What Does Ruth 1:11 Mean?
And Naomi said, Turn back, my daughters. Why will you walk with me? Are there still sons in my belly, that they may be husbands for you?
Key words are shown with the Hebrew or Greek and what each word meant.
Selah Decoded Version The Selah Decoded Version renders what the Hebrew and Greek words meant to the people who first heard them.
King James wording
King James Version
And Naomi said, Turn again, my daughters: why will ye go with me? are there yet any more sons in my womb, that they may be your husbands?THE KEY
Naomi’s call to return is shaped by a bodily limit: she cannot give her daughters-in-law the sons who might become their husbands.
THE MEANING
You hear Naomi name the limit plainly: no sons can come from her womb to become husbands for her daughters-in-law. Her question makes the future with her concrete, and her request that they return comes from what she cannot provide.
THE ROOT
שֹׁבְנָה
shovnah
GROWS FROM
שׁוּב
shuv
turn, return, come back
“Turn back” in this verse is shovnah. This root holds the movement of return itself: Naomi is asking her daughters-in-law to go back. The same root can describe restoration, so return can mean both going back and being brought back; here the request meets the hard limit she names.
ALSO GROWS
hēshīv: cause to return, bring back
הֵשִׁיב
This form shows return as something one person can bring about for another.
yeshōvēv: restore, bring back
יְשׁוֹבֵב
Psalm 23:3 uses this root for restoring the living soul, revealing a return that reaches inward as well as homeward.
THE PATTERN
Returning can move someone toward the life and wholeness still available.
He turns back my living soul; he leads me in the tracks of alignment for the sake of his nature.Thus says the LORD, Hold back your voice from weeping, and your eyes from tears, for there are wages for your work, says the LORD, and they will turn back from the land of the enemy.Let him know that the one who turns back one of those who miss the mark from the wandering of his way will deliver a living soul from death, and will cover a multitude of shortcomings.THE THREAD
Turn back, my daughters, and go, for I have grown too old to have a husband. If I should say there is hope for me, and I should even have a husband tonight, and should also bear sons.Naomi repeats the same call to return and gives its reason more fully: she is too old to bear the sons her daughters-in-law would need as husbands. The repeated root makes the request inseparable from the future she cannot provide.
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