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“Why did Job’s wife tell him to curse God and die?”

The day the Sabeans killed Job’s servants and took all his oxen and donkeys was the same day fire fell from the sky and killed all his sheep and shepherds. It was also the same day the Chaldeans stole his camels and the same day the house fell on his ten children during a party and killed them all. Job lost every outward sign of God’s blessing in a matter of minutes. Shortly thereafter, his entire body broke out in pustules.

The pustules apart, it should be obvious that everything that happened to Job also happened to his wife. We don’t think about that aspect of the story quite so much.

The Other Injured Party

Job’s wife lost ten children to whom she had given birth and probably loved as deeply as her husband did, maybe more so. She lost her wealth and her status in the community. Her husband became an instant cautionary tale and her family a public embarrassment. Then, instead of comforting her in her loss, Job sat down to scratch his sores in a pile of ashes, apparently contemplating his navel.

Consider that for a moment. You’re a woman living at a time in history when you are absolutely dependent on your husband. You have no life apart from him, no resources of your own to rely on, no independent existence whatsoever. There he is, at the moment you need him most, wrapped up in his own misery, to all appearances not just deserted by the God he had served faithfully for the entire time you have known him but actively destroyed by divine malevolence. He must surely have done something wicked that you don’t know about to deserve all this. He’s brought all this misery on you, and he’s doing nothing to solve the problem.

Think about the worst day of your life, and then think about hers. If Job had a crisis of faith, what was his wife’s like?

Hauling a Packed Suitcase

The writer of Job wasn’t terribly concerned with telling us, which was normal in those days. His emphasis also serves the storyline. We know the names of the daughters Job fathered later on, but not the name of his wife. A whopping three verses out of the 42 chapters in the book of Job mention her. In chapter 19, Job complains that she has turned on him and he is estranged from her (no kidding). In chapter 31, he puts her fidelity on the line with a curse against himself if he has failed to live righteously. In the final chapter of the book, when we get a list of the good things God gave him in the latter days of his life, we don’t even find out if the ten children Job subsequently sired were by the same woman. For all we know, Job’s wife may have run for the hills right after chapter 2, verse 9, when she advised him to curse God and die. She was probably hauling a packed suitcase when she said it and made the remark over her exiting shoulder.

Well? Wouldn’t you be tempted? I sure would.

A Few Hints

Why did Job’s wife tell her husband to curse God and die? Like so many of the “whys” in scripture, we would have to guess. But we can guess with a fair bit of information, based on the forty chapters that follow her statement.

Put yourself in her shoes. Job and his wife almost surely lived prior to Moses, so it’s likely they had not heard God explicitly associate health, prosperity and blessing with righteous living as he did in Israel’s law. Nevertheless, it’s apparent from the debate Job has with his friends after these events that he and most other intelligent men who reflected on the ways of God believed bad stuff happened to sinners and good stuff happened to people God liked. Job’s wife surely believed the same things: that God exists and he rewards men and women who seek and serve him. The goodies that showered down from heaven every day of her married life were the hard evidence that created and sustained her worldview. Take away those goodies in a single day, and that worldview completely collapsed.

Why wouldn’t it? If God does not reward good behavior, what use is there in serving and worshiping him? Either he does not exist at all and Job has lived his entire life believing a lie, or else he exists and actively hates you. Job’s wife has no other frame of reference. She knows nothing of councils in heaven, of the sons of God presenting themselves before him. If she knows anything at all about Satan, it would only be as the serpent in the Garden of Eden, and possibly not even that. Job doesn’t mention Satan in forty chapters of debate, and he never considers for a moment that anyone but God might be responsible for what had befallen him. Why would Job’s wife think any differently?

That Irritating Integrity

So when Job’s wife tells him to curse God and die, she is probably 100% certain his faith was misplaced from day one. More infuriating still, her passive husband didn’t even shake his fist at the heavens and rail at God for breaking the implicit arrangement that had previously governed their lives. This is clearly on her mind, as she asks him, “Do you still hold fast your integrity?” Why, Job? Why?

Interestingly, while Job’s friends incited God’s anger by not speaking rightly about him, neither the Lord nor the writer of Job condemn his wife for her words. The Lord is gracious, and even the scriptures acknowledge that sometimes people say unwise things that are best overlooked. This tendency is especially common in moments of deep distress.