On the way back to Judah, Naomi said to her daughters-in-law: “Go back, each of you, to your mother’s home. May the Lord show you kindness, as you have shown kindness to your dead husbands and to me. May the Lord grant that each of you will find rest in the home of another husband.” Then she kissed them goodbye, and they wept aloud. “We will go back with you to your people,” they said. But Naomi replied: “Why would you come with me? Am I going to have any more sons, who could become your husbands? Return home, my daughters. I am too old to have another husband. And even if I thought there was still hope for me, if I had a husband tonight and then gave birth to sons, would you wait until they grew up? Would you remain unmarried for them? No, my daughters. It is more bitter for me than for you, because the Lord’s hand has gone out against me!” At this they wept aloud again. Then Orpah kissed her mother-in-law goodbye, but Ruth clung to her. “Look, your sister-in-law is going back to her people and her gods. Go back with her.” But Ruth replied: “Don’t urge me to leave you or to turn back from you. Where you go, I will go, and where you stay, I will stay. Your people will be my people and your God my God. Where you die, I will die, and there I will be buried. May the Lord do so to me and more also if anything but death parts me from you.” (Ruth 1, 8–10; 1, 14-17)

The Book of Ruth, likely written in the 5th century B.C., tells the story of a young Moabite woman who would eventually become the great-grandmother of King David. Naomi, the mother of Ruth’s late husband, helps her to win over Boaz, whom she eventually marries.

The scene represents the moment where Naomi, after losing her husband and sons, decides to return to her home in Bethlehem. Her daughters-in-law, Ruth and Orpah, accompany her. However, Naomi asks them to return to their homeland so they can remarry. Orpah listens to her mother-in-law and goes back to her home, while Ruth chooses to stay with her. It is a tender moment in which a bond of love and care is sealed with an embrace, surrounded by a peaceful, pastoral setting.