Job’s Wife: Villainess or Heroine?
Last week, our Bible study group got deep with Job’s wife, and we really wrestled with whether she was a villainess or a heroine. It is one of those questions theologians, Hebrew scholars, and Bible commentators have lined for up on both sides.
When I first taught the book of Job, I was squarely on one side of this question. But, over the years, learning Hebrew, reading a wider selection of scholarly works, my positioned has been changed, and I share all that research in this twenty minute talk.
Job’s Story, My Story!
As an aside, the week I was to prepare this multimedia presentation, I also experienced a string of unfortunate incidents. The recording of the talk has noise issues I had to dampen, my computer then had a sudden and catastrophic event–probably the hard drive, it is still in the shop. My files, which I had arranged to be protected in the cloud, have continued to be unavailable, with the cloud providers servers down. My husband and I both drove a significant distance, two days in a row, to receive the first of our COVID vaccinations and I had an adverse reaction.
None of these things compare with the ordeal Job and his wife endured. However, there are echoes there, for me, and each of the lessons I saw in their account are truths I found I needed to immediately apply to my own life of faith. All of a sudden, Job’s wife was becoming a personal friend.
May it be you gain as much as I did from her story!
Four-Part Talk
I Blessings and Bitter Blows, Job 1
Earthly ordeals can have heavenly purposes
II Blaspheme and Berate? Job 2
Rejoice in hope, be patient in suffering, persevere in prayer (Romans 12:12)
III Beseech and Embolden? Job 2
Draw near to God and God will draw near to you (James 4:8)
IV Rebirth, Job 40-42
Mature faith is found in intimacy with God
Each video is designed to offer background scholarship on the topic, including setting, culture, original language, and archaeology, as well as a theological study. The “Broken, Searching, Trusted, Powerful” series is a companion to the book, available on Amazon, and published by Wipf and Stock.
Thank you Joanne
On Mon, Mar 15, 2021 at 4:29 PM Grace and Peace, Joanne wrote:
> Joanne Guarnieri Hagemeyer posted: ” https://youtu.be/DlOOQU0eQps Wife of > Job | Grace and Peace, Joanne Last week, our Bible study group got deep > with Job’s wife, and we really wrestled with whether she was a villainess > or a heroine. It is one of those questions theologians, Hebrew ” >
Criticism of Job’s wife has always seemed harsh to me. She was suffering horribly and had to watch her husband being consumed by disease. Losing him to death may have seemed a merciful escape from his suffering. Am happy to know about the two possible interpretations of the word “curse”. Thank you.
I also thought it was so harsh! I was heartened to discover such a long tradition, thousands of years, of Jewish scholarship that was so sympathetic to her.
There is much that has been taught about women in the scriptures that comes from a culturally negative view of women overall, and therefore always defaults to the worst possible explanation, while in no wise doing the same with men in the scriptures.
It seems as though it is time to ask new questions and and seek the best where we can, and listen carefully to the Spirit’s illumination overall