by
Damien F. Mackey
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Given that the prophet Job
was Tobias of the Book of Tobit (see Part One), then Sarah, the only known wife
of the same Tobias, is a candidate for the unknown wife of Job.
Now, there are enough
indications in the Book of Tobit to suggest that Sarah continued to live until
the very old age of Tobias, thereby making her the likely candidate
for Job’s wife.
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Questions
to be answered
- Was Sarah the same woman as the wife of Job’s trials? - so, can we now replace the usual “Mrs Job” with “Sarah”?
- And was it the wife of Job’s trials who lived on to provide Job with more offspring?
- Or did the wife of Job’s trials simply fade from the scene before the prophet’s deliverance, since the Book of Job - which mentions her in passing in 19:17 and 31:10 - does not refer to her at the end of the book.
Now, I think that there may be enough
indications in the Book of Tobit to indicate that Sarah, the wife of Tobias,
hence of Job (according to my view), had continued to be his wife until his
late old age. Sarah, then, is my choice for “Mrs Job”, the wife of Job’s trials.
In Tobit 8:7, for instance, young
Tobias prays with Sarah that the pair may attain to old age together: ‘And
so I take my sister not for any lustful motive, but I do it in singleness of
heart. Be kind enough to have pity on her and on me and bring us to old age
together’.
There is a hint of this again in the
prayer of Raguel, the father of Sarah, in v. 17: ‘You are blessed for taking
pity on this only son, this only daughter. Grant them, Master, your mercy and
your protection; let them live out their lives in happiness and in mercy’.
More specific in terms of time is
the blessing over the young couple by Gabael of Rhages (9:11): ‘And may you see your children, and
your children's children, unto the third and fourth generation …’.
These words might tactfully have been omitted from the
Book of Tobit had this blessing of “third and fourth generation” not been
realised.
Finally, there is nothing to suggest that Sarah was no
longer with the enlarged Tobiad family when, upon the death of parents Tobit
and Anna, the family departed Nineveh, to head back west (see my:
A Common Sense Geography
of the Book of Tobit
to Bashan (= “Ecbatana”), Tobit 14:12: “When Tobias’s mother died, he buried
her beside his father. Then he and his
wife and children returned
to Media [read “Midian”] and settled in Ecbatana with Raguel his father-in-law”.
It was there, in Bashan, in the “land of Uz” (see my:
that Tobias/Job
would experience his greatest trial.
And Sarah would
still be his wife, she being the same as the sorely tested “wife” of Job 19:17 and 31:10.
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