The literal form of Naomi’s suggestion turns out to be very misleading in both Chewa and Tonga (it is somewhat problematic culturally in Hebrew as well; see the commentaries). It would be a grave insult indeed to tell a girl to “go back home and stay with your mother” (Good News Bible), for this would imply that she has failed somehow as a wife and needs to be sent back to her village in order to receive further domestic “training.” In fact, the marriage would probably end there. In this situation there is the added complication that Naomi seems to be acting contrary to custom by refusing to allow her widowed daughters-in-law to be married again to close relatives of the clan of the deceased (i.e., her own sons). Other possible negative implications are that Naomi is here verbally abusing her daughters-in-law (after luring them away from their village) because they had not been properly married to her sons, or worse, that Naomi did not want them along since she suspected them of being “witches”; for what other reason should her husband and only sons die in that foreign land? Her subsequent words would then be taken ironically—a curse in the form of a blessing: may God do to you as you have done to my two sons and me myself (i.e., through my husband — you and your people have killed them all off!).

Source: Wendland 1987, p. 168f.