His wife said to him, "Are you still maintaining your integrity? Curse God and die!" – Job 2:9

Today's Scripture Reading (June 30, 2021): Job 2

Ernest Hemmingway instructed that "When people talk, listen completely. Most people never listen." He is right. I know that I am sometimes guilty of not listening completely. It is often too easy to make our decision about what is being said very early in the conversation, and from that moment on, all of the energy that should have been spent on listening is now invested in what we need to say. I, and we, need to learn to listen better and more completely.

Job's wife has become a prime example of an unsupportive and sharp-tongued wife. But that is because we weren't listening completely. The truth is that Job is not the only person in pain in the story. His wife is suffering as much as he is. And often, when two people are in extreme pain, it is hard for either to properly support the other.

In the Septuagint, an early Greek version of the Tanakh or Hebrew Bible, the interpreters put more words in the mouth of Job's Wife.

How long wilt thou hold out, and say, "Behold I wait yet a little while, expecting the hope of my deliverance?" For, behold, thy memorial is cut off from the earth – [even thy] sons and thy daughters, the pangs and pains of my womb, which I bore in vain, with sorrows; and though thyself sittest down to spend the nights in the open air among the corruption of worms, and I am a wanderer, and a servant from place to place, and house to house, waiting for the setting of the sun, that I may rest from my labours and my pains, which now beset me. Now curse God and die. 

Job's wife is in pain. She has lost everything, and the memory of that loss costs her every day. And watching her husband's pain daily just reminds her of all that has been taken away from her. She wants it all to be over. She has lost faith in life, tomorrow, and any hope that the future could be anything more than the pain already dominating her present. She wants it to be over. She wants Job to curse God and die.

As far as Job's wife is concerned, Job's integrity has not gained him anything, and neither has his service to his God. Of course, the reader knows more of the story than she did. We know that God was still in control. And maybe we can remind ourselves when we are in pain that we don't know the whole story either. Our truth is that God is still in control, even when we feel that he isn't.  

Tomorrow's Scripture Reading: Job 3