Job’s Wife – Different Faces of the Same Woman. The Interpretation of Job 2:9–10 in the Hebrew Bible, the Septuagint and the Testament of Job

Abstract

The article focuses on the figure of Job’s wife in three different traditions. Starting from the Hebrew text of the Book of Job, it shows the different stages in the interpretation of the character of Job’s wife and its role in the Book. In the Hebrew text Job’s wife appears only in the verses 2:9–10, where she pronounces one sentence (“curse God and die”). She is presented there as a kind of “devil’s helper”, diavoli adiutrix, as she was called by St. Augustine. However, the oldest translation of the text – the Greek Septuagint – shows her role in the Book differently: LXX extends her speech into couple of verses, paying attention not only to Job’s suffering but also to the affliction of his wife, who suffers like her husband (in particular because of the loss of her children and her hard work). On the basis of this interpretation, which in all probability was the work of the LXX translator of the Book of Job (original LXX variant), grew even more elaborate view of Job’s wife in the apocryphal Testament of Job, which was created in the environment of ancient Alexandria (thus the same as the Septuagint), probably in the I century BC. The character and role of Job’s wife, who even receives a name Sitis, expands to several chapters there. Her attitude toward suffering husband is considered almost like of the women who are praised in the Wisdom tradition as the courageous ones (for example in the poem from Proverbs 31). Such an extended thread can be considered as the oldest interpretation of the LXX text of the Book of Job. These three interpretations due to reveal different faces of the same woman and are the good example of the influence that the Greek translation of the LXX had on the history of interpretation of the Book of Job.