Orpah—A Lesser Love

"Even if I should this night . . . bear sons, would ye shut yourselves up and wait till they were grown?"—Ruth 1:12,13

When both of Naomi’s sons died in Moab, she had to tell her daughters-in-law that no man in Israel would marry them because they were foreigners. The lot of a widow would be hard. By staying in Moab, they could remarry and find the protection and honor of being a wife, so necessary in those days.

Orpah had a hunger for a resting place, security. She dreaded having to "shut herself up." Although she loved Naomi, she counted the cost and it was too much for her. She represented a class whose love for truth and righteousness is not enough to suffer much. They turn back into the world, as Orpah turned back to Moab.

—Condensed from Notes on the Bible by John A. Meggison