Iob et Feminismus

Job's Three Daughters

Amici, Americani, Compatriotae,

Today's Old Testament reading in the Divine Liturgy is from Job chapter 42. Here God more than restores Job's fortunes that Satan had taken away in chapters 1 and 2. I observed during the reading two interesting things.

First, nowhere in Job's restoration is his wife mentioned. Recall that she told Job, "Are you still holding to your innocence? Curse God and die!" (Job 2:9) Then she disappears from the remaining Sacred Text.

Second, when Job's fortunes are restored, the Sacred Text gives us the names for his three new daughters but not his seven new sons (recall that in Job 1:19 his first sons and daughters had been killed by a great wind collapsing the walls of the house where they were eating and drinking). Job 42:14 says, "The first daughter he called Jemimah, the second Keziah, and the third Keren-happuch." According to one of my many study Bibles, Jemimah means Handsome as the Day, Keziah or Cassia means Fragrance and Keren-happuch means Horn of Color. The verse 15 goes on to say, "In all the land no other women were as beautiful as the daughters of Job; and their father gave them an inheritance among their brothers." So their father Job treated them with the same dignity and concern that he treated his sons in that (contrary to general custom in the ancient Middle East) he gave them an inheritance as well. Thus does God consider women equal to men in dignity (but NOT in function!).

So what are the lesson here to learn? First, defy God like a liberal feminist as Job's wife did by saying curse God and die, and you will be wiped out from any mention. Your name will be absent from the Lamb's Book of Life (Revelation 20:11 through 15). But a real man who perseveres through Satan's affliction and persecution as Job did will always give honor and respect to the nobility and virtue of true femininity and womanhood. And the honor and respect that Job gave to authentic womanhood are contained in the names that he gave to his new daughters: Handsome as the Day, Fragrance and Horn of Color.

Now we don't know what became of Job's wife for the Sacred Text is silent on that score. She may have died and Job married another by whom he begot his new offspring, or she may have lived on and remained with Job, birthing to him his new family. But the important point is this: God hates the defiance and disobedience of feminism with its hubris, ego and arrogance, but loves authentic womanhood. How could He not for He deigned to become incarnate by a woman - the Blessed Virgin Mary?