Then his wife said to him, “Do you still hold fast your integrity? Curse God and die.” But he said to her, “You speak as one of the foolish women would speak. Shall we receive good from God, and shall we not receive evil?” In all this Job did not sin with his lips.

-Job 2:9-10, ESV

Why do bad things happen to good people?  That question has been asked since time immemorial and is so central to our understanding of the world that an entire book of the Bible explores it: Job.  In wrestling with this question, Job stands alone as his friends accuse rather than comfort him.  Even his wife turns against him…or does she?  All we see from her is this short statement: “Do you still hold fast your integrity? Curse God and die” (Job 2:9), which has caused many Christians to view her in a negative light.  This post will examine what that statement, Job’s response, and the context really say about her, which will give us all great reason to hope.

Satan’s 4D Chess?

Why did Job’s wife tell him to curse God?  Some claim it was because she was crucial to Satan’s strategy against Job: “Previously he had pursued his aim by battering Job, but now he insinuates a question into his mind and follows it up by a proposed action—all put into the mouth of Job’s wife!”.[1]  While it is quite possible that Satan tempted her to make this statement, some have taken this to mean that Satan had kept her alive for the purpose of tormenting Job—as if she was a wicked nag who would cause Job more pain alive than dead.  In this view, she is nothing more than a pawn in Satan’s game of 4D chess, but from context it is clear that nothing could be further from the truth.  The first two chapters of Job do not depict Satan as a master strategist playing 4D chess.  Instead, he is revealed to be short-sighted, arrogant, and self-centered.  Since we have previously seen that arrogant self-centeredness is the enemy of God’s people, it should not surprise us to find these traits exemplified by the Enemy himself—and that is exactly what we see in Job.  The only one in Job with a grand strategy is God.  It was God who drew Satan’s attention to Job and then by praising him essentially used Satan’s arrogance to goad him into making a bold claim that Job would curse God if he saw calamity.  When God gave Satan permission to take away all Job had, He was essentially saying “I’ll take that bet”.  At this point, a wise person would see this as a trap—or at the very least a foolish bet—and backtrack.  But since the fear of God is the beginning of wisdom (Proverbs 9:10), it should be unsurprising that Satan who does not fear God in a way that would lead to wisdom would arrogantly and foolishly stick to a plan doomed to failure.  When that inevitable failure came, Satan repeated the error by again making another bold statement against Job that elicited the same response from God—and the same failure when Job was afflicted with sores.  God proved Himself true and omnipotent while Satan only proved to be a fool blinded by arrogance who had no choice but to fulfill God’s Will.  His game could barely qualify as checkers, much less 4D chess.  Satan may be incredibly intelligent and cunning, but he had no grand strategy for Job.  Therefore it is preposterous to think that Satan had the wherewithal to keep Job’s wife alive for the purpose of tormenting him.  The most we can say is that in his shortsightedness, Satan tempted Job’s wife as a target of opportunity, but that is a far cry from her being part of some grand plan of his.  We can therefore rule out any thought that Job’s wife remained alive to add to his suffering, as that would be unsupported by the text. 

Describing Job’s Wife Biblically

What then can we say about Job’s wife?  All we have is that single statement from her, but there is much we can deduce from the rest of the text.  First, Job is described as blameless, upright, and having an appropriate fear of God (Job 1:1).  He also had seven righteous sons who were old enough to live on their own and three daughters who were mature enough to feast with them (Job 1:2,4-5).  It is illogical to think that those ten righteous children were not born and raised by a righteous mother—and equally illogical to think that righteous Job would have married an unrighteous woman.  Furthermore, at the end of the book we see Job blessed with seven more sons and three more daughters (Job 42:13).  There is no indication that his wife died or left him, so we must assume that she bore and raised them as well.  Therefore, from the text we can easily deduce that Job’s wife was righteous just as he was.

What then do we make of her comment?  How could a righteous woman exhort her husband to curse God and die?  The answer is that we are seeing a righteous woman in her darkest moment.  Everything that was Job’s was also hers, so she had just become destitute as he had.  More importantly, she had lost all ten of her children just as he had.  The pain of losing even one child is unparalleled, so the pain of losing ten at once would be unimaginable.  Additionally, we have previously seen that a godly wife’s primary focus is on the home and that the greatest impact most people will have on the Kingdom is their children.  This means that her life’s work for at least two decades was all gone in an instant.  Additionally, she had to watch the man she loved, whom she had been with through thick and thin, suffering while she was powerless to intervene.  Therefore, it is no stretch of the imagination to say that Job’s wife was suffering just as much as he was.  Only then did Satan seize the opportunity provided by grief to tempt her, as he often does:

Though he can never rob a believer of his crown, yet such is his malice and envy, that he will leave no stone unturned, no means unattempted, to rob them of their comfort and peace, to make their life a burden and a hell upon them, to cause them to spend their days in sorrow and mourning, in sighing and complaining, in doubting and questioning.

-Thomas Brooks, Precious Remedies Against Satan’s Devices, Edinburgh, UK: Banner of Truth Trust: 2021: 157.

When it is a dark hour of trouble with us, then is his fittest season to tempt….By these things Satan gets no small advantage upon the afflicted Christian; for albeit these thoughts are his burden, and God will not impute them to the condemnation of his people, yet they rob the soul of peace, hinder it from duty, and make it act uncomely under affliction, to the stumbling and hardening of others in their sin.

-John Flavel, Facing Grief: Counsel for Mourners, Edinburgh, UK: Banner of Truth Trust: 2021 (orig. 1820): 81-82.

It was in this moment of intense agony—the worst of her life—that she, being mystified at her husband’s composure, told him to curse God and die.  This was clearly the darkest day of her life.  Therefore, her words came out of intense grief.  Such struggles with God amidst intense grief are natural and to be expected, but becomes sinful when it turns into accusations against God:

We must allow the mourning, afflicted soul a due and comely expression of his grief and sorrow in his complaints both to God and men.  It is much more becoming a Christian ingenuously to open his troubles than sullenly to smother them.  There is no sin in complaining to God, but much wickedness in complaining of him.

-John Flavel, Facing Grief: Counsel for Mourners, Edinburgh, UK: Banner of Truth Trust: 2021 (orig. 1820): 20.

In exhorting Job to curse God, she was telling him to complain of God not to God, so her expression of grief crossed the line into sin.  Even so, she displays a much better perspective than Job’s friends, who could not get past their assumption that bad things only happen to bad people so Job must be bad.  She saw beyond this to the fact that God is still sovereign and actively working.[2]  So Job’s wife was not a wicked nag trying to torment him but a righteous woman overcome with grief when facing unimaginable loss right along with her husband. 

Job’s response corroborates this: “You speak as one of the foolish women would speak. Shall we receive good from God, and shall we not receive evil?” (Job 2:10).  The verse goes on to say that Job did not sin in what he said.  Since it is sinful for a husband to treat his wife harshly (Colossians 3:19), that means Job’s response was not harsh.  Instead, it was a strong but loving rebuke.  Job did not call his wife a fool, which as we saw recently would be sinful hate speech, but informed her that the way she was speaking was reminiscent of fools.  A wise woman builds her house but a foolish woman tears it down (Proverbs 14:1), so Job was reminding his wife that her words threatened to tear down her house.  He then shifted her perspective back to the fact that God gives both blessing and calamity, so we must accept what He gives knowing that He is both sovereign and good: “Whatever God does with us or ours, still we should maintain good thoughts of him.  A gracious heart cleaves nearer and nearer to God in affliction, and can justify God in all his strokes, acknowledging them to be all just and holy”.[3]  That is what Job was doing, and this loving correction returned Job’s wife to godly rather than sinful expressions of grief.  After this, she disappears from the scene.  Perhaps she simply went off to mourn in her own way or listened to the dialog between Job and his friends until she could no longer bear their baseless accusations against him.  Whatever she did, we can be sure that her response was no worse than that of Job’s friends.  Since God forgave them after they repented and Job interceded for them, we can deduce that Job’s wife was repentant of her sinful statement and was likewise restored.  And just as she had stuck with Job through thick and thin before, she was at his side as God restored his fortunes.  Most importantly, since Scripture gives us no evidence to the contrary, this meant she bore and raised ten more righteous children.  Finally, it is worth noting that Job didn’t hold out much longer before succumbing to despair and cursing the fact that he had even been born (Job 3).  Therefore, she is worthy of just as much praise as Job.

Not Defined by Our Darkest Days

We can conclude that Job’s wife was a godly woman who displayed a pattern of faithfulness throughout her life, buckled under the pressure of intense grief and temptation on her darkest day, and then repented and returned to her pattern of faithfulness.  So while many erroneously define her by her darkest day, she must be defined by her pattern of faithfulness instead.  I can say that with confidence because it is the very core of the Gospel.  As Christians we are not defined by our darkest day or season but by the fact that we are in Christ.  He saves us out of our sinful past, and redeems our failures in our darkest days so that even they serve our ultimate good and His ultimate glory:

Or do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: neither the sexually immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor men who practice homosexuality, nor thieves, nor the greedy, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God. And such were some of you. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God.

-1 Corinthians 6:9-11, ESV

Therefore it is sinful and abhorrent to define any Christian—whether another or ourselves—by the past.  It is the greatest of insults—blasphemy even—against Jesus Christ and all that He accomplished to define Christians by their past while overlooking the evidence of God’s grace on them—and ourselves—in the present.  Do we seriously think we can hurl insults at the Bride and not be pummeled by the Bridegroom?  This should be obvious, but it is a great sin of our day.  Our culture often defines people by their darkest days.  It is the sadistic habit of many, from internet trolls lurking in dark basements to staffers at the highest levels of the government and media apparatus, to incessantly dig into any notable person’s past until they find some tidbit from their darkest days that can be used to destroy their reputation.  This is exacerbated by the false religion of critical theory, where the “oppressors” are defined by their “sin”—not only individual sin but collective sin of their entire demographic against the “oppressed”.  As I alluded to here, here, here, here, here, and especially here, critical theory is incompatible with Scripture.  It is a false gospel that offers no salvation and gives no room for repentance or restoration.  Therefore, we must not mimic the abomination of critical theory by defining Christians by their past.  We are commanded to forgive others as Christ has forgiven us—and warned that God will not forgive us if we fail to forgive others (Matthew 6:14-15, 18:21-35, Colossians 3:13), so we must not continue to sin by holding the past of our fellow saints against them—or our own against ourselves. 

This manifests in many ways in the church, but one worth mentioning is how single Christian men influenced by the “red pill” narrative disregard women “with a past” while completely ignoring their present faithfulness. As I noted when discussing the need for men to take on the challenge of difficult relationships for the purpose of building the Kingdom, there are godly women with a past who would be excellent wives. Godly singles ready for marriage are rare enough as it is, so it would be foolish to disregard women (or men) with a checkered past who are presently displaying godliness. Job’s wife was defined not by her failure in her darkest hour but by her pattern of faithfulness, so we must define our sisters (and brothers) in Christ the same way. The Gospel demands it.

Contrary to critical theory that like Satan seeks to destroy us in our darkest day, Christ restores us in our darkest day: “Behold my servant, whom I uphold, my chosen, in whom my soul delights…a bruised reed he will not break, and a faintly burning wick he will not quench; he will faithfully bring forth justice” (Isaiah 42:1,3).  When we fail on our darkest day, we are the bruised reed that would be easily crushed or the smoldering wick that would be easily quenched—and Satan would like nothing better than to do just that.  But Jesus Christ does for us what He did for Job’s wife in her darkest day.  He does not break the bruised reed but strengthens and heals it.  He does not quench the smoldering wick but fans it into full flame.  So our darkest day should cause us to run to Jesus.

In conclusion, the story of Job’s wife reminds us that we must apply the Gospel by defining all who are united with Christ—others and ourselves—by that present state and not by past sins that have been repented of and dealt with by Christ.  Just as she did, we must repent of our past and then focus on faithfulness in the present, always maintaining hope in the Gospel.  So I will end with the words of Puritan Richard Sibbes that he undoubtedly would have told Job’s wife had he been there on her darkest day.  Let his words define how we face our own dark days.

Are you bruised?  Be of good comfort, he calls you.  Conceal not your wounds, open all before him and take not Satan’s counsel….Never fear to go to God, since we have such a Mediator with him, who is not only our friend but our brother and husband.

-Richard Sibbes, The Bruised Reed, Edinburgh, UK: Banner of Truth Trust: 2021 (orig. 1630): 9.

NOTES

[1] Hywel R. Jones, A Study Commentary on Job, EP Study Commentary, Darlington, England; Webster, New York: Evangelical Press, 2007: 67.

[2] David Atkinson, The Message of Job: Suffering and Grace, ed. J. A. Motyer and Derek Tidball, The Bible Speaks Today, Nottingham, England: Inter-Varsity Press: 1991: 27–29.

[3] John Flavel, Facing Grief: Counsel for Mourners, Edinburgh, UK: Banner of Truth Trust: 2021 (orig. 1820): 33.