Then his wife said to him, “Do you still hold fast to your integrity? Curse God and die!” But he said to her, “You speak as one of the foolish women speaks. Shall we indeed accept good from God, and shall we not accept adversity?” In all this Job did not sin with his lips.-Job 2:9-10-NKJV
In my previous post, “Consider Job’s Wife” I wrote about all the adversities that Job and his wife shared at the hands of Satan. I ended with her comment in verse 9- “Then his wife said to him, “Do you still hold fast to your integrity? Curse God and die!”
Today, I want to pick up at this verse. I believe this statement was the statement of a woman in deep pain. As I mentioned before, she lost everything: children, beloved servants, finances, property, status in the community, all in one day. And when Job got attacked in his physical body, I believe she was making a “God, I can’t take anymore statement!” And not a ,”God is not really God,” statement.
Job responded to her statement, “But he said to her, “You speak as one of the foolish women speaks. Shall we indeed accept good from God, and shall we not accept adversity?” In all this Job did not sin with his lips.”
I believe that this is definitely a statement of correction to Job’s wife, but not a statement of judgment. Foolish women are women who do not believe in God, nor trust Him for their welfare. Job was telling his wife, that she sounded as one who didn’t know and trust God. He understood that he was married to a woman of high moral character and she was hurting. So when he told her how she sounded, he was basically saying, “That’s how a woman who doesn’t know God would talk. God has blessed us and now we’re having some hard times, should we reject Him because of that?”
Now you might think I’m stretching here in my thinking. But let’s look at another key verse in this account of what happened to them. “Now the Lord blessed the latter days of Job more than his beginning; for he had fourteen thousand sheep, six thousand camels, one thousand yoke of oxen, and one thousand female donkeys. He also had seven sons and three daughters.-Job 42:12-13
Look carefully at this verse. The passage tells us that God blessed Job with cattle and with 10 more children. But it doesn’t tell us that God gave him another wife. I believe Job still had the same wife. The wife Job lovingly encouraged during their hard times. Had the Lord been displeased with Job’s wife, He would have given this godly man a more godly woman. Had Job been displeased, he would have put her away. But it doesn’t tell us that. Therefore, we can infer that Job, and the same wife he had at the beginning of this trial, were blessed together, by God, at the end of it.
I have read this book on several occasions and have not seen anywhere in this account of all that happened to Job, the mention of a new wife. But he most certainly did have to have a wife in order to have 10 more kids!
What am I saying? We have made snap judgments about his wife being cruel, insensitive, ungodly, and critical, to name a few. But instead, she was just a wife who was hurting because of so many great losses at one time. And in a moment of weakness, she opened her mouth and made a dumb statement. But Job lovingly, helped his wife get the right perspective on what it meant to trust God.
Trust isn’t just trusting God in the good times, but it is trusting Him in the difficult times. Any person can render trust to another or even to God, when things are going well. But when it looks as if you have been forsaken, as if you have been forgotten, or even as if you have been betrayed, and you still trust-well, that’s genuine trust! And that’s what I believe Job very effectively helped his wife to see; and when she saw it, she was strengthened. There is so much more I can share, about going through difficult times, the husband/wife relationship, being rash with our words, or raising children, but time and space is against me.
Let me leave you with this thought: God is and always has been a good God. He didn’t set Job and his wife up to fail, but to be successful! And they succeeded. The next time you are hit with a trial, realize the devil is behind it, and if you will trust God, you too will succeed. Sickness and disease, loss of job and income, loss of loved ones, loss of all that you hold dear are painful situations in this life. Most of them are not at the hand of God showing the devil how great your love and trust for Him is. Most are simple a result of us living in a fallen world of sin, and having to navigate the life we live, by faith, in the God we trust! I trust we will never experience pain and difficulty to the level that Job and his wife did, but if we do, we already know that we can win it and receive double for our trouble! Wonderful Jesus!
