I went out full, and Yahweh has brought me home again empty. Why do you call me Naomi, since Yahweh has testified against me, and the Almighty has afflicted me?”
Ruth 1:21 (WEB)
in its setting: Ruth 1:19-22
1 Where we are
The meeting was at nine-forty and it lasted twelve minutes. By eleven Kelvin is sitting on the stairwell landing between B1 and B2 of the office carpark with a box on his knees: a mug, a small desk fan, twenty-two years. He is fifty-one. The company was fair and the package was fair, and nothing was done to him that he can point at, which is the part he cannot get past. If nobody is to blame, maybe there is nothing to mourn, and he should be grateful instead. Underneath that is something quieter. For twenty-two years he was the one they could depend on, and he does not know what he is worth to anybody at nine in the morning now.
2 What the passage is doing
Naomi comes back into Bethlehem after ten years away, having buried a husband and two sons in Moab. The women of the town recognise her and say her name, and she will not have it. Naomi means pleasant; call me Mara, she says, call me bitter. Then she turns and says it to God's face: I went out full, he has brought me home empty. Nobody in the passage corrects her. Ruth is standing right there, the barley harvest is just beginning, and still Naomi is not made to mention either one yet.
רֵיקָם
reyqam · empty-handed, with nothing to show
Reyqam is not a mood, it is a pair of open hands. It is the word used when someone arrives somewhere carrying nothing — the same word the law uses when it says no one should come before God empty-handed. So Naomi is not only saying that she feels sad. She is saying she has turned up in her hometown with no husband, no sons, nothing to put on the table, and she says it straight to God rather than about him.
3 Taking it with you
So you can say it plainly. Something has been taken from you, and the fact that it was taken politely, with a fair letter and a fair sum, does not turn it into nothing. Scripture gives you the words in the first person, and God does not flinch at them or ask you to be grateful first. And hear this about your worth, because it was settled before you lost the pass and the title: Jesus was stripped of everything, counted useful to no one, and cried out to his Father from a place with no silver lining in sight. He did that for you. You are not what your employer needed at nine in the morning. You are someone he came and got.
A prayer you can pray
Lord, I went out full and I have come home empty, and I am telling you because there is no one else to tell. It hurts, and I am not ready to be grateful yet. Do not leave the landing where I am sitting. Hold my name when I cannot hold it. And remind me today that you did not love me for what I could produce. Amen.
Soli Deo Gloria — to God alone be the glory.
