Job, His Daughters and His Wife

The epilogue and prologue of the book of Job reveal that Job treated his second set of daughters better than his first: Job's first daughters are invited to their brothers' birthday feasts, but they have no birthday feasts of their own. This reveals a practice of benevolent yet prejudicial exclusion within the Joban family system that contrasts heavily with the epilogue's description of how Job's second set of daughters received ‘inheritances among their brothers’. This contrast raises the question as to what caused Job to change in this treatment of his daughters. A probable answer is explored in this article: namely, that Job's suffering approximated the experience of his first set of daughters to the extent that Job suffered through no fault of his own and therefore, through his suffering, Job gained empathy for his daughters leading to a remarkable change in terms of how Job treated his second set of daughters. It follows that Job's suffering had the purpose of stimulating an ethical reform that could only have been achieved via Job's unjust suffering