Ruth 1:4
“And they took them wives of the women of Moab; the name of the one was Orpah, and the name of the other Ruth: and they dwelled there about ten years.”
King James Version (KJV)
Read this verse in context with translation switching:
Read Full Chapter →Naomi's sons marry Moabite women, Orpah and Ruth, and the family remains in Moab about ten years.
What Does Ruth 1:4 Mean?
Naomi's sons marry Moabite women, Orpah and Ruth, names that now enter the story for the first time. Ten years pass in Moab, long enough for it to feel permanent. To the original readers this was a complicated picture, for Moab and Israel had a long, troubled history, and yet here ordinary life unfolds: marriages, a household, years quietly passing.
Into this quiet, Ruth's name is planted almost in passing, with no hint of the devotion she will soon reveal. The text refuses to define her by her nationality or to pre-judge her. God's grace, we are being shown, is not bounded by borders or bloodlines; it reaches into Moab and lays hold of a woman the world would have overlooked. The whole book turns on the truth that the Lord delights to draw outsiders near, weaving the unlikely and the foreign into the lineage of His promise.