Job's Wife Speaks

Job 2:9-10

She only shows up and speaks up once throughout the book - and like many other biblical women - we never know her name.

But Job’s wife’s words are those of every grieving human, every angry mother living through horrors and cruelty, and her role is crucial to this story about the trials of faith and the tribulations that rise when we try to make sense of the wrongs of the world.

Her few words echo throughout the book and her presence is central in many of the artistic depictions of this story, spanning many centuries.

What does Job’s wife have to tell us today about the human response to suffering - as well as the continued silencing and minimizing of women’s roles and wisdom in patriarchal society?

Chapter 2 picks up the progression of horrors that happens to Job and his household as a result of the bet between God and the Satanic Adversary, testing Job’s love of God even as he is sorely afflicted. The first chapter details his financial ruin, followed by the harrowing news that his ten children all perish within one day due to what appears to be an earthquake. Job mourns but refuses to blame the good god for this tragedy.

The second chapter continues the conversation between God and Satan, and raises the bar on Job’s suffering - now afflicted upon his physical body in the form of painful boils.

It is at this point, as he sits in ashes, scratching his open sores with a broken piece of pottery that his wife, likewise mourning her dead children and loss of status, engaged with him in conversation:

וַתֹּאמֶר לוֹ אִשְׁתּוֹ עֹדְךָ מַחֲזִיק בְּתֻמָּתֶךָ בָּרֵךְ אֱלֹהִים וָמֻת׃

וַיֹּאמֶר אֵלֶיהָ כְּדַבֵּר אַחַת הַנְּבָלוֹת תְּדַבֵּרִי גַּם אֶת־הַטּוֹב נְקַבֵּל מֵאֵת הָאֱלֹהִים וְאֶת־הָרָע לֹא נְקַבֵּל בְּכׇל־זֹאת לֹא־חָטָא אִיּוֹב בִּשְׂפָתָיו׃

His wife said to him, “You still keep your integrity! Blaspheme God and die!”

But he said to her, “You talk as any shameless woman might talk! Should we accept only good from God and not accept evil?” For all that, Job said nothing sinful.

Job 2:9-10

What is the meaning of her words?

Most commentaries point that she is the first character in the story who introduces the possibility of doubt in divine justice into the narrative, planting the seeds of protest in Job’s mind.

One of the first early texts to give her more respect and amplify her position is the classical Greek translation of the Bible - the Septuagint. This version not only expands her speech but also presents her own parallel misery:

“Then after a long time had passed, his wife said to him, “How long will you persist and say, ‘Look, I will hang on a little longer,

while I wait for the hope of my deliverance?’ For look, your legacy

has vanished from the earth—sons and daughters, my womb’s birth

pangs and labors, for whom I wearied myself with hardships in vain.

And you? You sit in the refuse of worms as you spend the night in

the open air. As for me, I am one that wanders about and a hired

servant—from place to place and house to house, waiting for when

the sun will set, so I can rest from the distresses and griefs that now

beset me. Now say some word to the Lord and die!”

The Septuagint - Greek Translation of the Bible (English Translation)

Prof. Ilana Pardes, a noted biblical, literary and feminist scholar, helps us to better understand Job’s wife’s role in the story, linking her to the original woman of the biblical canon:

“In the well-known biblical story dealing with the problem of undeserved suffering, Job loses his children, his possessions, and his health. Job’s nameless wife turns up after the final blow, after Job has been struck with boils. .. To cling to a model of perfect devotion to a supposedly perfect God when reality is so far from perfection seems to Job’s wife to be not exemplary strength, but an act of cowardice. Such “integrity,” she seems to be saying, lacks a deeper value. What Job must do is to challenge the God who has afflicted him so, even if the consequence is death.

Much has been written about the unusual challenge the Book of Job offers in its audacious questioning of the ways of God, but one never hears of the contribution of Job’s wife to the antidogmatic bent of the text. Job’s wife prefigures or perhaps even generates the impatience of the dialogues. She opens the possibility of suspending belief, of speaking against God. Job’s initial response to his wife’s provocative suggestion is harsh: “You speak as any foolish woman would speak. Shall we receive the good at the hand of God, and not receive the bad?” (2:10).

When the dialogues begin, however, Job comes close to doing what his wife had suggested. He does not curse God directly, but by cursing his birth he implicitly curses the creator who gave him life. Much like Eve, Job’s wife spurs her husband to doubt God’s use of divine powers. In doing so she does him much good, for this turns out to be the royal road to deepening one’s knowledge, to opening one’s eyes.

Job’s wife disappears after her bold statement. She is mentioned in passing only once more in the course of Job’s debate with his friends.

Job’s wife is conspicuously absent from the happy ending in which Job’s world is restored. Job’s dead children spring back to life, as it were, because he ends up having, as in the beginning, seven sons and three daughters. Yet his wife, who actually escaped death, is excluded from this scene of familial bliss. The challenge of the outsider—and woman is something of an outsider in divine-human matters—seems far more threatening than a critique voiced from within.”

Pardes’ positioning of Job’s wife as Eve echoes many artistic depictions of her throughout the ages.

And what’s fascinating is that this also places the Satanic adversary who gets this tragedy rolling to resemble the role of the original tempter - the serpent in the Garden of Eden.

Many artists, including William Blake, whose treatment of Job is a nod to Jewish and Christian biblical motifs, depict Satan here as a serpent.

Job’s drama, as it unfolds, picks up these biblical intertextual references and alludes to the deepest layers of our human grapplings with the biggest questions of all - desire and curiosity, suffering and sorrow, life and death.

Although she will not be heard from again directly throughout the book - her voice and question will set the stage for the rest of the drama.

The other voices to emerge from this second chapter are the three companions of Job who travel to console their bereaved friend and sit with him in sorrow:

וַיִּשְׁמְעוּ שְׁלֹשֶׁת  רֵעֵי אִיּוֹב אֵת כׇּל־הָרָעָה הַזֹּאת הַבָּאָה עָלָיו וַיָּבֹאוּ אִישׁ מִמְּקֹמוֹ אֱלִיפַז הַתֵּימָנִי וּבִלְדַּד הַשּׁוּחִי וְצוֹפַר הַנַּעֲמָתִי וַיִּוָּעֲדוּ יַחְדָּו לָבוֹא לָנוּד־לוֹ וּלְנַחֲמוֹ׃ וַיִּשְׂאוּ אֶת־עֵינֵיהֶם מֵרָחוֹק וְלֹא הִכִּירֻהוּ וַיִּשְׂאוּ קוֹלָם וַיִּבְכּוּ וַיִּקְרְעוּ אִישׁ מְעִלוֹ וַיִּזְרְקוּ עָפָר עַל־רָאשֵׁיהֶם הַשָּׁמָיְמָה׃ וַיֵּשְׁבוּ אִתּוֹ לָאָרֶץ שִׁבְעַת יָמִים וְשִׁבְעַת לֵילוֹת וְאֵין־דֹּבֵר אֵלָיו דָּבָר כִּי רָאוּ כִּי־גָדַל הַכְּאֵב מְאֹד׃

When Job’s three friends heard about all these calamities that had befallen him, each came from his home—Eliphaz the Temanite, Bildad the Shuhite, and Zophar the Naamathite. They met together to go and console and comfort him.

When they saw him from a distance, they could not recognize him, and they broke into loud weeping; each one tore his robe and threw dust into the air onto his head.

They sat with him on the ground seven days and seven nights. None spoke a word to him for they saw how very great was his suffering.

Job 2:9-13

This epic Shiva visit will set the tone for the rest of the book, as Job, prompted by his wife and now in the presence of his three friends, will begin to speak out loud and confront the cruelty of his fate, and the horrible reality that sometimes comes with being human.

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