Job 2:9 Commentary and Bible Study

We understand that all that is recorded here, all the elements of Job’s trial, were carefully thought-out strategies of Satan to bring him down. Satan has been given permission by the Lord to do whatever he wants short of taking Job’s life, and so when we read of this assault by his wife we realise that the devil is behind it. He had got at her first. She too had suffered the loss of all her children, as well as her property, and she too was reduced to misery. She now falls in the way that Satan is trying to make Job fall. The way Job sharply rebukes her shows that he had counted her as a believer, and she was behaving out of character. He does not say that she was a foolish woman, but that she was speaking as one of the foolish women. It may be that she recovered from this fall. We are not told anything further about her in the book, but neither is it stated anywhere that she dies, and later when God restores him and blesses him again, Job has more children, presumably by the same wife.But now she deserts him, and this is a further source of pain and heartache to God’s servant. No doubt they had already faced many trials together in life, and he had counted on her loyalty to him and to the Lord. Husband and wife should be heirs of life together. The pray together, and worship together. They admonish each other. They call upon the Lord for guidance in all difficulties, and they uphold each other’s faith. Job looked to her to be his helpmeet in matters of this life and matters of faith. He could have shrugged off a suggestion to forsake God if it had come from a stranger or a mere acquaintance, but when it came from the one he shared his life with, who was one flesh with him, this was a devastating blow. ‘Dost thou still retain thine integrity?’ Her faith collapses, and she becomes hostile. She knows that her husband is still holding onto his trust in God, even though he cannot explain what is happening to him, and she sees him as absurdly righteous when God had done this to him. ‘Curse God, and die.’ Get it over with. Stop trying to keep up this pretence of faith, she in effect says. She has been brought to despair and she tries to bring her husband to despair with her. All your service to God, she says, is pointless. What is most precious to Job, and is his shield against these trials, she speaks of as something to be despised. In a moment she goes from being his closest companion, to being his most dangerous enemy.‘What? shall we receive good at the hand of God, and shall we not receive evil? In all this did not Job sin with his lips.’ At first Job stands marvellously, suffering his tragedy without sin. He is determined to give thanks to God for the good he receives, and to bear patiently with the evil. Faith is convinced that even the evil works for good by the grace of God. Job therefore reproves his wife for her godless attitude and will not for a moment agree that she has just cause for it. In a fallen world which is under the curse and where believers and unbelievers are subject together to the unpredictable events of life, should believers only maintain their faith as long as God sends them pleasing providences? No, Job refuses to live like that. He will continue to trust the Lord even though events occur in his life which he cannot explain, and which cause him to suffer. But he is gradually brought very low by harrowing disease.