Job 2:9-10 – Job’s Wife and his Second Response

SUMMARY

After a second round of suffering comes upon Job, his wife advises him to “Curse God and die.” Job responds a second time to his suffering.

ANALYSIS

After the Satan afflicts Job with a skin disease, Job’s wife appears for the first time and says to Job, “Do you still persist in your integrity? Curse God and die.” Job responds, “You speak as any foolish woman would speak. Shall we receive the good at the hand of God, and not receive the bad?” (2:9-10).

Job’s wife has come in for some harsh criticism by interpreters through the centuries (see “Bible in the World”). It is important to note, however, that she has suffered great losses as well. The children who die in chapter 1 are her children too. The import of her words depends on the tone in which the reader hears them. Is she chastising Job? (Job’s labeling her “a foolish woman” would seem to support this interpretation.) Or is she urging him to give up the fight and be released from his suffering by death? Like much in this book, it is up to the interpreter to decide.

Job’s second response is similar to his first one at the end of chapter 1. He seems to stoically accept his suffering, asserting that everything – good and bad – comes from God. There are two reasons to think, however, that this second response is different from the first: 

1. Job’s second response is a question, not a statement. Though it is a rhetorical question, it may open up a crack in his pious armor through which will flow the torrent of questions and accusations he throws at God in the poetic dialogue (chapters 3-31).

2. After Job’s first response, the narrator says, “In all this Job did not sin or charge God with wrongdoing” (1:22). After his second response, the narrator writes, “In all this Job did not sin with his lips” (2:10). There is a significant difference in these two evaluations. Is Job sinning inwardly? Or is he starting to charge God with wrongdoing? The following chapters certainly see Job charging God with all sorts of things. Perhaps in this second response, the pious, patient Job of the prologue begins to reveal glimpses of the impatient Job we will see later.