Why Elimelech and His Sons Died for Leaving the Land of Israel

Another interpretation (of Psalm 106:43): "Many times He delivered them." This speaks about human beings. When trouble comes upon a person, he immediately repents, and the Holy One, blessed be He, delivers him. So it is the first time and the second. If he repents, well and good; but if not, He brings trouble upon him. Why? Because it is hard before the Holy One, blessed be He, to stretch out His hand against this person. And what does He do to him? When he sins, He first stretches out His hand against his possessions. From whom do you learn this? From Naomi and her sons and Elimelech, who was the head of the generation. When the famine came, what did he do? He abandoned the Land of Israel and went off to the land of Moab. And the Holy One, blessed be He, was angry with him, for he was the prince of the generation. The Holy One, blessed be He, said to him: "Were My children to do this, they would leave the Land of Israel a wasteland!" What is written there? "And Elimelech, Naomi's husband, died" (Ruth 1:3). And his sons should have learned from their father to return to the Land of Israel, but what did they too do? "And they took for themselves Moabite wives" (Ruth 1:4) — for they did not immerse them and did not convert them. "The name of the one was Orpah and the name of the second was Ruth" (Ruth 1:4): Orpah, because she turned her back (oref) on her mother-in-law; Ruth, because she regarded (ra'atah) the words of her mother-in-law. "And they dwelt there about ten years" (Ruth 1:4). For all those ten years the Holy One, blessed be He, was warning them. When He saw that they did not return in repentance, He began to stretch out His hand against their camels and against their cattle, but they did not return. When He saw that they did not return, immediately "the two of them also died, Mahlon and Chilion" (Ruth 1:5). Thus it is hard before the Holy One, blessed be He, to stretch out His hand against this person. And what does He do to them? He impoverishes them of their possessions, and they sell them.