8. Naomi said to her daughters-in-law, “Go back, each of you to your mother’s house. May the Lord show you the same kindness as you have shown to the deceased and to me.
9. May the Lord guide each of you to find a husband and a home in which you will be at rest.” She kissed them good-bye, but they wept aloud,
10. crying, “No! We will go back with you, to your people.”
11. Naomi replied, “Go back, my daughters. Why come with me? Have I other sons in my womb who could become your husbands?
12. Go, my daughters, for I am too old to marry again. Even if I had any such hope, or if tonight I had a husband and were to bear sons,
13. would you wait for them and deprive yourselves of husbands until those sons grew up? No, my daughters, my lot is too bitter for you, because the Lord has extended his hand against me.”
14. Again they wept aloud; then Orpah kissed her mother-in-law good-bye, but Ruth clung to her.
15. “See now,” she said, “your sister-in-law has gone back to her people and her god. Go back after your sister-in-law!”
16. But Ruth said, “Do not press me to go back and abandon you!Wherever you go I will go,wherever you lodge I will lodge.Your people shall be my peopleand your God, my God.
17. Where you die I will die,and there be buried.May the Lord do thus to me, and more, if even death separates me from you!”
18. Naomi then ceased to urge her, for she saw she was determined to go with her.
19. So they went on together until they reached Bethlehem. On their arrival there, the whole town was excited about them, and the women asked: “Can this be Naomi?”