Soon after, Job heard his three friends, Bildad, Eliphaz, and Zophar, converse together, and repeat what had been told them by Satan; and the thought that he was supposed to be rejected by God from among His prophets, was so distressing to him, that he cried out, “Truly, O God! evil has befallen me; but Thou art the most merciful of those who show mercy.”[448] That is, the words of men are cruel, but Thou, O God, wilt deliver me out of all my evils. Job was sick for seven years, and all that while his wife ministered to him. But the mediæval commentators draw a very different picture of this wife, relying on the words of Scripture which make her tempt Job to “_curse God and die_.” They say that her tongue was one of the plagues of Job. That he bore patiently the loss of his cattle, of his children, and of his health, was indeed wonderful; but that he also endured the nagging of his wife with equanimity,—that was the most wonderful of all. Then God looked on Job and had compassion upon him, and he said to him, “Strike the earth with thy foot.”[449] Job stamped, and from the dung-heap on which he had been seated a clear stream of water issued, the sweetest that there is, and the water continued to flow. Then God said to Job, “Wash in this water.” Rahma, the wife of Job, poured the water upon his head and over his body, and he washed himself. All the sores that were on his flesh disappeared, and he was healed; there was not a scar left, and he appeared more beautiful than before he was afflicted. Then God said to Job, “Drink of the water.” Then all the worms that were in the inside of Job died, and he was quite whole. Now this took place in Bashan, and the fountain remains to this day, and is called Qarya-Aïyub, and the city near which it is, Aïrs-Aïyub. “I have seen the city of the fountain,” says the Persian translator of Tabari: “every person who goes there, affected by internal or external maladies, and washes and drinks of that water, is healed of his disease.”[450] Then God said to Job, “Fulfil thy vow, and take in thine hand a bundle of rods.”[451] But the rods God told him to take were light sticks; and he took a hundred of these, and bound them together and smote Rahma with them, and he did not hurt her. By this action of Job, the Mussulman doctors support their advice to those who have taken rash oaths to clear themselves by a subterfuge. Thus, if a man has sworn he will not enter his house again, he is recommended to allow himself to be bound hand and foot and be carried into his home. Or, if he has sworn to recite the whole Koran, it will be sufficient for him to say the word “Koran,” and listen to the imaum reading before the assembly. Then God restored to Job double all that he had lost; and Job lived, after he was recovered of his disease, twenty years, and he died at the age of ninety-three.