Were There Actually Four – Not Three – Earthly Comforters?

Note that the very first person who did not understand nor stand in solidarity with Job was his wife. In the footnotes in BibleGateway (NIV) it says “Job 2:10 The Hebrew word rendered foolish denotes moral deficiency.”

In II Corinthians 6:14-18 we are told not to be unequally yoked and this passage is often associated with marital partnership. While I don’t know for sure how all these various biblical passages and ideas find appropriate connection, it appears the book of Job was between the 7th and 4th centuries BCE, and Proverbs 31 around 700 BCE.

But of course, Genesis depicts the broken aspects that will plague the most dear human relationship going forward from the fall in the Garden of Eden.

One of my favorite parts of Proverbs 31 is “the heart of her husband trusts in her and he will have no lack of gain.”

Surely it seems the various biblical references to marriage, women and more seem contradictory. In Paul’s writings, at least at first blush, we can get a sense that the woman is simply not to be trusted.

In the least, looking only at this second chapter of Job and making some modern day assumptions, I notice, and in the ideal would have expected, that Job’s number one supporter, the person who knew him (and his integrity) best and would have said and acted along the lines of “I’ve got your back in THIS one…”, actually was the first to cave in to the temptor’s assaults upon her husband.

In a sense, and perhaps it was truly more than she could bear herself, she unwittingly became yet another vessel of assault upon Job.

She tells him, “Are you still maintaining your integrity? Curse God and die!”

Now of course, from the get-go we get a sense that Job is a highly unusual man of integrity. We are slow to identify with Job because we know that we are not at that starting point when various assaults to our integrity, our faith, our hopes, our dreams, our possessions, our life, and more…come upon us in seemingly wave upon wave at times…

When we suffer losses – physical losses or a variety of other equally real losses – our tendency is unlike Job’s maintaining of his sense of personal integrity and faithfulness to God. Our tendency is to question ourselves beyond healthy examination, and perhaps question God.

Or, wonder “where is God?”

Our responses seem more fully human that those of Job…at least Job’s responses thus far through Chapter 2.

I am not sure what is meant by “skin for skin!” but I get the sense that Satan wants to up the metaphorical ante a bit. He is frustrated before God that Job has not yet fallen, and seeks to turn the heat up on him.

God says, in this literary narrative, that “he still maintains his integrity, though you incited me against him to ruin him without any reason.”

So in the book of Job, God is not allowing nor working in the troubles of life to further build Job’s faith, character or endurance.

There is simply no reason for Job’s excessive sufferings.

The words translated “incited me” jump out at me, simply in terms of the modern day focus/naming of the relational phenomenon called gaslighting.

Gaslighting (think of an arsonist, who secretly sets something on fire and then watches it burn…) is a term from an old movie wherein the husband is covertly doing things that incite the wife to question her sanity. His hope is that he might push her over the edge for his own malevolent reasons (in the specific movie plot).

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But back to Job 2. God acknowledges that Job has done nothing in particular to incite the calamities that have suddenly and swiftly befallen him; and, Satan is not yet satisfied. Satan then gets God’s permission to physically assault Job in his body. To this point, Job’s assault were upon his soul – he endured his entire life and hopes and dreams be taken from him in a seeming instant.

I suppose that is why I’m suddenly focused on Job’s wife.

I’m going to assume she is the one who physically bore the sons and daughters who were feasting and drinking and died in Job 1:18-19.

I’m going to assume she is the one who worked side-by-side her husband to help him build his life, reputation and fortunes.

I’m going to assume she is the one who worshipped God alongside her husband.

Maybe I’m assuming too much here, but, that is going to be my assumption here in the year 2022 (setting aside probable and possible hands-on differences and marital practices in those days), as I attempt some takeaways from this masterpiece of malevolence found in the Old Testament.

And I will think of her response as entirely understandable and deeply human. She just could not take any more, herself…

One other part I am focused on: It says that Job took a piece of pottery to scrape himself, as he sat in the ashes, right before his wife spoke.

I believe I’ve heard years back, a wondering whether this was a sign Job was considering cutting himself for some reason. I don’t think so. Job was mourning – sitting in the ashes so-to-speak, which would seem to be the non-remnants of his great losses, that which he possessed and held dear just days (?) before – and he may have been simply lancing the painful boils that covered him from head to toe?

Because his response to his wife seemed to be a matter-of-fact acceptance of yet this new assault upon him: “Shall we accept good from God, and not trouble?”

I know that I (nor probably most of us) would not have taken all this so silently…and it seems to me that the artery of Job’s humanity and human expression of pain was not yet ruptured in his speaking…

Oh.
And by the end of this segment, along come three of Job’s friends.

Somehow, they have heard of his afflictions and arrive to comfort him. When they see him from afar, they cannot even recognize him.

“Who were these people, anyways???!!!”..we probably rightfully all ask ourselves by the end of this literary masterpiece…and the various orations!

How did they know of Job’s misfortunes? (Facebook…Instagram…Email…Job’s Blog…Gossip…Word-of-Mouth…Newspapers of the Day??!!)

At first, it seems they did the first thing right.

They wept, and they sat with him, and they kept silent.

Because they somehow observed how great his suffering was.

The NIV says they had met up by agreement and the friends came to “sympathize” with him.

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Sympathy:

1: to be in keeping, accord, or harmony

2: to react or respond in sympathy

3: to share in suffering or grief : COMMISERATEsympathize with a friend in troublealso: to express such sympathy

4: to be in sympathy intellectuallysympathize with a proposal

Empathy:

1: the action of understanding, being aware of, being sensitive to, and vicariously experiencing the feelings, thoughts, and experience of another of either the past or present without having the feelings, thoughts, and experience fully communicated in an objectively explicit manneralso: the capacity for this

2: the imaginative projection of a subjective state into an object so that the object appears to be infused with it

2 On another day the angels[a] came to present themselves before the Lord, and Satan also came with them to present himself before him. 2 And the Lord said to Satan, “Where have you come from?” (6 Words)

Satan answered the Lord, “From roaming throughout the earth, going back and forth on it.” (12 Words)

3 Then the Lord said to Satan, “Have you considered my servant Job? There is no one on earth like him; he is blameless and upright, a man who fears God and shuns evil. And he still maintains his integrity, though you incited me against him to ruin him without any reason.” (46 Words)

4 “Skin for skin!” (4)Satan replied. “A man will give all he has for his own life. 5 But now stretch out your hand and strike his flesh and bones, and he will surely curse you to your face.” (34 Words)

6 The Lord said to Satan, “Very well, then, he is in your hands; but you must spare his life.” (15 Words)

7 So Satan went out from the presence of the Lord and afflicted Job with painful sores from the soles of his feet to the crown of his head. 8 Then Job took a piece of broken pottery and scraped himself with it as he sat among the ashes.

9 His wife said to him, “Are you still maintaining your integrity? Curse God and die!” (11 Words)

10 He replied, “You are talking like a foolish[b] woman. Shall we accept good from God, and not trouble?” (17 Words)

In all this, Job did not sin in what he said.

11 When Job’s three friends, Eliphaz the Temanite, Bildad the Shuhite and Zophar the Naamathite, heard about all the troubles that had come upon him, they set out from their homes and met together by agreement to go and sympathize with him and comfort him. 12 When they saw him from a distance, they could hardly recognize him; they began to weep aloud, and they tore their robes and sprinkled dust on their heads. 13 Then they sat on the ground with him for seven days and seven nights. No one said a word to him, because they saw how great his suffering was.