Tuesday, April 28, 2015

Did Job’s Wife really say to the Prophet: ‘Curse God and die’? Part Three. The Testament of Job.








by

 Damien F. Mackey


  


 

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The Testament of Job is thought to have been written somewhere between the C1st BC and the C1st AD. It adds details not to be found in the biblical Book of Job, such as the spectacular one that Job was a veritable king of Egypt.

 

Importantly, for this study, the Testament of Job gives more prominence to Job’s wife, even providing her with a personal name – a detail missing from the Book of Job. And that name is, as it happens, cognate with “Sarah”, the name of Job’s wife (see my Part Two).

 

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Prologue


 


To the reader who wrote the following, recalling an alternative (for Job as Jobab of Genesis) to my thesis that the prophet Job was Tobias, son of Tobit:


 


Hi Damien, while I find this topic intriguing, I am finding difficulty in linking Tobias whose father was Tobit and his mother was Anna (apparently), but there is no indication of Job(Tobias) sons. I am at the moment trying to find a genealogical path to Sarah. So far her father was Reuel(Raguel) and mother was Edna.


….


what do you say concerning Gen 36.33. It does not explicitly describe the genealogy of Jobab as Job. However, his lineage can be traced through his father Zare (Gen 36:33), whom the Edomite genealogy identifies as a son of Raguel (Gen 36:16–17), one of the sons of Esau by Ishmael’s daughter Basemath (Gen 36:10). …. [,]


 


I replied in favour of my view for Job’s having lived at a time much later than Jobab’s:


 


…. Names get duplicated. For example, the geographical names in the Book of Job, usually attributed to Edom, can also be found in the region of Bashan where I locate Job. I noted this fact in “Job’s Life and Times” [https://www.academia.edu/3787850/Jobs_Life_and_Times]. …. If you carefully read [this article], you will see from that quote of Delitzsch that the type of fertile farmland that the Book of Job attributes to Job can by no means be located in sterile Edom. But it does fit Bashan, where Arabic traditions place the home of Job – and so do I. The Book of Job is closest in style and content to Jeremiah (and Lamentations), sometimes almost word for word with Jeremiah (who, I have suggested, may have been young Elihu of the Book of Job). It clearly belongs to the c. C7th BC. Also, the mention of a squadron of Chaldeans is fitting in that late era, but not at all in the era of Jobab of Genesis.


….


Added to all that, the mention of the Adversary “Satan” seems to be a late concept, also occurring in Zechariah 3:1. And C. Seow has described the Book of Tobit as being the “most substantial early influence” on the Book of Job, see: http://bookofjob-amaic.blogspot.com.au/2015/04/book-of-tobit-is-most-substantial-early.html


That is most fitting if Job was the son of Tobit, as I am arguing. ….


 


[End of e-mails]


 


The Testament of Job


 


According to this late apocryphal document we learn that Job’s wife of his sufferings - i.e., the wife whom we had encountered most fleetingly in the Book of Job - was named Sitis. The Jewish Encyclopedia article on the subject thus summarises the rôle of this Sitis in the tale (http://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/articles/8694-job-testament-of):


 


For seven years (48 years; Paris MS.) [Job] sat on a dunghill outside of the city, while his wife, Sitis, who had been brought up in royal luxury, served as water-carrier to win bread for herself and him. Afterward (after 15 years; Paris MS.), when she was no longer allowed to take him bread, Satan, disguised as a bread-seller, went to meet her, asking, as the price of three loaves of bread for her starving husband, for the hair on her head; to save her husband from famishing, she consented (comp. Shab. 59a; Akiba's wife). At last, when under the influence of Satan, her patience gave way, and in an impassioned appeal, full of pathos (contrasting her former riches and glory with her present state of gloom and poverty) and poetic grandeur, she called upon Job to curse God and die (comp. LXX. Job ii. 9). Job, however, indignantly rebuked her and challenged Satan, who had been hidden behind her all this while, saying: "Only a coward fights with frail woman; come forth and wage war with me!" Then Satan broke forth into tears, and said, "I yield to thee who art the great wrestler," and left him, abashed (ch. iii.-vi., ed. Kohler; ix.-xxvii., ed. James; comp. B. B. 16a: "The grief of Satan was greater than that of Job"). As to Job, the great "athlete" or "wrestler," see IV Macc. vi. 10, xvii. 15-16; and Philo [where Job is frequently characterized as such; comp. Heb. x. 32. ….


[End of quote]


 


According to my Part One of this series, Job’s wife had intended in 2:9 for her husband, not “to curse God and die”, as according to the Testament of Job above, but to “bless God and die”.


But the special jewel that I draw from The Testament of Job is that the name here attributed to Job’s wife, Sitis (var. Siti, Sitidos), has the Arabic meaning of “Lady” (سيتي).


And so with the name, “Sarah” (שָׂרָה) (http://finejudaica.com/pages/hebrew_names.htm): “Hebrew name meaning “noble lady, princess”.


 


So, possibly, the Testament of Job has preserved, in the Arabic name Siti[s], meaning “Lady”, the actual name of Job’s much tested wife, Sarah, meaning “Lady”.   


 

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