Ruth 1:14

14. Orpah kissed her mother-in-law The last sad kiss of a tearful separation; after which she, unlike Ruth, turned back again to her people and her gods. The great deity of the Moabites was Chemosh. Numbers 21:29; Judges 11:24.

But Ruth clave unto her She would not leave nor forsake her. It was not merely because of a tender affection for her mother in law that she clung to her, but also a yearning desire to know more of the God and land of Israel. Compare Ruth 2:11-12. Like Martha and Mary of New Testament history. Orpah and Ruth represent two different types of character. Orpah’s home attachments, and desire to find rest in another husband’s house, control and limit her life-influence and action. Ruth’s loftier spirit discerns in the God of Israel the fountain of a purer religion than the Moabitish idolatry affords, and gladly forsakes father and mother and sister and native land to identify herself in any way with the people of Jehovah. Thus it is that, in some decisive moment, every soul that attains salvation makes its choice, by which it adopts the true Jehovah as its portion. It abandons all the former idolatries of its life, and becomes a true worshipper of the true God.