Having lost a child and experienced the nightly weeping and grief of my wife (not that I wasn’t grieving) I sympathize with Jobs wife. How do you console a mom that’s lost a child let alone ten children? It doesn’t excuse her lack of faith or challenge towards Job (and ultimately God) but it makes sense. Couple of comments from the article....
1. There are no replacement kids. My wife and I have other children but we still miss our son. God restored everything to Job double what he took away yet at the end of the story Job still has ten kids not twenty. Obviously there is the hope of eternity with the first set of ten.
2. I don’t see anywhere in the text that Job got a new wife? The story is not focused on Jobs wife but on Job himself. However, I think some basic things can be said about his wife and their marriage. Clearly there was, prior to the events in the story, a time when they shared marital bliss evidence by the ten children. To me this demonstrates that Jobs wife had a heart for their home. Clearly her heart was broken at having lost their children since prior to her telling Job to curse God and die she had not said anything that is recorded after their livelihood was destroyed and taken from them. The loss of their children elicited the response not the loss of material possessions. And lastly at the conclusion of the story Job is found with ten more children implying that after all of the bitterness and grief some sort of restoration in their marriage occurred. I doubt there are too many wife’s who want to have sex with their husbands when their marriage is on the rocks. I cringe when I hear jokes about Satan taken everything from Job except a bitter and angry wife as if having his wife still present was some sort of punishment. I know my wife has been able to verbalize things that candidly I was afraid to say towards God that has driven me to my knees in prayer with unanswerable questions. We must recall that Job is never privy to the cosmic forces at play behind the scenes. What I do see is a man who held onto his faith and marriage even in the face of impossible circumstances. God blessed their marriage and restored it which I think is the greater testimony than having wealth restored.
Having lost a child and experienced the nightly weeping and grief of my wife (not that I wasn’t grieving) I sympathize with Jobs wife. How do you console a mom that’s lost a child let alone ten children? It doesn’t excuse her lack of faith or challenge towards Job (and ultimately God) but it makes sense. Couple of comments from the article....
1. There are no replacement kids. My wife and I have other children but we still miss our son. God restored everything to Job double what he took away yet at the end of the story Job still has ten kids not twenty. Obviously there is the hope of eternity with the first set of ten.
2. I don’t see anywhere in the text that Job got a new wife? The story is not focused on Jobs wife but on Job himself. However, I think some basic things can be said about his wife and their marriage. Clearly there was, prior to the events in the story, a time when they shared marital bliss evidence by the ten children. To me this demonstrates that Jobs wife had a heart for their home. Clearly her heart was broken at having lost their children since prior to her telling Job to curse God and die she had not said anything that is recorded after their livelihood was destroyed and taken from them. The loss of their children elicited the response not the loss of material possessions. And lastly at the conclusion of the story Job is found with ten more children implying that after all of the bitterness and grief some sort of restoration in their marriage occurred. I doubt there are too many wife’s who want to have sex with their husbands when their marriage is on the rocks. I cringe when I hear jokes about Satan taken everything from Job except a bitter and angry wife as if having his wife still present was some sort of punishment. I know my wife has been able to verbalize things that candidly I was afraid to say towards God that has driven me to my knees in prayer with unanswerable questions. We must recall that Job is never privy to the cosmic forces at play behind the scenes. What I do see is a man who held onto his faith and marriage even in the face of impossible circumstances. God blessed their marriage and restored it which I think is the greater testimony than having wealth restored.