Job 2:9

Then his wife makes her only appearance in this drama. She speaks only once. She must have followed him out to the ash-heap, weeping and wailing. And now she speaks, but not of herself. Satan uses her as his instrument. He speaks through her. "Do you still hold fast your integrity? Curse God and die." That is exactly what Satan had said in God's presence, that Job would do this very thing. And now he uses the woman to suggest suicide to Job.

Job himself was struck as severely and mercilessly as he had earlier been stripped of children and possessions. Everything was completely gone. And the one who was nearest to him, instead of being a helper, tempts him in despair, but in vain.

"Curse [literally, bless] God, and die." It was a dreadful speech. Satan drew it out of her, and her failure to look up to God was just as truly behind it… He does not say, "You speak as a foolish woman"; he goes no further than, "You speak as one of the foolish ones." It is well known that the word "foolish" has a morally bad sense in Scripture. This is not a question of weak intellect. It is the worst kind of moral corruption — the kind that blots out God, and so makes nothing of His word.

Curse God! That would have meant giving up his God. Could he do that? Never. He could lose everything, but not his God. Many things may have seemed essential to him in earlier days. But he had reached this point now: he could do without everything but God. God alone was essential to Job.

We will not be dogmatic about Job's wife. The root of the matter may have been in her, and she may have been only for a time overwhelmed by her grief. But her words are very evil… Some have thought that her love for Job prompted these words. On that view, she could not bear to see one so dear to her in such torture, and so she was in effect advising suicide. We can leave her case with Him who searches the heart… She was placing herself among the godless who despise God. She had been quite willing to enjoy good things from the hand of God. Now that He sees fit to send trial, shall we refuse to take it as meant for good? It was God who was the giver in each case.

So far as Job was concerned, Satan's efforts proved useless. Having done his utmost, he goes away… God enabled Job to hold fast his integrity. Had matters ended here, his patient endurance would only have strengthened the platform of his righteousness and fed his self-satisfaction… Yet even as he lay among the ashes, Job was not truly penitent and broken-hearted. He was not yet thoroughly broken down before God. He was still the great man — great in his misfortunes as he had been in his prosperity.

The very worst thing that can happen to any one of us is to allow the enemy to plant any doubt in our minds about the love of God. That love lies behind ALL His dealings with us… Then the enemy shot a flaming arrow at Job. In Job's case it was his wife. This shows us something: although we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, the enemy sometimes uses flesh and blood when he attacks us… but Job met that thrust with the shield of faith… and the flaming arrow fell to the ground.