R1-20: Did Orpah Sin By Deciding Not To Follow After Naomi?

“Again they wept aloud. Then ‘Orpah kissed her mother-in-law good-bye. But Rut stuck with her. She said, ‘Look, your sister-in-law has gone back to her people and to her god; go back, after your sister-in-law.’”-Ruth 1:14-15

There’s a very interesting theological question that arises concerning Orpah.

Did she sin when she decided to leave Naomi and return to her Moabite hometown?

The answer is of course not.

She wasn’t being disloyal, uncaring or even selfish.

After all, she simply did what Naomi insisted she should do…

And it was the practical and most reasonable decision to make given the situation.

So she did NOT make a bad or immoral decision when she decided to return home to her people the Moabites and their god Chemosh.

But here’s the thing.

In hindsight, she could have made a better decision.

This is a perfect example of how some people can come so close to being grafted into the commonwealth of Israel but never taking that life-changing step because there was another road to take.

And from the human perspective, usually that other road is the more natural and easier one.

Now don’t misunderstand me here.

I’m not saying the “other road” is an evil road necessarily…

But it is NOT the road to salvation…

It is not the road that leads to God’s plan for us…

What we’re being shown here is a picture of two people (Ruth and Naomi) who both were placed in a situation where they could have accepted to join God and His people or reject it.

As we’ll see, Ruth decided to accept it…

But Orpah decided to reject it.

Interestingly, there’s a similar encounter presented to us in the New Testament about two men who had a chance to follow Yeshua and become one of his disciples…

One man decided to follow Yeshua…

The other hesitated…

Here’s the verses from the book of Matthew:

 ^“Then a teacher of the law came to him and said,
‘Teacher, I will follow you wherever you go.’
Yeshua replied,
‘Foxes have dens and birds have nests,
but the Son of Man has
no place to lay his head.’
Another disciple said to him,
‘Lord, first let me go and bury my father.’
But Yeshua told him, ‘Follow me,
and let the dead bury their own dead.'”
-Matthew 8:19-22

Notice how the two men both had the same opportunity to follow Yeshua…

One man, like Ruth, said “I will follow you wherever you go“.

Yeshua responded to him similarly to how Naomi responded to Ruth.

He told the man that following him wasn’t going to be a bed of roses.

The other man also said he’d like to follow Yeshua…

But unlike the first man who said he’d drop everything on the spot to follow Yeshua right away, the other man said he first had to go “bury his father”.

We’re not given any more details, but I think it’s reasonable to assume the first man did follow after Yeshua (like Ruth followed Naomi)…

But the second man decided to leave Yeshua to return home (like what Orpah did).

Again, the man who decided NOT to follow Yeshua and returned home didn’t necessarily do an evil or immoral thing…

But knowing what we know now, he could have made a much, much better decision. 

And by the way, the gentile church has a tendency to misinterpret this event and say it was a choice between salvation or no salvation.

No it’s not.

The issue was whether the men would drop everything to serve Yeshua as one of his disciples.

It’s the level of commitment that’s being raised in that story…

Not whether one had faith in Yeshua or not…

Are you going to have only a passive trust in Yeshua?

Or are you going to go all in and follow Yeshua no matter what the cost (as Ruth did)?

So I hope you can see the parallels.

Orpah was like the man who said “Let me first go bury my father”.

Ruth was like the man who said to Yeshua “I will follow you wherever you go”.

After Orpah kissed Ruth goodbye, Naomi tried one last time to convince Ruth to follow after her sister.

 “Look, your sister-in-law
is going back
to her people and her gods.
Go back with her.”

But Ruth wasn’t having any of it.

She insisted on staying with Naomi.

And that settled the matter once and for all.

So we can see we have two women who made two decisions…

Both decisions weren’t bad or evil.

But one decision was eternally better than the other.

Which leads us to the $64,000 question…

If you were placed in a situation where you had to make a similar decision, what would you do?

Would you be like Orpah and go the worldly route of comfort, certainty and security?

Or would you be more like Ruth who chose to join God and His Chosen people and then let the chips fall where they may?