Tuesday, June 16, 2020

Job's wife

When Job got hit with disease on top of all his other losses, his wife said "Curse God and die!"

When I was O(8 years old) I wondered what kind of phrasing was involved in that curse--after all, he went on to complain at length, including coming very close to calling God unjust. What was the boundary between kvetching and a final sort of curse?

The other day I was reminded of Chesterton's "The man who kills himself, kills all men; as far as he is concerned he wipes out the world." Perhaps that's what she meant. Perhaps it was an idiom for suicide: trying to wipe out God and all His works--from Job's point of view.

That would be futile, of course--and I think Job knew it.

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