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In the previous essay I argued that Job's wife's line in 2:9 should best be translated, "Bless God, and you will die." Its meaning would then be, 'Job, if you continue your path of blessing God in all circumstances, it will kill you. It will cause such a dissonance between your words and your experience that you simply will die.' My thesis in this mini-essay is not only that Job heeded his wife's advice from this verse in the short term, but that his bold actions in 42:10-17, after new children were born to him and his wife, also can be explained as an example of his following her advice.

Poetic Speech as Following Her Advice

The implication of my reading is that Job's wife sees Job's inner conflict better than he does. It is a very high view of his wife, and it assumes she loved him very much, for only a wife in love with her husband can limn the depths of his pain and the tortured paths of his mind while he is suffering. She has seen that the only way for her husband not to die is that he not "bless" God. Now Job's first speech, in chapter 3, becomes perfectly explicable. What Job does is change his words from blessing to cursing. Lest we miss it the text tells us quite clearly: "After this Job opened his mouth and cursed the day of his birth (3:1)." Triumph for Mrs. Job! Job actually listened to her and put her advice into practice. He would now let the words flow from the hurt places of the heart.

Job's wife does not appear in the rest of the play. Rather than this being an oversight or an admission that she is unimportant, I now see it as confirming the point that she has said all she needed to say. It just takes the men 42 chapters to work out the advice she gave in five words! She need not say anymore because they were doing precisely what she thought they should be doing. Even though Job seemed to misunderstand her advice at first (2:10), he ends up following it. But Job wouldn't be the first male to follow a woman's advice without giving her credit, would he?

Job's Daughters

I am not going to talk about the service organization here, but to make an observation about Job's new daughters in 42:10-17. What is remarkable about these new daughters is that they are given names while the sons remain nameless. In addition, they get an equal share of inheritance with the sons, which is not the way that Hebrew law would have it (sisters only get inheritance if there are no sons or if they have died). But what may be behind this radical social arrangement that Job is pursuing is not only that, in the wake of experiencing great loss, all social conventions are, at best, "optional" (I argued this in my book on Job--A Hard-Fought Hope), but also that he is trying to express his gratitude to his wife. What better way for the author to recognize the seminal importance of Job's wife for Job's thoughts in the entire book than to give Job's new daughters names and an equal share with their brothers? It would be an indication of Job's recognition, by the end of the book, that his wife was the one who reoriented his thinking.

Conclusion

The implication of this reading is that Job's wife is a much more central person to the development of the words and actions in the Book of Job than has hitherto been recognized. Her one line, far from being a flippant, carping, critical comment in the time of her husband's need, is a laser into Job's deepest interior. She knew that in order to live, he needed to challenge God and let his feelings be known. By so encouraging her husband, she saved his life.

I would venture to say that if many men were honest about it today, they too would admit that their wives have saved not simply their "bacon," but have saved their lives. Whether it is fidelity to his vision, encouragement when he has been discouraged, insight into the hidden depths of his heart or an exhortation to speak his mind when he might otherwise lapse into "false consciousness," many wives have and will continue to save their husband's lives. And, they will continue not to be recognized for it in publicly visible ways. Their husbands still might end up getting "all the lines." But they will know what he needed in order even to speak the lines, and they will tell him what he needs to do. Job's wife, now, is my new heroine of faith. Agree?