The Fallible · Synthetic · Study Bible
Naomi Becomes a Widow
Ruth 1:1–5 — Naomi Becomes a Widow. Each verse below carries the full apparatus: the Berean Standard Bible, the vocalized original (tap any word), and a parsed breakdown of every term transcribed from the interlinear. Synthesized commentary, canonical threads, and the reading of Christ gather at the end, over the whole unit.
1In the days when the judges ruled, there was a famine in the land. And a certain man from Bethlehem in Judah, with his wife and two sons, went to reside in the land of Moab.
Berean Standard Bible · CC0
Hebrew — tap a word ↓
bî·mê haš·šō·p̄ə·ṭîm šə·p̄ōṭ way·hî way·hî rā·‘āḇ bā·’ā·reṣ ’îš mib·bêṯ le·ḥem yə·hū·ḏāh wə·’iš·tōw ū·šə·nê ḇā·nāw way·yê·leḵ lā·ḡūr biś·ḏê mō·w·’āḇ hū
Literal — word-for-word from the original
“And-it-came-to-pass in-the-days of-the-judging of-the-judges, and-it-came-to-pass a-famine in-the-land. And-went a-man from-Beth-Lechem, Judah, to-sojourn in-the-fields-of Moab — he, and-his-wife, and-two-of his-sons.”
Where the English smooths the original
How far Elimelech was justified in fleeing, even under the pressure of the famine, from the land of Jehovah to a land where Chemosh was worshipped and the abominations practised of Baal-peor, may well be doubted, even though God overruled it all for good.
It is folly to think of escaping that cross, which, being laid in our way, we ought to take up. Changing our place seldom is mending it.
In ancient times it was only strong necessity which induced people to leave their homes, cf. 2 Kings 8:1 ; for a foreign country meant a foreign religion
But it is in vain to multiply guesses. The date of the famine is not given, and it is futile to make inquisition for it.Pulpit is here closing a survey of Josephus, Bishop Patrick and others; the restraint is the point, and it stands against the confident datings offered by Benson, Gill and K&D.
2The man’s name was Elimelech, his wife’s name was Naomi, and the names of his two sons were Mahlon and Chilion. They were Ephrathites from Bethlehem in Judah, and they entered the land of Moab and settled there.
Berean Standard Bible · CC0
Hebrew — tap a word ↓
hā·’îš wə·šêm ’ĕlî·me·leḵ ’iš·tōw wə·šêm nā·‘o·mî wə·šêm šə·nê- ḇā·nāw maḥ·lō·wn wə·ḵil·yō·wn ’ep̄·rā·ṯîm mib·bêṯ le·ḥem yə·hū·ḏāh way·yā·ḇō·’ū śə·ḏê- mō·w·’āḇ way·yih·yū- šām
Literal — word-for-word from the original
“And-the-name-of the-man Elimelek (‘My-God-is-King’), and-the-name-of his-wife Noomi (‘Pleasant’), and-the-name-of two-of his-sons Machlon and-Kilyon — Ephrathites from-Beth-Lechem, Judah. And-they-came the-fields-of Moab, and-they-were there.”
Where the English smooths the original
The names - Elimelech, i.e., to whom God is King; Naomi (נעמי, a contraction of נעמית, lxx Νοομμείν, Vulg. Nomi), i.e., the gracious; Machlon, i.e., the weakly; and Chilion, pining - are genuine Hebrew names
It had been originally imposed as a name by some grateful and happy mother, who, by gracious providences, or by other gracious revelations, had been led to think that "sweet are the ways, sweet are the dealings, and sweet is the character of God.Pulpit is arguing against reading Naomi as a description of the woman; on his account the name is a confession about God, which is why her renaming in v. 20 is a theological complaint, not a mood.
Probably they were sickly children, and not likely to be long-lived. Such are the products of our pleasant things, weak and infirm, fading and dying.
3Then Naomi’s husband Elimelech died, and she was left with her two sons,
Berean Standard Bible · CC0
Hebrew — tap a word ↓
nā·‘o·mî ’îš ’ĕ·lî·me·leḵ way·yā·māṯ hî wat·tiš·šā·’êr ū·šə·nê ḇā·ne·hā
Literal — word-for-word from the original
“And-died Elimelek, man-of Noomi; and-she-was-left-remaining, she and-two-of her-sons.”
Where the English smooths the original
"In these words," says Fuller, "we have two marriages ushered and followed by funerals.Pulpit is quoting Thomas Fuller, not speaking in his own voice; the epigram governs vv. 3-5 as a unit.
and she was left, and her two sons; in a strange land, she without a husband, and they without a father.
4who took Moabite women as their wives, one named Orpah and the other named Ruth. And after they had lived in Moab about ten years,
Berean Standard Bible · CC0
Hebrew — tap a word ↓
way·yiś·’ū lā·hem mō·’ă·ḇî·yō·wṯ nā·šîm hā·’a·ḥaṯ šêm ‘ā·rə·pāh haš·šê·nîṯ wə·šêm rūṯ way·yê·šə·ḇū šām kə·‘e·śer šā·nîm
Literal — word-for-word from the original
“And-they-lifted-up for-themselves women, Moabitesses: name-of the-one Orpah, and-name-of the-second Ruth. And-they-sat there about-ten years.”
Where the English smooths the original
Marriages of Israelites with women of Ammon or Moab are nowhere in the Law expressly forbidden, as were marriages with the women of Canaan
either these were proselytes when they married them, which may well be doubted, from Ruth 1:15 , or they sinned in marrying them, as appears from Deu 7:3 23:3 Ezra 9:1 ,2 Ne 13:23 , and therefore were punished with short life and want of issuePoole states the opposite conclusion to Barnes and K&D on the same law; the brief preserves both, and the text itself pronounces neither.
We cannot, therefore, feel sure that the writer invented the names; he may have derived them from tradition.
By this wonderful providence of God Ruth became one of God's household, of whom Christ came.
5both Mahlon and Chilion also died, and Naomi was left without her two sons and without her husband.
Berean Standard Bible · CC0
Hebrew — tap a word ↓
šə·nê·hem maḥ·lō·wn wə·ḵil·yō·wn ḡam- way·yā·mū·ṯū hā·’iš·šāh wat·tiš·šā·’êr miš·šə·nê yə·lā·ḏe·hā ū·mê·’î·šāh
Literal — word-for-word from the original
“And-died also both-of-them, Machlon and-Kilyon; and-was-left-remaining the-woman, from-two-of her-children and-from-her-husband.”
Where the English smooths the original
It is not for us to say how far those are right who see in the death of Elimelech and his sons God’s punishment for the disregard of His law.
and Jewish writers say that the early deaths of both the young men were divine judgments inflicted on them for those unlawful connections.JFB is reporting a rabbinic verdict, not necessarily endorsing it; the text of Ruth assigns no cause to either death.
There is no evidence in the text of Divine displeasure, and the Christian expositor, when going beyond the text in quest of principles, should not forget the tower of Siloam
Loss of children and widowhood are both come upon her. By whom shall she be comforted? It is God alone who is able to comfort those who are thus cast down.
The verse-by-verse work is done. What follows gathers the whole unit. All three layers below are machine-generated (⚙). Weigh them; they have no authority.
AI synthesis — woven from the public-domain voices above and the original text; generated and fallible.
The book opens on a conjunction. Pulpit remarks on that “And” standing at the head of a book, and lists Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Joshua, Judges, Samuel, Kings, 2 Chronicles, Ezekiel, Esther and Ezra among its company: these are “parcels of history,” each with a genesis in what came before. Then comes a date that dates nothing — שְׁפֹט הַשֹּׁפְטִים, “in the judging of the judges,” root repeated (H8199, Qal infinitive governing a Qal participle). Ellicott calls the note of time “by no means definite,” and the commentators prove him right by disagreeing: Benson and K&D argue for the Midianite devastation under Gideon (Judges 6:3-4); Gill catalogues Josephus for Eli, Jarchi for Ibzan, the Jewish chronology for Ehud, Junius for Deborah, Alting for Jephthah; Barnes rejects the Ibzan identification outright; Poole concludes that since “Scripture being silent, it seems presumptuous to determine.” Pulpit closes the case: the date is not given, and hunting it is futile. ⚙ What the phrase does tell us is moral rather than chronological — Cambridge notes the opening formula leans on the editorial theory of Judges 2:16, the era whose refrain is that every man did what was right in his own eyes.
Into that era falls רָעָב, famine — and the narrator places it two words from בֵּית לֶחֶם, House of Bread. Gill states the fact flatly: the town “had its name from the fruitfulness of the place, and the plenty of bread in it, and yet the famine was here.” Elimelek goes לָגוּר (H1481), which Cambridge glosses precisely as “a protected alien,” and Gill as sojourn “for a time, until the famine was over.” He goes not to the land of Moab but, as Barnes insists on the Hebrew, to its fields (שְׂדֵי, H7704) — the word the narrator reserves for foreign soil, withholding from Moab the ʼerets he has just given to famished Israel. Ellicott doubts the whole venture: whether a man was justified in fleeing “from the land of Jehovah to a land where Chemosh was worshipped” may well be doubted. Henry grants the care and denies the removal. Neither can point to a word of blame in the text, and neither pretends to.
Verse 2 is almost entirely names, and every one of them is a sentence. Elimelek: JFB reads “My God is king,” K&D “to whom God is King,” and Pulpit argues the medial vowel is one of union, giving simply “God is King” — and adds that to name a son so “would be something like a manifesto of the father's creed.” ⚙ The manifesto is dated: in the days when there was no king in Israel, the man called God-is-King leaves the land of that King's promise. Naomi: Ellicott from the root “to be pleasant”; Cambridge, following Wellhausen, as an Aramaic feminine of Naamân, giving “a clear parallel to Marah = bitter one in Ruth 1:20”; Pulpit, most ambitiously, as a mother's confession that God deals sweetly with men. Machlon and Kilyon: K&D, “the weakly” and “pining”; Ellicott, “sickness and wasting … the names being given by reason of their feeble health”; Benson, sickly children “not likely to be long-lived.” Cambridge and Pulpit both refuse to be certain, Pulpit finding it hard to believe a father would stereotype his worst anticipations in his sons' names.
⚙ Whatever the etymologies, the narrative shape is unmistakable in Hebrew and invisible in English: the two sons share a single שֵׁם (singular construct), and Pulpit explains why — they “were for the moment regarded as a unity.” One name, one death notice. And the verbs quietly migrate. He went to sojourn (v. 1); they came to the fields of Moab and were there (v. 2, וַיִּהְיוּ־שָׁם); they sat there about ten years (v. 4, וַיֵּשְׁבוּ). Gill's one-line gloss on “continued there” is the whole tragedy: “unto their death; all excepting Naomi.”
Pulpit quotes Thomas Fuller for the shape of these three verses: two marriages ushered and followed by funerals. The deaths are reported without cause, and the tradition fills the vacuum from both sides. JFB reports the rabbinic verdict that the early deaths were “divine judgments inflicted on them for those unlawful connections”; the Targum, quoted by Gill and by Ellicott, says they transgressed the decree of the Word of the Lord; Poole holds that they sinned and “therefore were punished with short life and want of issue”; Benson offers the Chaldee's “their days were cut short.” Against them stand Barnes, who observes that marriages with Moab are “nowhere in the Law expressly forbidden, as were marriages with the women of Canaan,” and K&D, who draws the precise distinction: the law barred not the marriage but “the reception of Moabites into the congregation of the Lord” (Deuteronomy 23:4). Ellicott declines to rule. Pulpit closes the argument with a rebuke to all of them, sending the expositor back to the tower of Siloam.
⚙ The Hebrew makes its own comment, and it is not a verdict but a stripping. Twice the Nifal וַתִּשָּׁאֵר (H7604, “was left over”) — once with three survivors, once with one. In v. 3 the dead man is אִישׁ נָעֳמִי, Naomi's man; in v. 5 the survivor is not Naomi at all but הָאִשָּׁה, the woman, her name withheld at the precise moment it stops describing her. And the boys, called בָּנִים (H1121, sons who build a name) in vv. 1, 2 and 3, are called at their death יְלָדֶיהָ (H3206) — the ones she bore. The double min of privation finishes the accounting: left from her two children, and from her husband. Fuller's ladder, preserved by Pulpit, descends exactly this staircase, from woman to old woman to widow to poor widow to childless widow to a childless widow in a foreign country, and concludes that no woman ever had tribulation like Naomi. Geneva alone, in its Argument, has already named what the emptying is for: the state of the Church set forth figuratively, subject to many afflictions, “teaching us to abide with patience till God delivers us out of troubles.”
⚙ Read only against the rest of Scripture and offered to be tested: this unit is a ledger of subtraction written in a town named for abundance. Bethlehem has no bread; a man named God-is-King leaves the King's land in the era when Israel had no king; a sojourner's verb (gûwr) hardens into a settler's verb (yāšab); and one by one the three men who could carry a name are removed, until the narrator has to stop calling the dead sons and call them children, and stop calling the survivor Naomi and call her the woman. Nothing in these five verses is explained. The text records no sin, no judgment, no promise, no prayer, and no divine speech — it does not even say that the LORD did any of it. That silence is not an oversight I should fill; the commentators who fill it (JFB's rabbis, the Targum, Poole) go beyond what is written, and Pulpit is right to send them back to Luke 13:1-5. ⚙ What I think Scripture permits me to say is this: the book begins by emptying its hands. Every legal instrument that will save Naomi — the redeemer's claim, the raising up of a dead man's name on his inheritance, the harvest in the fields of Bethlehem — is worthless until there is nothing left to lose, and the narrator spends five verses making sure there is nothing left. When the LORD is finally named as acting (1:6, visiting His people to give them bread), He arrives into a vacancy this unit has carefully prepared. ⚙ If that reading is right, the rare Nifal wattiššāʼêr is the hinge of the whole book: what God works with here is a remainder. And He works it, as Geneva saw, through the one person in the chapter with no claim on Him at all — a Moabitess whose very name the best Hebrew philology admits it cannot translate. I hold this offered, not asserted.
The House of Bread had no bread, and the ledger closes with one woman and two prepositions of loss. (This line is the tool's own summary, not a verse of Scripture.)
AI-generated connections. Each carries a verification badge with a recorded basis; contested links are flagged.
The four Israelite names introduced in 1:1-2 and buried in 1:3-5 are recited again, together, in the two verses where Boaz makes his acquisition public (Ruth 4:9-10) — Elimelek, Chilion and Mahlon by name in 4:9, and in 4:10 Ruth the Moabitess as the widow of Mahlon, taken so that the name of the dead may be raised upon his inheritance. (The wording of those verses is outside this brief; I describe their content rather than quote it.) The Verifier confirms the lexical overlap, and the lexemes are rare: כִּלְיוֹן (H3630) occurs in only three verses in the Hebrew Bible and מַחְלוֹן (H4248) in four, all of them in this book. ⚙ The link is deliberate and structural as well as verbal: 1:5 subtracts the names one by one and switches from bên to yeled precisely because there is no one left to build the name; 4:9-10 is the legal act that puts the name back. K&D's note that Ruth was the wife of Mahlon (Ruth 4:10) is what joins the two passages by a person and not only a word.
Ruth 4:9 · Ruth 4:10
basis: Verifier: shared Hebrew lexemes H3630 Kilyôwn (in 3 vv), H4248 Machlôwn (in 4 vv), H458 ʼĔlîymelek (in 6 vv), H5281 Noʻŏmîy (in 20 vv), H7327 Rûwth (in 12 vv). Rare proper nouns, deliberately re-recited; not a quotation of one text by another, but a verbal roll-call within one book
Ruth 1:2 files the family under a gentilic that occurs in only five verses in all of Scripture: אֶפְרָתִי (H673). One of those five is 1 Samuel 17:12, where the same gentilic introduces Jesse, David's father, as a man of Bethlehem in Judah. The Verifier's basis is the formula itself: same rare gentilic, same town (H1035, in 39 vv), same disambiguating “Judah.” K&D makes the derivation explicit, from אֶפְרָת (Genesis 48:7) or אֶפְרָתָה (Genesis 35:19), “the old name for Bethlehem, Ephrathite, i.e., sprung from Bethlehem, as in 1 Samuel 17:12.” JFB and Poole record the same equivalence. ⚙ A family that leaves Bethlehem in a famine is introduced by the exact phrase that will later introduce the house of Jesse; Ruth 4:17-22, which Barnes uses to date the book, closes the circuit.
1 Samuel 17:12
basis: Verifier: shared Hebrew lexemes H673 ʼEphrâthîy (in 5 vv — rare) and H1035 Bêyth Lechem (in 39 vv), forming a near-identical descriptive formula; K&D independently cites 1 Samuel 17:12 for this gentilic. Shared formula, not a citation of one text by the other
עָרְפָּה (H6204) occurs in exactly two verses in the Hebrew Bible, and both are in this chapter: 1:4, where she is introduced as a wife, and 1:14, where she parts from Naomi. Poole's chapter outline, printed with 1:1, states the outcome in his own words — Orpah returns home to her people and gods, and Ruth remains. ⚙ The pairing is the book's sharpest structural device — two Moabitesses named in one breath and separated by a single verb ten verses later. The folk etymology that reads the name from ʻoreph, “neck,” and so as “she turned her neck,” is reported by Cambridge from the Midrash Rabbah and immediately doubted by him; K&D calls the sense “very arbitrary.” I record the etymology as contested and rest the thread on the narrative pairing and the shared name, not on the wordplay.
Ruth 1:14
basis: Verifier: shared Hebrew lexemes H6204 ʻOrpâh (in 2 vv — the only two occurrences in Scripture) and H7327 Rûwth (in 12 vv). The verbal datum is certain; the reading drawn from it (the parting of the two wives) is structural, and the ʻoreph etymology is explicitly doubted by Cambridge and K&D
The Verifier lists Judges 12:5, 1 Samuel 1:1 and 1 Kings 11:26 as sharing H673 with Ruth 1:2, which is arithmetically true and exegetically misleading. K&D states the problem exactly: the plural אֶפְרָתִים here is an adjective formed “not from אפרים, as in Judges 12:5, but from אפרת … the old name for Bethlehem.” In Judges 12:5 an “Ephraimite” is a man of the northern tribe; in Ruth 1:2 an “Ephrathite” is a man of Bethlehem in Judah. Elkanah (1 Samuel 1:1) and Jeroboam (1 Kings 11:26) belong on the Ephraim side of that divide. ⚙ One Strong's entry, two different referents — so the computed basis does not establish a link, and I record it as flagged rather than confirmed. The genuine H673 link in this unit is 1 Samuel 17:12, which K&D names.
Judges 12:5 · 1 Samuel 1:1 · 1 Kings 11:26
basis: Verifier: shared Hebrew lexeme H673 ʼEphrâthîy (in 5 vv). Basis contested: K&D argues the gentilic derives from two distinct place names (Ephrath/Bethlehem vs. Ephraim), so the shared Strong's number does not guarantee a shared referent. Recorded here so the computed link is not mistaken for a confirmed one
The narrator will not call Moab a land. Four times he says שְׂדֵה מוֹאָב, “the field(s) of Moab” — 1:1, 1:2, 1:22, and again at 4:3 — and Barnes notes the idiom is used elsewhere of Amalek, Edom and Philistia, “pointedly … with reference to a foreign country.” Cambridge lists the same references. ⚙ The irony is that the same noun sâdeh (H7704) then becomes the stage of the rescue: Naomi returns from the fields of Moab (1:22) and Ruth goes out to a field in Bethlehem (2:2-3), and at 4:3 the parcel of field that belonged to Elimelek is what Boaz redeems. The word travels from exile to inheritance. This is a motif carried by a very common noun, not a quotation, and I tier it accordingly.
Ruth 1:22 · Ruth 2:3 · Ruth 4:3
basis: Verifier: shared Hebrew lexemes H7704 sâdeh (in 309 vv — common), H4124 Môwʼâb (in 158 vv), H458 ʼĔlîymelek (in 6 vv). The frequency of sâdeh forbids a verbal claim; the link is the repeated fixed phrase and its reversal, i.e. structural
Ruth is introduced here with no comment at all: the second of two Moabite wives, ninth word in a verse of names. Matthew 1:5 names her in the line of the Messiah, alongside Rahab — and Ellicott makes the connection explicit in his note on this very verse, reasoning from Boaz as “the son of Salmon … and Rahab (Matthew 1:5)” to the date of the famine. Geneva's Argument to the book says the same thing in advance of the story. ⚙ Because this is a Greek text and a Hebrew one, no shared Strong's number is possible and none is claimed; the link is the continuity of a named person and a named town across the Testaments, which is a structural claim, not a verbal one.
Matthew 1:5 · Ruth 4:17
basis: Cross-Testament (Greek↔Hebrew): shared Strong's numbers are impossible by definition, so no verbal tier is available. Recorded basis is person-and-place continuity — Ruth and Boaz of Bethlehem named in Matthew's genealogy — cited by Ellicott on Ruth 1:1 and by the Geneva Argument
AI-generated reading; weigh it against the text.
The etymology is not a flourish; Gill records it as fact — Bethlehem “had its name from the fruitfulness of the place, and the plenty of bread in it, and yet the famine was here.” JFB, Poole and K&D all further identify the town with Ephrath of Genesis 35:19, the name JFB traces “even down to the time of the prophet Micah (Mic 5:2)” — the verse that names Bethlehem Ephrathah as the place from which the ruler of Israel comes forth. ⚙ The unit therefore opens with a named emptiness in exactly the place Scripture appoints to be filled: the House of Bread has no bread, and the first thing the LORD is finally said to do in this book is to visit His people “in giving them bread” (1:6, so Benson). That Bethlehem is the Messiah's town is ancient and universal; the reading of this famine as a figure of the hunger that the bread of life answers (John 6:35) is my own extension of the sourced material, and I mark it as such.
Micah 5:2 · Luke 2:4 · John 6:35
Geneva's Argument to the book, printed with 1:1, already reads the whole story christologically: it describes how Jesus Christ, who according to the flesh came from David, “proceeded by Ruth,” though she was a Moabite “of base condition, and a stranger to the people of God,” declaring that the Gentiles would be sanctified by him “and that there would be one sheepfold, and one shepherd.” Geneva's marginal note at 1:4 says it again — by this providence Ruth became one of God's household, of whom Christ came. Gill states the same conclusion from the marriages themselves: “it was so permitted by the Lord, and ordered in Providence, that from one of them the Messiah might spring.” ⚙ The legal sharpness is K&D's: what the law forbade was not the marriage but “the reception of Moabites into the congregation of the Lord” (Deuteronomy 23:4) — which is precisely the barrier this woman crosses and Ephesians 2:12-13 names as abolished.
Matthew 1:5 · Deuteronomy 23:3 · Ephesians 2:12-13
⚙ Verse 5 leaves a woman with nothing the law can work on: no husband, no sons, and — by the narrator's own change of word from bên (H1121, the son who builds a name) to yeled (H3206, the one she bore) — no builder of a name at all. That exact vacancy is what the kinsman-redeemer exists for, and Boaz will fill it at Ruth 4:10, taking the widow of Mahlon so that the name of the dead may be raised upon his inheritance. K&D, Barnes and Ellicott all supply the sourced fact that Ruth was Mahlon's wife (Ruth 4:10); the reading built on it is mine. ⚙ I take the pattern to be redemptive-historical rather than allegorical: a kinsman who is under no obligation assumes a dead man's claim at cost to himself, and Scripture elsewhere describes the incarnation in those terms — born under the law, to redeem those under the law (Galatians 4:4-5), not ashamed to call them brothers (Hebrews 2:11). The typology of Boaz as redeemer is widely held in the tradition; its application to this unit, where Boaz is not yet named and the point is the emptiness he will enter, is mine and is offered to be tested.
Ruth 4:10 · Galatians 4:4-5 · Hebrews 2:11
The biblical text is the Berean Standard Bible (BSB), public domain (CC0). Hebrew/Greek text, transliteration, morphology and Strong’s are transcribed from the Berean interlinear (CC0) + Strong’s lexicons (PD); the literal renderings, divergence notes, word notes and all synthesis are this tool’s own work (⚙) — fallible; verify them.
Named voices, quoted verbatim from public-domain works:
Text. Hebrew consonantal and pointed text and parses are taken from the Berean interlinear supplied in the brief; the English base is BSB (CC0). Every Strong's number, gloss, parse and frequency count in this unit is from that source and has not been supplemented from memory.
What is genuinely uncertain here. (1) The date. Six different periods are proposed by the sourced commentators — Eli (Josephus, via Gill and Pulpit), Ibzan (Jarchi and “most of the Jewish commentators,” rejected by Barnes), Ehud or Shamgar (Seder Olam and Lightfoot, via Gill), Deborah and Barak (Junius), Gideon (Benson, K&D, and “others” in Gill), Jephthah (Alting). Poole and Pulpit both hold that the text does not say. This synthesis takes no position. (2) The names. Machlon and Chilion as “weakly” and “pining” is K&D's rendering and Ellicott's, but Cambridge calls the meaning “not quite certain” and Pulpit doubts a father would give them. Ruth's own name is the least secure of all: K&D says the derivation from reʻûṯ, friend, “is quite uncertain,” and Cambridge, Ellicott and Pulpit each survey and reject the alternatives. I have not translated it. (3) Whether the marriages were unlawful. The sources split cleanly — Barnes and K&D say Deuteronomy forbade Canaanite marriage and Moabite naturalization, not Moabite marriage; JFB, Poole, Benson and the Targum (via Gill and Ellicott) read them as transgression punished by early death. The narrative itself, as Pulpit points out, contains “nothing of the nature of condemnation, not the least hint of blame.” Both readings are preserved above and neither is presented as the text's verdict.
Capped entries. The Pulpit entries on 1:1 and 1:2 and the K&D entry on 1:1 are truncated in the brief; quotations above are drawn only from the text actually supplied. Nothing has been quoted from beyond the cap.
Thread bases. All shared-lexeme bases are the Verifier's computed output. The Judges 12:5 / 1 Samuel 1:1 / 1 Kings 11:26 candidates are recorded as flagged rather than dropped, because the shared H673 there is real but, on K&D's argument, refers to a different Ephrath. The Matthew 1:5 thread carries no lexeme basis at all and is tiered structurally for that reason.
⚙ layer. Every sentence marked ⚙ — including the reading of bên → yeled in 1:5, the verb progression gûwr → hâyâh → yâšab, the withholding of Naomi's name in 1:5, and the whole sola reading — is machine synthesis built on the sourced parse and lexicon. It is fallible and is offered to be tested against the text.
✦ = human, public-domain source, quoted and named. ⚙ = machine synthesis, to be verified. Flagged cross-references are left visible on purpose — the verifier working in the open. “Search the Scriptures daily, whether those things were so.” (Acts 17:11)