(Job’s Wife, who has been quoted once and judged forever)
Now, if you’ve heard my name at all, and most folks haven’t, you’ve most likely heard it attached to a single sentence.
“Curse God and die.”
That’s the line.
That’s the whole of me, as history would have it.
No context.
No background.
No mention of what came before or after.
Just one sentence, plucked out like a thorn and passed around as evidence.
Well.
I would like to begin by sayin’ a woman rarely arrives at a sentence like that without a series of developments.
Before Everything Went Wrong
We had a life.
A good life.
Children laughin’, fields prosperin’, a house full of noise and purpose.
My husband was respected; wise, generous, upright in the way folks admire from a comfortable distance.
And I will say this for him:
He was exactly as good a man as everyone claims.
That’s what made the rest of it so hard to watch.
The First Loss
Now, when the first messenger came, I thought it was a mistake.
Then the second came.
Then the third.
You can tell a life is about to change when the bad news starts travelin’ in groups.
Livestock gone.
Servants gone.
Security gone.
And then…
The children.
Every last one of them.
Gone in a single afternoon.
Now I ask you, as a reasonable observer:
What does a mother do with that kind of tragedy?
The Response (His, Not Mine)
My husband tore his robe.
Fell to the ground.
And said words that have since been repeated as proof of his righteousness.
“The Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away…”
Now I don’t dispute the poetry of it.
But I would like it noted:
Poetry don’t fill an empty house.
The Second Blow
As if grief were not sufficient, affliction followed.
Boils.
From the top of his head to the bottoms of his feet.
Pain that won’t rest.
He sat in ashes, scrapin’ his skin with broken pottery like a man tryin’ to carve his way out of his own body.
And still,
Still!
He held fast.
My Position (Rarely Requested)
Now I sat right there beside him.
In the same ashes.
With the same losses.
But without the benefit of bein’ called righteous for endurin’ them.
And I watched.
Day after day.
Pain.
Silence.
Endurance stretched so thin it sang.
And I thought
There must be another way to end this mess.
The Sentence (Which Everyone Loves to Quote)
So yes.
I said it.
“Do you still hold fast to your integrity? Curse God, and die.”
Now, I would like to clarify the tone.
This was not mockery.
It weren’t rebellion.
It weren’t the shriekin’ of a woman undone.
It was good, practical advice.
On Mercy (A Misunderstood Concept)
What I was suggestin’, and I cain’t believe I’ve got to explain this, was an end to the suffering.
My husband was a good man.
A faithful man.
A man who had lost everything and was now bein’ asked to endure more.
So, I offered him what seemed, at the time, a reasonable alternative:
If the arrangement has become unbearable…
End the arrangement.
His Reply (Which History Prefers)
He said:
“You speak as one of the foolish women speaks.”
Now, I have lived with that sentence longer than I care to admit.
And I will say this:
A woman can be called foolish for suggestin’ mercy while a man is called righteous for refusin’ it.
History does have its preferences.
After the Words
What no one tells you is this:
I stayed.
Through the boils.
Through the silence.
Through the long stretch of days where nothin’ improved, and no explanation was offered.
I didn’t leave.
I didn’t curse.
I didn’t disappear into the footnotes of someone else’s virtue.
I remained.
Closing Observation
So yes, I spoke a sentence.
One sentence.
And it has followed me like a shadow ever since.
But if you are lookin’ for the truth of me, you might consider this:
It is easy to praise a man for his endurance.
It is harder…
To sit beside it.
And that, as near as I can tell it, is how I became a cautionary tale for sayin’ out loud what others were thinkin’ quietly.
olbigjim 