Job and his wife

The Lord said to Satan, “Very well, then, he [Job] is in your hands; but you must spare his life.” So Satan went out from the presence of the Lord and afflicted Job with painful sores from the soles of his feet to the crown of his head. Then Job took a piece of broken pottery and scraped himself with it as he sat among the ashes. His wife said to him, “Are you still maintaining your integrity? Curse God and die!” He replied, “You are talking like a foolish woman. Shall we accept good from God, and not trouble?” Job 2:7-10

Poor Job! Poor, poor Job!

He is described at the beginning of the book as “blameless and upright”, a man who “feared God and shunned evil” (1:1). He is wealthy and powerful, yet God allows a string of catastrophes to strike him, including the deaths of his seven sons and three daughters. But “in all this, Job did not sin by charging God with wrongdoing” (1:22).

But now comes a whole new affliction: “painful sores from the soles of his feet to the crown of his head” (2:7). Leprosy? Elephantiasis? These are two of the main possibilities scholars have suggested. But it doesn’t matter; we can only speculate after all. What does matter is that it was horrible, and we are shown him sitting pathetically on the local rubbish dump scraping his body with a piece of broken pottery, presumably to get himself some kind of relief (2:7-8). How are the mighty fallen!

And then, to cap it all, his wife turns against him. She hadn’t reckoned on this all those years earlier when they married, and you can’t entirely blame the poor woman for at last losing patience with his wonderful faith and goodness: “Are you still maintaining your integrity? Curse God and die!” (2:9).

How did Job feel when his own wife of many years, the mother of his ten children, directed those terrible words at him? Utterly, utterly lonely, I would think. His children dead; his wife turning on him: who is there left to give him comfort?

Job rebukes her for “foolishness”, and then asks a question which is one of the best short sayings in the Bible: “Shall we accept good from God, and not trouble?” (2:10). “Fine words”, as one commentator says.

And they are words which are for us today as much as for this wretched man lost in the mists of time.

“Shall we accept good from God, and not trouble?...”

I know we would never admit this, but I suspect that often we subconsciously view God as basically the guarantor of our comfort and well-being: in a word, he exists to keep us happy. It’s as if we have made a bargain: we trust and obey him, and he keeps us from any harm.

Except, of course, that it just doesn’t work like that. Ultimately, yes, God promises us everything; but he owes us nothing. Paul, quoting from Isaiah 64, speaks of “what no eye has seen, what no ear has heard, and what no human mind has conceived – the things God has prepared for those who love him” (1 Corinthians 2:9). Unimaginable riches are what God will pour on his people: but in his own time and his own way.

This may be a little hard on Simon Peter, but I wonder if perhaps he was an example of the “bargain” approach to following Jesus. “We have left everything to follow you,” he tells him: “What then will there be for us?” That was pretty brazen, wasn’t it? Yet Jesus replies in the same coin, so to speak: “Everyone who has left houses or brothers or sisters or father or mother or fields for my sake will receive a hundred times as much and will inherit eternal life” (Matthew 19:27-29).

What Job saw but his wife didn’t was the difference between resignation and acceptance.

Resignation is essentially a negative thing. When something bad happens, it says, “I don’t like this and I would rather it wasn’t happening; but I suppose I had better put up with it”. But acceptance is a positive thing. When something bad happens it says, “I don’t like this and I would rather it wasn’t happening; but believing as I do that God is my loving Father, I will pray to see his hand even in this, and ultimately to benefit from it”.

What about us? When troubles come do we simply try to “put up with it”? Or do we see it in the same light as Job? Something to accept as being ultimately for a good purpose? Something through which we may grow?

This doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try to escape from our troubles; but it does mean that if no escape is possible, then a positive acceptance is called for, not a grin-and-bear-it resignation.

The apostle Paul was, like Job, troubled by Satan: he was given a “thorn in the flesh” (whatever that may have been), and very naturally he prayed – no less than three times – that God would take it away. But God said No: “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness”.

And so Paul responded with words even more magnificent than Job’s: “That is why, for Christ’s sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong” (2 Corinthians 12:7-10).

Thank you, Father, that the Jesus we follow prayed that the cup of crucifixion might pass from him, but then added, “Yet not as I will, but as you will”. Grant me too, Lord, the grace of willing acceptance when troubles, great or small, come to me. Amen.