Thread:FrenchTouch/@comment-1777104-20160627003843

Hi, French Touch, thanks for asking for details about Sarah and Orpah. Whereas we can learn a lot about Sarah, Orpah is truly a "minor" character in the greater history of the people of God. As I understand it, you have asked our help to flesh out these characters so that you may create believable fictional characters based on them.

It is our hope here at Bible Wiki that the Bible be more than trivia and unconnected data. The Bible is the Word of the One True God, the Creator of the world and Redeemer of a people that are special to Him. The two women you have asked about are typical of the two kinds of people in the world: those who live apart from God and those who are walking close to Him.

Though Sarah comes before Orpah in history, I will deal with Orpah first. She was a descendant of Moab, a son born by an illicit relationship between a woman and her father. In those days it was dishonorable to willfully deny the continuance of the family line (even if it were "only" through a daughter). Technically, Lot should have sought someone from his clan for each of his daughters, but instead he had withheld them from the possibility. They took things into their own hands and forced the matter.

Moab's father was Lot, the nephew of Abraham and Sarah (to whom I will return). Instead of trusting God, Lot had trusted in the bountiful pastureland of the Jordan valley. He moved into the city of Sodom where he and his family began to live by the standards of that city. These standards were much like those that Lot's grandfather Terah had left back in Ur many decades before. However, God had promised to bless Abram and his household; and that included Lot. And so, Moab and his brother Ammon (Ben-Ammi) were able to settle in lands which became "theirs" by right.

As a tribe and a nation, the Moabites largely forgot the one true God, the God of Abraham, and became just like most people of that day. The made up gods out of their imaginations (sometimes based loosely on history). However, when the wandering Israelites encountered these people, they were forbidden by God from going to war with them to take their land. Sometime after the Isrealite tribes moved across the Jordan into the ancient lands where Abram had roamed, and Moab had become an established nation, hard times caused some to seek "greener pastures" on the other side of the river.

It was in this way that Naomi, her husband and two sons moved into Moab. This showed a lack of faith in God. Once there, the boys grew up to marry Orpah and Ruth. Then hard times followed the family and the men all died, leaving no male children to continue the family heritage. Naomi decided to move back home to live among those of her tribe, telling her daughters-in-law to go back and marry men of their own country.

Oprah, like her ancestors, Lot and his daughter, chose to trust in circumstances rather than God. She wanted a child more than she wanted to continue to live to be a part of Namomi's family with its uncertain future. She went back to her own people, forsaking the greater blessings that God had promised the descendants of Abraham.

In short, Orpah was a materialist, trusting only in what she could understand, and in things that she could more or less control. Saddened by the separation from Naomi, she made her choice and is lost to history. No record is know as to her second husband and probable children.

I can speak "authoritatively" on this because I believe the Bible to be accurate and dependable. Even such a small thing as the name of a Moabitess willing to marry a Judahite in the first place was recorded briefly. Her sister-in-law Ruth demonstrated a measure of faith when she chose Naomi and her God over her own family and their gods.

I can see myself in Naomi's husband, fleeing adversity and hardship for the sake of my family. I can even see myself being influenced by the world into which I chose to live. I am sure you could say the same thing. However, the story of Sarah shows another way. I will post separately for that. Meanwhile, read the book of Ruth. It is a fascinating story about human nature and the love of a man for a woman.

SouthWriter (talk) 00:38, June 27, 2016 (UTC) 