... Noemi did not mean to persuade Ruth to return to the false gods she had formerly worshipped: but by this manner of speech, insinuated to her, that if she would go with her, she must renounce her false gods and return to the Lord the God of Israel. 1:16. She answered: Be not against me, to desire that I should leave thee and depart: for whithersoever thou shalt go, I will go: and where thou shalt dwell, I also will dwell. Thy people shall be my people, and thy God my God. 1:17. The land that shall receive thee dying, in the same will I die: and there will I be buried. The Lord do so and so to me, and add more also, if aught but death part me and thee. The Lord do so and so, etc... A form of swearing usual in the history of the Old Testament, by which the person wished such and such evils to fall upon them, if they did not do what they said. 1:18. Then Noemi seeing that Ruth was steadfastly determined to go with her, would not be against it, nor persuade her any more to return to her friends: 1:l9. So they went together, and came to Bethlehem. And when they were come into the city, the report was quickly spread among all: and the women said: This is that Noemi. 1:20. But she said to them: Call me not Noemi (that is, beautiful,) but call me Mara (that is, bitter), for the Almighty hath quite filled me with bitterness. 1:21. I went out full and the Lord hath brought me back empty. Why then do you call me Noemi, whom the Lord hath humbled, and the Almighty hath afflicted? 1:22. So Noemi came with Ruth, the Moabitess, her daughter in law, from the land of her sojournment: and returned into Bethlehem, in the beginning of the barley harvest. Ruth Chapter 2 Ruth gleaneth in the field of Booz, who sheweth her favour. 2:1. Now her husband Elimelech had a kinsman, a powerful man, and very rich, whose name was Booz. 2:3. And Ruth, the Moabitess, said to her mother in law: If thou wilt, I will go into the field, and glean the ears of corn that escape the hands of the reapers, wheresoever I shall find grace with a householder, that will be favourable to me. And she answered her: Go, my daughter. 2:3. She went, therefore, and gleaned the ears of corn after the reapers. And it happened that the owner of that field was Booz, who was of the kindred of Elimelech. 2:4. And behold, he came out of Bethlehem, and said to the reapers: The Lord be with you. And they answered him: The Lord bless thee.