Ruth 1:17

Where thou diest, will I die, and there will I be buried. She wished to be naturalized for life in Naomi's fatherland. Nor did she wish her remains to be conveyed back for burial to the land of her nativity. So may Yahveh do to me, and still more, but death only shall part me and thee. She appeals to the God of the Israelites, the one universal God. She puts herself on oath, and invokes his severest penal displeasure if she should suffer anything less uncontrollable than death to part her from her mother-in-law. "So may Yahveh do to me." It was thus that the Hebrews made their most awful appeals to Yahveh. They signified their willingness to suffer some dire calamity if they should either do the evil deed repudiated or fail to do the good deed promised. So stands in misty indefiniteness; not, as Fuller supposes, by way of "leaving it to the discretion of God Almighty to choose that arrow out of his quiver which he shall think it most fit to shoot," but as a kind of euphemism, or cloudy veil, two-thirds concealing, and one-third revealing, whatever horrid infliction could by dramatic sign be represented or hinted. And still more—a thoroughly Semitic idiom, and so may he add ( to do ) There was first of all a full imprecation, and then an additional 'bittock,' to lend intensity to the asseveration. " But death only shall sever between me and thee!" Ruth's language is broken. Two formulas of imprecation are flung together. One, if complete, would have been to this effect: "So may Yahveh do to me, and so may he add to do, if ( אִם ) aught but death sever between me and thee!" The other, if complete, would have run thus: " I swear by Yahveh 'that' ( כִּי ) death, death only, shall part thee and me. In the original the word death has the article, death emphatically . It is as if she had said death , the great divider . The full idea is in substance death alone . This divider alone, says Ruth, " shall sever between me and thee;" literally, " between me and between thee," a Hebrew idiom, repeating for emphasis' sake the two-sided relationship, but taking the repetition in reverse order, between me ( and thee ) and between thee ( and me ).