Like a lot of other people, I have vilified a woman over a long period. Somewhere along
the track, she was said to be a really nasty person.
A lot of people have talked about her both in print and on radio and I have sat in audiences where she was described as the nastiest wife in history. Preachers and theologians with doctorates have upheld her as the worst possible example of wifely disloyalty.
I have never heard anybody defend her reputation. Nobody has ever asked, “Is this the real truth? Is all the evidence on the table?”
She was the wife of a successful man and the mother of sons and daughters who lived well. They were a gregarious family and often gathered together to enjoy themselves. They also had religious convictions and an established pattern of worship so they were a happy, successful, pious family.
However, disaster struck the family in both terrorism and hurricane, taking out workmen, livestock and finally, every member of the large family. Only the husband and wife were left alive. Then the husband came down with some terrible disease that was extremely itchy and painful and had no cure. He was in agony and this is where things get nasty.
His wife suffered the loss of their children along with her husband, as well as the loss of livestock and material goods and now she watched her husband suffering intolerably.
I can relate to watching her pain because I have watched over somebody I loved deeply. He was dying and in extreme pain that nothing relieved. To lose him was the greatest sorrow I could experience but I prayed that he would die. I wanted his suffering stopped so I understand something of what happened to this historical woman.
She said to her husband, “Curse God and die.” And so it gets reported in every newscast and for centuries we have all swallowed it. We have allowed this incredibly loving woman to be maligned because we have failed to look at all the evidence.
Am I alone is asking, “What is the evidence?”
I looked up the meaning of that word, “curse.” The ancient word for curse used here is used only in this place in the whole book and only in this context.
To curse God or the king for treason is one of the meanings of the word “curse” used here and it is the only meaning we are ever given.
Other meanings include to kneel, to praise, to salute and to thank, as well as to bless God.
Has anybody ever these equally valid meanings on evidence on behalf of the slandered wife? Has any theologian or preacher ever told you about these meanings?
Have they been deliberately lost in the translation? Or has “curse God and die” been used as an excuse to keep women in subjection down through the centuries?
What this loving wife actually said to her husband was most likely something like this: You believe in God’s goodness and integrity and these dreadful calamities must be shaking your belief. You have lived an exemplary life and been a loving husband and father and you have been good to your workmen. Now you are in terrible agony and you have suffered the loss of your children and everything they built up. For your own sake, why not thank God for all the good times and then allow yourself to die in peace?
Mr. Job saw the outcome long term. He answered that she must not give excuse for anyone to think he could ever question God’s integrity. Only silly women could think he would do so and Mr. Job did not want her to be classed as a silly woman. He valued his wife too much to let her reputation be dragged into the mud.
Yet that is exactly what preachers and theologians for hundreds of years have done and we have allowed the love of this man for his wife to be ridiculed. We have libelled both Mr. Job and Mrs. Job.
So I apologise to them both but especially to Mrs. Job. With great compassion, she was prepared to let her husband go into God’s eternal care, without any thought for her own comfort or her own loss and grief.
I think “Curse God and die” should be read as “Give thanks to God and go in peace.”
Read the story in Job, chapters 1 and 2 and find what was lost in the translation.
Elizabeth Price