Verse 2 relates that the man’s name is Elimelek (“My God is king”) and his wife’s name is Naomi (derived from the root na‘em [“be beautiful, pleasant, good”]).17 The meanings of both names play a role in the story: Elimelek with the coda, Naomi with Ruth 1:20. The names of their two sons are Mahlon and Kilion. Both names are etymologically uncertain and presently unattested in the ancient Near Eastern onomastica.18 They may be coined names meaning “sickly one, sickness” and “finished or spent one, [hence] destroyed, death” used as “ominous names,”19 implicitly pointing to the intensification
...more
