Today’s reading: Job 01.01-04.21
Job 02.09-10 “9 Then his
wife said to him, “Do you still hold fast your integrity? Curse God and die!”
10 But he said to her, “You speak as one of the foolish women speaks. Shall we
indeed accept good from God and not accept adversity?” In all this Job did not
sin with his lips.”
The Book of Job records the faith of a man in the midst of incredible
suffering. From this book we get the answer the age old question, “Why do the
righteous suffer if God is loving and all powerful?” The answer is that God is
always in control of what happens and that we can learn more from our suffering
than we can learn when all is going well. Job teaches us that sometimes the
righteous must suffer without knowing the reason why; and that is why it is
important to trust God in everything. When we see how great He is, like Job, we
bow down in humble submission. You will notice as well reading through this
book that never once did God ever explain to Job why Job was going through all
this suffering.
In today’s reading, we see that Job was a man
of great wealth and character (Job 01.01-05).
When Satan came before the LORD one day, the LORD called Job “My servant” (Job 01.08) and Satan accused Job of
only being faithful to the LORD because the LORD had abundantly blessed Job (Job 01.09-11). Thus we see the first
test of Job by Satan, where Job had a really, really bad day. Lost all his
children, his wealth (flocks) and his servants all in one day (Job 01.13-19)! Satan is then allowed to
give Job another test (Job 02.01-06),
which were painful sores all over his body (Job 02.07-10). Job’s friends heard about what happened to him and
the all came to comfort him (Job 02.11-13).
Job laments the day of his conception and birth (Job 03.01-26) while Eliphaz states that the innocent do not suffer,
thus Job is guilty of sin (Job 04.01-21).
Job’s wife tried to counsel him let go of his
integrity, curse God and as a result of cursing God, to die. Unknown to both
Job and his wife, her advice was the very thing that Satan had predicted twice
that Job would do (Job 01.11; Job 02.05). When Job needed comfort
from his wife, instead he received a rebuke and the counsel to curse God and
die.
The phrase “Curse God” (Job 02.09) is literally “bless”
in the original Hebrew.
“curse” H1288. בָרַךְ barak; a primitive root;
to kneel; by implication to bless God (as an act of adoration), and (vice-
versa) man (as a benefit); also (by euphemism) to curse (God or the king, as
treason): — x abundantly, x altogether, x at all, blaspheme, bless,
congratulate, curse, x greatly, x indeed, kneel (down), praise, salute, x
still, thank.
So what’s the idea of this Hebrew word that means to
“bless” but also used for “curse” in English?
When Job’s wife told him to curse God and die, she was
literally saying that Job should “renounce God, bidding Him farewell”.
This is the same Hebrew word that is used for “cursed” in Job 01.05.
This helps explain why Job offered a burnt offering for
each of his kids, for he was interceding for them, afraid that they “renounce
God” in their festivities.
When Job’s wife told telling Job to renounce God (Job 02.09), this also helps explain further why Job responded to her
the way that he did in Job 02.10. Calling her
foolish, or literally one who is “spiritually ignorant or spiritually
insensitive”.
The Bible is filled with verses talking about going
through adversity (Acts 05.41; Romans 08.17-18; Romans 08.35-37; 2Corinthians
12.09-10; Hebrews 10.34; James 01.02-04; James 01.12; 1Peter 04.13-16).
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