A Devotional from the Pen of Dr. John Gill
For the Fifth Day of the January 2025
Taken from
Ruth 1: 16 & 1: 17
And Ruth said, entreat me not to leave thee, or to return from following after thee [1]
Do not make use of any arguments to persuade me to go back: or “do not meet me”, or “be against me”; do not meet me with objections, or be in my way, or an hinderance to me, in going along with thee; do not be against it, for to be against that was to be against her inclination, desires, and resolutions, and against her interest:
For whither thou goest I will go
Let the country she was going to be what it would, though unknown to her, and though she should never see her own country anymore:
And where thou lodgest I will lodge
Though in ever so mean a cottage, or under the open air:
Thy people shall be my people
Whom I shall choose to dwell among, and converse with; whose religion, laws, and customs she should readily comply with, having heard much of them, their wisdom, goodness, and piety, of which she had a specimen and an example in Naomi, and by whom she judged of the rest:
And thy God my God
Not Chemosh, nor Baal-peor, nor other gods of the Moabites, be they what they will, but Jehovah, the God of Naomi, and of the people of Israel. So a soul that is truly brought to Christ affectionately loves him, and heartily cleaves unto him, resolves in the strength of divine grace to follow him, the Lamb, whithersoever he goes or directs; and is desirous to have communion with none but him, and that he also would not be as a wayfaring man, that tarries but a night; his people are the excellent of the earth, whom to converse with is all his delight and pleasure; and Christ's God is his God, and his Father is his Father: and, in a word, he determines to have no other Saviour but him, and to walk in all his commands and ordinances.
Where thou diest will I die, and there will I be buried
She was determined to abide with her unto death, and not only was desirous to die as she did, but where she should die; in the same country, cottage, and bed, and be laid in the same grave, in hope of rising together at the resurrection of the just; having no regard at all to the sepulchers of her fathers, which people in all ages and countries have been fond of being laid in, as an honour [sic] and happiness. So, with the Greeks and Romans, not only relations, but intimate friends, and such as had a strong affection for each other, were sometimes buried in the same grave, as Crates and Polemon, Paris and Oenome, and others; see Galatians2:20,
The Lord do so to me, and more also, if ought but death part thee and me
This is the form of oath she used for confirmation of what she had said, and to put an end to the debate on this subject; what she imprecates upon herself is not expressed, should she otherwise do than what she swears to; leaving Naomi to supply it in her own mind, and as being what was not fit to be named, and the greatest evil that could be thought to befall a perjured person.
[1] John Gill, “Ruth 1: 16-17,” John Gill’s Exposition of the Old & New Testament, Vol. 1 (London: Mathews & Leigh, 1809; reprint, Paris, AR.: The Baptist Standard Bearer, 1989), 395 (page citations are to the reprint edition).
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