Christle Maier's Job Story

at https://books.google.co.nz/books. Christle Maier is the Professor of Old Testament at Yale Divinity School, and Professor Silvia Schroer’s is an editor and writer whose area of specialisation is The Old Testament, feminist exegesis and hermeneutics. She is the founder and editor of the first Internet journal for feminist exegesis in Europe, the "Lectio Difficilior".

The Job story gives little space to women, rather it silences Job's wife in a brief paragraph and devotes the remainder of the book to men. Women, their world and experiences, appear in patriarchal perspective only in a very peripheral way. While the story concerns a man who experiences much misfortune and shows great patience, in their compendium “Feminist Biblical Interpretation”

Job’s wife plays no part as a person in her own right. In 31:10 Job suggests that if he has committed various offences, then his unnamed wife should “grind another man’s grain.” Presumably this means to serve another man, possibly also in a sexual sense, and be transferred as a possession. Thus, Job puts at stake the integrity of his wife. There is no perception of a real loving relationship between Job and his wife who is relegated to be a nameless womb. Her name was never revealed and yet she may be one of the most famous or infamous woman in the Bible. Augustine labeled her "the devil's accomplice." Calvin called her "a diabolical fury." And the contemporary understanding of Job's wife hasn't improved much on Calvin or Augustine. It's difficult to find a book or sermon treatment of the life of Job that doesn't include the usual condemnations about his wife. It has become somewhat standard to pity Job, as if his wife was yet another cross God called this man to

Ten times God had blessed her womb. Ten times she endured the joy and pain of childbirth. Ten lives nurtured to love, honour, and respect Jehovah. Imagine the grief that overwhelmed her soul as she looked down in disbelief at ten freshly dug graves. From the account in the first chapter of Job, this appears to be a fun-loving, God-fearing, tight-knit family. Who was the heartbeat of this home? Likely Job's wife played a big part in that. It's unlikely he could be such an esteemed man in society (Job 1:1) if his wife was not an integral and influential leader in her own