The First Cut is the Deepest
Then his wife said to him, “Do you still hold fast your integrity? Curse God and die!” Job 2:9 NASB
Curse – Job’s wife has only a few words to say, but, according to David Penchansky, what she says summarizes the entire story of this suffering, righteous man. She speaks sarcastically, telling Job, “Curse God and die,” using the Hebrew word, barak, a word that typically means “to bless.” In other words, she sees a man who suffers for some unknown reason. He is a man whose meticulous righteousness is legendary. He claims tāmam, integrity, but apparently God does not honor or protect him. In fact, it appears that the God that he worships is the culprit behind all of Job’s terror. In her opinion, the “blessing” God has turned out to be nothing more than a fickle, vindictive deity. Penchansky notes:
Job’s sufferings at the rejection of his spouse bespeaks all of Job’s losses, and the violence of Job’s wife’s vituperations again personifies the ways that the universe spat upon that unfortunate man. This narrative is a metaphor for the entire book of Job. The story of Job’s wife becomes a parable that carries the prescriptive message of the entire work.[1]
Her words are so malicious and carefully chosen. She disparages his efforts at integrity, calling them pointless, having no effect. She tells him to blaspheme, the very thing he had always been so scrupulous to avoid. But she encourages him to tear apart and cast away the last vestiges of his pious rationalizations, the final barrier between him and the fearful void. . . . There were certainly people in Israel who did curse God, and not just the unrighteous. Job could not face this fearful truth. Job’s wife gave him the courage to accuse the deity and he does it well. He curses God with an artistry and passion that is unsurpassed.[2]
Job’s wife made him aware of issues that are at the heart of communal life: personal integrity and human discourse. On that ash heap he faced the precariousness of human discourse. When he was robbed of everything, he finally tasted the absence at the heart of things, and the utter fragility of all human knowledge. With her words, so brutal and cutting, she came close to personifying all of the abuse that Job received from the universe. If Job embodies the experience of human pain and abandonment, Job’s wife represents the source of all human suffering. Eliphaz, Bildad, Zophar and even young Elihu argue with Job, annoying and angering him, but Job’s pain was magnified and illuminated through the lens of her abuse. Job blasphemes God, but he did not die. Ultimately, that is integrity.[3]
What is the worst a man can suffer? To lose his possessions? To lose his children? To lose his health? Or is losing the blessing of his ‘ezer kenegdo the worst thing possible? Perhaps we can find our way through the bankruptcy of physical life and its accoutrements. With counsel and comfort, we may even be able to carry on after the death of a child. In our world, medical decline is often ameliorated. But how does one escape the psychic pangs of the loss of love, graphically exhibited in the breakdown of the relationship intended to bring unity and display the deeper spiritual character of the Creator? Is there any cut deeper than this betrayal? Can this wound ever be healed? The scar it leaves forever marks change in who we are and who we thought we were. Job’s wife’s words slay him in a way no one else could. Her sarcasm belittles his relationship to God and his integrity. She slaps him and the sting does not go away.
Reading the story of Job’s wife might remind us of the trauma of Havvah. In the Genesis account, it is the husband, not the wife, who pushes spiritual failure into the face of the victim. By naming his wife according to her worst nightmare, Adam does the same thing Job’s wife does to Job. He slaps her with her God’s apparent rejection. Of course, the rejection is not really the truth of the situation, but just like the case with Job, it certainly seems so. Job’s wife and Havvah’s husband use the appearance of disapproval as psychological warfare. They attack their victims with ruthless depravity.
Perhaps you have experienced something similar. Perhaps someone close has turned into an attacker, using your trust against you. Perhaps life seems to confirm your desperate condition. The rest of Job’s story might be useful. It helps us realize that God does not abandon us even when it seems so. It reminds us that God is not the cruel perpetrator of our desperate plight. It demonstrates that faithfulness is the path regardless of the circumstances. Job’s wife was wrong. So was Adam. But it takes true moral courage to see this when we are thrown into the pit.
Topical Index: curse, bless, barak, Adam, Havvah, Job’s wife, David Penchansky, Job 2:9
[1] David Penchansky, The Betrayal of God: Ideological Conflict in Job (Westminster/John Know Press, 1990), p. 85.
[2] Ibid., p. 86.
[3] Ibid.
This post really cute deep, just shows that we have to be anchored in his word ,and be steadfast no matter what the circumstances , Thanks Skip !
The Truth always awaits.
Time and time again God uses the banality of this world and the
misguided lost souls within it to turn a wounded heart to the only
remaining refuge: Himself.
“I will never leave you nor forsake you.”
The story of Job, be he real or the protagonist in an epic parable invoking tragic drama, brings to my mind one who went through similar catastrophic testings and who best “embodies the experience of human pain and abandonment”. Yeshua. It was on the cross that He best “helps us realize that God does not abandon us even when it seems so. It reminds us that God is not the cruel perpetrator of our desperate plight. It demonstrates that faithfulness is the path regardless of the circumstances.” I understand that the verse “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” is misunderstood, but I also know, along with Job and Havvah, the psychic pain that brings one to the point of crying out this passionate imprecation. As the author of Hebrews reminds us: “We do not have a high priest which cannot be touched with the feeling of our infirmities; but was in all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin.”
Amein!
Arrow to the heart!
Hurting people hurt people. This is hardwired flesh and what it does to ‘protect’ itself from having to share com – passion (be connected with the passionate experience of another). When people lose hope they turn on others in an attempt to ‘save’ themselves. The pain of others – because we have been designed to share empathy – threatens to hurt us with their pain. The flesh will seek to protect itself by severing that line: by fracturing the connections of love. Those who have suffered this fracture in times past will have learned (by experience) how to, in turn, do it to yet others when faced with similar situations. Thus, sin is perpetuated like a snowball from hell.
The world puts up a good face because experience has taught us all only too well how vicious others are if we show any weakness. (The turning of Job’s wife exemplifies why.) Bitterness can paint a happy smile on the face of a small child who knows better than to let any trace of the misery of his life to show. Bitterness is the fence we build to CONTAIN the chaos within, for the world punishes any who show any traces of suffering. Bitterness is the ‘protection’ the flesh invariably is tempted to invoke when we lose hope in the protection of heaven, but bitterness is the embodiment of the loss of empathic connection between us and God, ourselves and others. Bitterness is the manifestation of hopelessness.
How can we re-establish empathy with others again when we have been hurt in the past? Forgiveness. Adam cut the line of empathy with his wife because he was bitter toward her. He probably didn’t have a clue what to do with that bitterness; I guess he had to learn forgiveness through experience in the brave new world where instruction in righteousness was no longer efficacious. Job’s suffering, coupled with the mutual loss of wealth, status and children, was too much for his wife, too. Perhaps it triggered previous rejection from her earlier history (she had to have learned how to throw people away from somewhere), but she had apparently chosen to keep a wall of ‘protection’ around herself, which is the allure of bitterness: “I will NEVER let that happen again!”.
Y’all, this is HIGHLY speculative, and I beg forgiveness up front for thinking the following, but because I have only my own experience to draw on, this is my handicap. I am thinking perhaps Job’s wife turned to bitterness when she lost her hope. Perhaps Job suffered all he did because his wife was harboring secret bitterness that only showed up when she lost all the ‘happy’ walls she was employing to hide her essential fracture from empathy with others? I know my sin can affect (curse) those around me. Perhaps it was not Job’s fault at all, just like the record says, but he had yet to experience (and survive) his ezer’s sin? I know I suffered from the sin of others, too. I have always wondered who opened the door to the disaster of the children. Perhaps it was their mother….
The unforgiveness we choose to nurse in our hearts will always show back up through our repetition of the sin done to us, for sin retained is sin repeated. At that point, we will need forgiveness ourselves for the sin we perpetuated. We ultimately can get that forgiveness by doing the homework: by going back to the reason we rejected others (got rejected ourselves) and understanding that we got rejected because someone originally rejected our rejector, thus putting us both on the same boat. To understand why someone rejected me is to understand why I reject others, thus giving me the tools (understanding) necessary to forgive.
Job got forgiven when he repented for rejecting YHVH. His friends got forgiven for rejecting him when he asked YHVH to forgive them. He, of course, could not have done that if he had not forgiven them first. Rejection puts everybody in a bind. Forgiveness is the slaying knife we hold that we can use to cut the death grip of bitterness instead of the throats of the perpetrators. Forgiveness, in turn, cuts the power of the curses on our lives, too. It is clear that Job forgave his wife, and through his forgiveness she got ten more children. Halleluah!
Laurita, I can identify with the “snowball from hell” image. That snow is frozen so hard that even the superheated flames of Sheol cannot melt it. My heart feels like it was forged of a composite material made of it plus iron, tears, sin, flesh, bitterness, chaos, rejection, pain, ego, hatred, sorrow, shame, despair, depression, fear and more. But in the distance I do hear a faint song of deliverance, a sweet melody of forgiveness and fellowship which I hope will warm my heart and slowly begin the spring melts.
I hope too that the rising waters will flood my soul and tear down these bitter fence rows which hold in the chaos by force of fungible thoughts, fragmented memories and fraudulent agreements. My fear of self revelation has led to a self imposed seclusion which has frozen me out, of not just life on earth, but sadly heaven as well. Come quickly sun and spring …and Son and spring (to my aid), for I am weary, worn and full of woe until I am unfrozen from my fractured soul.
Michael, it may totally shock you to hear it, but you have just described all of us.
You are not alone.
But you are more blessed than most of us.
Most of us have been so much more successful in deceiving ourselves with the prophylactics and the sweet delusions of the world that who you have so well described could not POSSIBLY be, well, me.
You are not alone because you are somehow ‘behind’ the rest; no, you are alone because you are out in front of the pack. You who are blessed with being slammed with the truth to the point that you truly believe it. May we all be convicted of jealousy, for what we do not see we cannot repent for.
We are blessed, too, to have you. Thank you! For you! Thank Arnella too for sticking with you! Please hug her for me. You two are awesome. Please keep speaking for me. I am blessed once again, brother.
Hi Michael and laurita, for those who have gone through abuse,I highly recommend podcast 68 from Michael Heiser. Audrey and Fern ( not their real names)Are truly incredible and they are the most insightful and gifted women in this area I have ever heard . I pray you take the time to listen.
Thanks Pam. I will listen attentively. I am a fan and follower of Mike H. I have 2 of his books and ordering a 3rd book soon. Why is it that women seem to be always on the leading edge of helping, healing and wholeness…oh, wait that was a dumb question. They have suffered more abuse at the hands of men than the other way around and they were created for this role….of helping, healing and wholeness not abuse. I better quit while I am behind.
Don’t quit Michael your ahead??
Thank you, Pam. This is going to be helpful for me with some people who have ended up in my world. Mind control is widespread and yes, the government does do it and the way they go about it and the amazing people who survive it, well, they put up this impeccable front; no one can tell. Except that they are invariably going to be people I think who are drawn to anything occultic, because that is HOW they have been treated; they recognize that spiritual realm.
People can go through their entire lives without acknowledging spiritual darkness, but without understanding what Paul was talking about when he was referring to “spiritual wickedness in high places (acting as gods in people’s lives)” they will never be able to confront that wickedness or help those desperate people. I think if we are going to set out to love everybody, at some point, we have to become willing to meet all the needs we are surrounded with, with the love of God. In some sense, this is war: what we do not master, will master us.
I have found, in my dealings with the victims of the occult, that the occult loves to hide, and the best way to hide is to convince someone that something does not actually exist. Thus, the occult will always lie about itself. If we listen and believe that (because we do not want to deal with it), we are left unable to reach out and touch those who are gripped in the very bowels of hell on earth; that is, trapped inside their own psyches by means of all these occultic lies. May we learn to reach out and touch these untouchables and not be afraid of their fear. I pray we all become willing to walk in the whole truth that has the power to set us all free. Halleluah!
Laurita, I hastily admit that I like your view of me better than my view of me. Only from a higher perspective (truth) can you see what ‘lies’ below your (ad)vantage point. If I am ahead of any pack it is a pack of hell-hounds nipping at my heels! But thanks for the en-courage-ment. Please send some courage to bolster it, build it or as usual, use it to bluff my way through. Shalom my sister.