March 3, 2024

Job 2.9 (NIV)
His wife said to him, “Are you still holding on to your integrity? Curse God and die!”

Crisis doesn’t necessarily make character, but it certainly does reveal it.*

We don’t know her name or much else about her. She is only mentioned two other times: in 19.17, in which Job states that his breath has become offensive to her; and in 31.10, in which Job says if he’s lying about not being enticed by another woman, then his wife can sleep with other men. Job, her long-suffering husband, has become a symbol of patience but her only claim to fame is this one quote which she surely regretted ever saying. Could it be that she has been misunderstood for all these centuries?

Everything that Job lost in his great trial, she lost, too: wealth, security, and her children. The Bible doesn’t say how Job’s wife feels about his offer to let her sleep with other men, but I would guess that it only added to her suffering. At the end of Job’s ordeal, we are told that he had ten more children to replace the ones who died. Who gave birth to those ten children? Who suffered the most in this story? I’m thinking that history has not been fair to Mrs. Job!

The plight of Job and his wife raises the question: Why do the righteous suffer? The Book of Job provides an answer to the question: God allows it.

In Mrs. Job’s situation we find a second answer: Sometimes we are blessed by association; sometimes we are cursed by association. I knew a family in which the lazy bum husband/father was provided for because his wife was a hardworking, faithful woman - blessed by association. Another family is struggling financially because the husband/father, who is a faithful servant of God, is being tested by God. Meanwhile, his wife and children must join him in his struggles as he learns about humility – “cursed” by association.

Finally, a third answer to the question of suffering: it allows God to turn our curses into blessings. Whatever her faults, Mrs. Job stuck by her husband and eventually reaped the benefits of her "cursed" association with Job.

God can use suffering to improve a person, if it is received in the right spirit.*

*Quote sources available upon request.