Jó 2:9

9. His wife There is an old tradition among the Jews, which also appears in the Chaldee Paraphrast, that his wife was Dinah, the frail daughter of Jacob. This is of value only as showing an ancient belief that Job lived in the patriarchal age. This unfortunate woman, who had not the living faith of her husband, and who, perhaps, did not believe in his God, has been bitterly denounced in every age, and has given point to many a stinging epigram from the days of the German Alters to Coleridge. “Why,” asks Chrysostom, “did the devil leave him this wife? Because he thought her a good scourge by which to plague him more acutely than by any other.” Augustine calls her the “helper of the devil;” Ebrard, “a tool of the tempter;” Spanheim, “a second Xantippe;” Calvin, (cited by Delitzsch,) “Proserpina, an infernal fury;” and J.D. Michaelis thinks she alone remained to Job in order that the measure of his sufferings might be full. Among others. Kitto ( Daily Bib. Illus.) and Hengstenberg have taken a more pleasing view of the woman, whom others seem to have forgotten was a sufferer who had been as terribly bereaved as Rachel herself. (Jeremiah 31:15.) “It must be taken into consideration that her despair was rooted in the heartiest and tenderest love to her husband. In all their previous losses she had allowed herself to be kept in restraint by Job’s own submissiveness, and had the pains of disease befallen herself, she would probably still have resisted her despair.” HENGST., Lec. on Job. It was a favourite thought with the fathers that as Satan had successfully employed woman for the ruin of man in Paradise, he feels sure of success in this, his last stake, as he wields the same instrument against Job in the ashes. The moral elements of the two temptations were similar to each other. There was the preceding wreck of woman’s heart, together with the subtle leverage of man’s affection, as well as the contagious influence of evil example; all which unitedly constituted a temptation of inestimable power.

Curse God… die (See Job 1:5.) She evidently alludes to what Job had said, (Job 1:21,) and, strangely enough, employs the very words that the tempter had expected Job would use as he sank in despair. By Ewald, among others, the expression is taken as ironical, “say farewell to God, and die;” by others (Rosenmuller, Hirtzel) as an insolent and defiant demand, “Renounce God, and die.” Schultens suspects it to have been a common saying among spare worshippers of the Deity of that day, like that of the Latin, “Eat, drink: to-morrow we die.” It practically said, Religion is of no account. Such sentiments prevail under visitations of the plague and kindred calamities. Thucydides thus moralizes over the plague at Athens: “Men were restrained neither by fear of the gods nor by human law; deeming it all one whether they paid religious worship or not, since they saw that all perished alike.” The wife of Job is now swept away into a similar maelstrom. The Septuagint informs us “that much time had passed” when she uttered these taunting words, “Curse God, and die;” and, displeased at the idea that an angry woman should say so little, puts a long speech into her mouth, recounting her sufferings, and closing with the tame words, “but say some word against the Lord, and die.”