Naomi is showing, step by step, that going with her makes no sense for them. Keil & Delitzsch note that she imagines three cases, each more impossible than the one before: having hope, having a husband that very night, and even bearing sons. Even then, these two questions ask, would they wait years for those sons to grow up and refuse other marriages meanwhile? They were young widows, and Gill says it was fit they should marry again, so it was unreasonable to suppose they would wait. The questions are meant to make the answer obvious: go home.

Naomi answers her own questions at once: "nay, my daughters." She gives her reason: "the hand of the LORD is gone out against me." The women wept again; Orpah kissed her and went back, "but Ruth clave unto her" (Ruth 1:14). Ruth would not be persuaded, and when Naomi "saw that she was stedfastly minded to go with her, then she left speaking unto her" (Ruth 1:18). In plain words, when Naomi saw Ruth was determined, she stopped arguing.

Two Hebrew words in this verse help show what Naomi was saying. The verb behind "stay" is agan, which means to shut oneself in or off, here from marriage. It appears only here in the Bible. Keil & Delitzsch note that the Talmud, a later collection of Jewish teaching, used a related word for a woman who lived shut in her house without a husband. Gill points to a similar case: Tamar was told to wait as a widow until Shelah was grown (Genesis 38:11), though Shelah was already born.

The last clause of the verse can be read two ways. The KJV has Naomi grieving "for your sakes". Keil & Delitzsch prefer a comparison, "it has gone much more bitterly with me than with you," and Gill gives "I have exceedingly more bitterness than you." The root word, marar, means to be bitter. The first reading stresses Naomi's sorrow for her daughters-in-law; the second stresses how heavy her own loss was.

Naomi is honest about her pain, and she names God as its source: "the hand of the LORD is gone out against me." Keil & Delitzsch explain that she means the LORD had taken away her husband and both her sons. She does not pretend God is absent. She simply cannot see how He could be for her.

The rest of the book answers what Naomi could not see from the road. The same LORD who she said had gone out against her had already "visited his people in giving them bread" (Ruth 1:6), and in the end the women would bless the LORD, "which hath not left thee this day without a kinsman" (Ruth 4:14).