Our Provider

In the book of Ruth, in the first chapter we have some amazing testimony by Ruth of her dedication to Naomi. On the other hand, Naomi's own dedication at this point was, well, lacking. In her own words;

Ruth 1:20 "And she said unto them, Call me not Naomi(Pleasant), call me Mara(Bitter): for the Almighty hath dealt very bitterly with me." 21 "I went out full, and the LORD hath brought me home again empty: why then call ye me Naomi, seeing the LORD hath testified against me, and the Almighty hath afflicted me?"    The parenthesizes are mine.


 In this poignant exchange with her town folk Naomi lays the blame of her emptiness on the Lord. (Honestly I can relate to that.) But she uses a word that is hard to translate, yöå;dAv, Shaddai. Most Bibles translate  this word "Almighty". According B. Childs this is a particularly hard word to translate. When trying to find a proper translation I looked to the Hebrew lexicon, BDB. According to Briggs, Driver and Bridges,  it translates it deity, or proper name. If we look closer to the root of the word we see it means breast. It is translated by KJV as Almighty, the all powerful. How do we bring these two translations together or do we? Maybe if we look at the story of Naomi and why she says she is "empty" it might give us a key. She went out with a full family, husband and two children. She came back without even the hope of a child, or a husband to create one. She was empty. To be childless was to be cursed of God (1Samuel 1:1). But wait by the end of the story she has a child! In fact the women whom she asked to call her bitter are calling her blessed. More than that they say "Naomi has a child"(Ruth 4:14-17). They knew that is where the real bitterness sprang. Not only did Naomi have a child (really Ruth's, I know, I am just quoting the Bible) but she put it on her lap and became its nurse! This has been known to happen. But the point her is that her breast were full! God had redeemed her from her bitterness. The neighbors also called this child the go'el, the redeemer. You might say "I thought Boaz was the redeemer?" He was of Ruth. The child was Naomi's redeemer, I guess. Now about shaddai, remember the breasted one? Reading the end of the story helps me see what the author might have been reaching for when he had Naomi call the Lord the breasted One. J.R. Stevens agrees with this translation in his book Pray Without Ceasing. He translates this term as the "Great Breasted One". With this background I can get to the KJV translation as Almighty as the one who is able to care for me, protect and feed me, as a mother might provide for her young. If the Jews had a view of God that was maternal this might be one example, or not.