Call Me Mara
19 So they both went until they came to Bethlehem. When they had come to Bethlehem, all the city was excited about them, and they asked, “Is this Naomi?” 20 She said to them, “Don’t call me Naomi. Call me Mara, for the Almighty has dealt very bitterly with me. 21 I went out full, and Yahweh has brought me home again empty. Why do you call me Naomi, since Yahweh has testified against me, and the Almighty has afflicted me?” 22 So Naomi returned, and Ruth the Moabitess, her daughter-in-law, with her, who returned out of the country of Moab. They came to Bethlehem in the beginning of barley harvest.
The town recognizes her and she rejects her own name — then the last line drops two words that change everything.
All the city was excited about them, and they asked, is this Naomi? Ten years and three deaths had made the question a real one.
Her answer refuses the name. Naomi means pleasant; call me Mara, bitter, for the Almighty has dealt very bitterly with me. Renaming oneself is a serious act in Scripture, and she does it in public, in the town square, to the first people who greet her.
Verse 21 states her case in a balanced line: I went out full, and Yahweh has brought me home again empty — reyqam H7387. The accounting is honest as far as it goes. She did go out full and has come back with nothing. What the sentence leaves out is standing beside her, and the narrator does not correct it either.
Then the last clause of the chapter, dropped without comment: they came to Bethlehem in the beginning of barley harvest. Naomi has just declared herself empty in the house of bread, at the exact moment the grain is ready. The narrator says nothing about it. He simply puts the two facts in one sentence and moves on.
settled What this mark means