Job 28-32

The Facts (Chapter number: Verse)

Job 28 - No mention of any women.

Job 29 - No mention of any women.

Job 30 - No mention of any women.

31:1 - "I have made a covenant with my eyes; how then could I look upon a virgin?"
31:9-12 - "If my heart has been enticed by a woman, and I have lain in wait at my neighbor's door; then let my wife grind for another, and let other men kneel over her. For that would be a heinous crime; that would be a criminal offense; for that would be a fire consuming down to Abaddon, and it would burn to the root all my harvest."
31:13-15 - "If I have rejected the cause of my male or female slaves, when they brought a complaint against me; what then shall I do when God rises up? When he makes inquiry, what shall I answer him? Did not he who made me in the womb make them? And did not one fashion us in the womb?"
31:16 - "If I have withheld anything that the poor desired, or caused the eyes of the widow to fall,"
31:18 - "for from my youth I reared the orphan like a father, and from my mother's womb I guided the widow"

Job 32 - No mention of any women.

My Comments

You know who I just realized is very absent from this entire book so far?

Job's wife.

Job waxes poetic for 30 chapters now, and not once have we heard from his wife nor has he really mentioned his wife (at least not in any meaningful way). He claims to have lost everything in his life, and yet we haven't read about his wife dying or leaving him. Is his wife not important? I would think she would be if as nothing more than someone who can bear him more sons. So either Job's wife is dead and she is just so insignificant that her death didn't even need to be mentioned or she is so insignificant that she doesn't count as anything of worth in his life. While lamenting his losses he doesn't mention that he still has her.

So, to sum up: Job's wife means nothing to Job. She means so little that she might as well not exist.

How sweet, right?

And I think Job 31:9-12 is basically saying that if Job lusts after another man's wife that his own wife may as well belong to another. I think. Which is interesting because it acknowledges that if he lusts after another woman he is willfully neglecting his very own wife. So if he is neglecting her she may as well be someone else's wife.

Which has little or no impact when you realize that he has been neglecting her and treating her as nothing THIS ENTIRE BOOK.

Just... just... ugh!

The last verse of Job 31 reads, "The words of Job are ended." My first thought upon reading that was, "Thank God, now we won't have to listen to him bitch any longer."

Wednesday: More Job