It's not EASY being Job's wife!

God has put such a fire in my heart for Job’s wife!  You know the old question….if you could spend time with and talk to any person in the Bible, who would it be and why?  Until recently, my list would have been extensive; a regular Who’s Who of the Old and New Testaments.  Not anymore.  Top of the list – Job’s wife.  First question – what is your name so that I can stop call you “Job’s wife.”  After all, she was a real person; a real woman, just like me, with hopes and dreams and thoughts and feelings…and failures.  But, by the grace of God, let not one failure that I have, one single moment of weakness, be all that I am remembered for throughout the rest of history.  Such is the fate of Job’s wife.

Can we judge her without walking in her shoes? Here is a woman who has lost everything…her home, her comfort, her children, and basically her husband…her provider!  How was she supposed to support herself, and did she even want to?  Imagine the heartbreak of losing a child.  Now imagine that multiplied in losing ALL one’s children. The very lives that you carried in your own body, that you gave life to.  She has no home, she has no money, and she is all alone! Job is in the trash heap outside the city. Where is she to live?  The Law did not allow wives to abandon their husbands! 

“I give up!” Hasn’t everyone said that at one time or another?  But this poor woman is dragged through the mud by every pastor, by every PERSON who reads the book of Job.  “How’d you like to have a wife like that?” Well, I don’t know about others, but my husband does have a wife like that…ME!  Life is hard sometimes, and some days you just have to make yourself get out of bed and tell yourself that you WILL breathe and you WILL put one foot in front of the other.

I know that everyone teaches one lesson that we are supposed to learn from the book of Job - Job’s is the righteous way to suffer, his wife is the not so righteous way.  Yes…maybe…but what if there’s more….

You see, I think that we are missing something, something vitally important.  What they did wrong…they didn’t fight together! Neither one of them combined their faith together. (Matt 18:19-20) Satan’s biggest success was not in taking Job’s things, but in dividing their union.  Job’s wife was hurting…did Job comfort her suffering and say wife, don’t talk like that, we’ll make it through?  No, he calls her foolish and pushes her aside.  Wasn’t he then just as guilty of being so focused on himself that he failed to see her pain?  Eve is blamed for the fall of man, yet it was Adam who had the power to reject her sin, repent on her behalf, and own up and the head of the household.  Here too, we see that Job things started to turn around when he started to pray for his friends.  Did he ever pray for his wife?  We don’t know.  If he would have consoled his wife instead of rebuking her, if he had allowed them to share their pain together, would God have delivered them sooner?  For wasn’t it really about the process that Job took to get to his place of deliverance? Did he honor and care for his wife as the weaker one? ( I Peter 3:7)

So do me a favor, the next time you want to snarl your lip when you mention Job’s wife, take a minute to pause and think about yourself.  What have you done or said that in one single moment you might be remembered for all of history? 
~D