Scriptures

New Living Translation (NLT)

Judges 21
²³ So the men of Benjamin did as they were told. Each man caught one of the women as she danced in the celebration and carried her off to be his wife. They returned to their own land, and they rebuilt their towns and lived in them.
²⁴ Then the people of Israel departed by tribes and families, and they returned to their own homes.
²⁵ In those days Israel had no king; all the people did whatever seemed right in their own eyes.
Ruth 1
¹ In the days when the judges ruled in Israel, a severe famine came upon the land. So a man from Bethlehem in Judah left his home and went to live in the country of Moab, taking his wife and two sons with him.
² The man’s name was Elimelech, and his wife was Naomi. Their two sons were Mahlon and Kilion. They were Ephrathites from Bethlehem in the land of Judah. And when they reached Moab, they settled there.
³ Then Elimelech died, and Naomi was left with her two sons.
⁴ The two sons married Moabite women. One married a woman named Orpah, and the other a woman named Ruth. But about ten years later,
⁵ both Mahlon and Kilion died. This left Naomi alone, without her two sons or her husband.
⁶ Then Naomi heard in Moab that the LORD had blessed his people in Judah by giving them good crops again. So Naomi and her daughters-in-law got ready to leave Moab to return to her homeland.
⁷ With her two daughters-in-law she set out from the place where she had been living, and they took the road that would lead them back to Judah.
⁸ But on the way, Naomi said to her two daughters-in-law, “Go back to your mothers’ homes. And may the LORD reward you for your kindness to your husbands and to me.