The Love Story #5 — Right in Their Own Eyes | Moheb Mina

Section Five

”Right in Their Own Eyes”

Days had been passing. The feeling of grief, loss, and despair had been growing deeper in Naomi’s family. Despite Naomi’s quiet efforts to lift the spirits of her family, the weight kept growing. Things had changed already and the hope of returning to Bethlehem one day seemed a lifetime away. The battle of survival had taken a toll on all of them.

The habit of daily praying had been the first thing to go.

Back in Bethlehem, Naomi’s ears had been used for years to hearing the sounds of early birds alongside the sound of Elimelech as he led Mahlon and Chilion in the morning prayer.

Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God is one Lord. And thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thine heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy might. And these words which I command thee this day shall be in thine heart; and thou shalt teach them diligently unto thy children, and shalt talk of them when thou sittest in thy house and when thou walkest by the way, and when thou liest down and when thou risest up. And thou shalt bind them as a sign upon thine hand, and they shall be as frontlets between thine eyes. And thou shalt write them upon the posts of thy house and on thy gates.

For Naomi, Elimelech had been one of those who recited this prayer twice a day — once at dawn and once in the evening when it was getting dark and silent. He used to recite it as part of his bedtime prayers to affirm his own faith before going to sleep.

Now the mornings were quiet.

She had started to miss it — not just the words, but the voice. The ritual. The anchor. She knew life was now different from the life she had known before, and she did not know when normal life would return to her again.

Days kept passing. The standing defensive walls between her home and the Moabites had slowly been falling down. She stood watching, asking herself — Where is this taking us? Yet she was hoping Yahweh would intervene soon and make things different.

Yet Yahweh was silent.

It was in that silence that the boys began to change.

Mahlon and Chilion had listened to the old man’s advice and became less confrontational about their faith. They did not accept the Moabite gods, but they would not talk about Yahweh anymore either. They did not want to cause conflict or upset anybody. They wanted to make friends. They wanted to belong.

And there was one particular thing encouraging them further down that road.

For several days now, they had noticed two sisters working alongside them in the field. They had started to like them. During the breaks from the heat, when everyone sat together in the shade, Mahlon and Chilion did not want to feel like outsiders anymore. They wanted to enjoy the company of these two girls. They could not speak to them yet. But from time to time, as they were sitting together, the scarves covering the faces of those two girls would shift just enough to show their eyes. Mahlon and Chilion would lift their faces, and the eyes would meet each other — and then quickly move away.

As the days passed in the field, friendships formed. They started spending more and more time together. The more Mahlon and Chilion saw those eyes and the smile behind the sheer scarf protecting those faces, the more attached they became. They liked them. They wanted to be accompanied by them.

Each morning when they walked to the field, their eyes searched for those familiar faces.

They looked good to them.

They talked together a lot as they walked at dawn to catch the work before the heat of the day arrived. And somewhere along those walks, the conversation turned to what both of them had been quietly thinking.

Chilion spoke first.

“Listen, brother — we are going to die as strangers in this land, alone, if we don’t get married.”

Mahlon was silent for a moment. Then he replied, “Chilion, my brother — you know that would be a big mistake. We have learned that this would be an error against Yahweh. He told us not to marry the Moabites. No. That is a big mistake, brother.”

Chilion looked at him. “Listen — you might be right. But where is Yahweh? He has forsaken us. Look at Bethlehem. It is a barren land and things won’t change soon. We might die as singles here. No family. No one to look after us when we are old. No children to carry our name. Do you want that, brother?”

While Chilion was just finishing his sentence, Mahlon’s eyes drifted across the field — and caught sight of the two sisters arriving for the day’s work.

He said nothing more.

On the way home that evening, they came to an agreement. They would talk to their parents.

Naomi had prepared a hot meal to feed the family after a long day of labour. They prayed and ate. Then after the meal, with the table still between them, the sons looked at their parents and spoke.

“We saw these two sisters in the field. We like them. We want you to come with us to speak to their parents and take them as wives for us — for they are right in our eyes. Our eyes are attached to them and we cannot look away when we are around them.”

Elimelech and Naomi’s faces turned to stone.

For a few minutes, neither of them moved. Neither of them spoke. They could not believe what they had just heard with their own ears. Moabite women as wives for Mahlon and Chilion. What a crisis.

Elimelech gathered his thoughts and his strength. He looked at his boys — his eyes full of confusion, love, and fear for what they were even considering. They were already losing so much of their identity. He told them they could not do this. They knew the command of Yahweh. He went on and on.

But his sons’ ears were already closed.

Naomi, from the shock, could not say a word that night. Her mind went far away, imagining every worst possible scenario. That was the last thing she could have imagined for her family. What brought her back to the moment was the sound of the argument heating up — the sons blaming their father for the decision that had brought them to Moab in the first place, mocking his rebuke, asking where Yahweh was in all of this and why they should still abide by the law. Let us get married here and make our families in this land.

Despite everything Elimelech tried, he seemed to his sons to be jesting. Like a man whose words no longer carried weight.

This broke his heart. It reminded him of something deeper — how he had once been a man of influence, a man people listened to. That influence was gone now. Even his own sons could not hear him.

To his sons, he sounded like a frightened old man clinging to stories from another time.

And suddenly another story flashed before Elimelech’s eyes.

Lot.

He remembered how Lot had warned his future sons-in-law when judgment was coming upon Sodom. Yet they had laughed at him. The man who saw the danger most clearly was the man nobody took seriously. Scripture said that Lot seemed to them as one who was jesting.

Now Elimelech felt the terror of that story in his own home.

He looked at his sons and realised they were no longer hearing him. The warnings that burned within his heart sounded foolish in their ears. Somewhere along the road from Bethlehem to Moab, he had lost the influence he once carried. For the first time, he feared that he was not only losing his sons to Moab, but that he was becoming another Lot — watching helplessly as those he loved walked toward a future he could no longer prevent.

He left the room. He went to the roof.

He lifted his eyes as far as they could reach, hoping — just hoping — to see Bethlehem the way he used to see Moab from the hills of Bethlehem. But no. He could not see it. The darkness was too deep and the distance too far.

His heart was heavy. His thoughts were rushing. He could do nothing with his sons. They had already made up their minds with no consideration for anything else.

And somewhere in that darkness, he knew. He had made a terrible mistake by leaving Bethlehem and going down to Moab in the first place.

But it was too late.

And he did nothing.

A few days and weeks passed. He went down with his sons to the parents of those two sisters. He knew what he was doing.

No one had forced his feet down that road. He had walked it himself. The families began to talk about wedding agreements and plans. Elimelech watched it all unfold — the thing he had warned against, the thing he had rebuked, the thing that broke him — and he went along with it anyway.

His last act as a father was to accompany his sons into the very decision that had undone him.

Naomi was feeling the storm coming to sweep her home. But little did she know — the storm had not yet arrived.

One morning, Naomi noticed that Elimelech had not come for breakfast.

She went to see him.

And he was dead.

Also Read:

• The Love Story #4 — When Exile Becomes Home
• The Love Story #3 — Strangers in a Strange Land
• The Love Story #1 — Bethlehem, the House of Bread

Next: Part 6 — Naomi Alone.

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