Hey! What About Job's Wife?

Yesterday the power was out for a few hours due to a small fire. I decided to crack open the spine of my Bible again and started reading. I picked up with Job and read for 45 minutes.... I got to thinking about Job's wife ... Wow. I don't know about you, but the only thing I've ever heard about Job's wife is that she tells Job to curse God and die. And she's gotten an awful lot of bad press over those few words she was given to speak. But now I see that she just didn't actually say that? My question is, how do translators know that this particular passage is or is not sarcasm? I mean, what if Job's wife truly meant, "Bless God, and die"?

Along with this thought, it occurred to me for the first time that everything Job lost, his wife lost, too. And yet we never hear about it this way. Was it not her children who were killed? Was it not her home that was lost? Was it not also her fortune that disappeared? And was she not having to watch her husband be tortured and waste away before her very eyes? It had to be a living hell ... But we hear nothing of her faith, we don't even hear her cry or suffer along with Job. Surely she suffered!I know these things are "outside the text." The story is not concerned with Job's wife, but with Job. Even so, I would love to hear the story told again from her perspective.

Just some thoughts on a Monday morning ...

Tim

Job 2:8-10

2:8 Job took a potsherd with which to scrape himself, and sat among the ashes.

2:9 His wife said to him, "Do you still persist in your integrity? Curse/Bless God, and die!"

2:10 But he said to her, "You speak as any foolish woman would speak. Should we receive the good at the hand of God, and not receive the bad?" In all this Job did not sin with his lips.