NAOMI
“my pleasant.”
Wife of Elimelech, who took her, along with her two sons, to the country of Moab, because of a great famine that reigned in Judah. The sons married Moabite girls.
Elimelech and his sons died. Naomi, accompanied by Ruth, one of her daughters-in-law, returned to Bethlehem of Judah (Rt. 1-4). She asked to no longer be called Naomi, but Mara, “bitter,” because the Almighty had treated her, she said, bitterly.
She sought the good of Ruth, who married Boaz; She became nurse to Ruth’s son, Obed.
Typologically, she represents desolate Israel, just as Ruth represents the despised but pious remnant, who are introduced to a full blessing at the end, on the basis of sovereign grace, as Gentiles, but entrusting themselves to the goodness of the Near Kin-Redeemer ( cf. Is. 63:16).