Comments on: Job’s turkey, poor as

By: MARY

MARY — Sun, 17 Feb 2013 18:18:43 +0000

Sunday, February, 17, 2013. I first heard the expression: “We were as poor as Job’s turkey” from my cousin Eloise Anderson who is 96 years of age in 2013. Her family has been Baptist for many generations and they have had two ministers in the family, and the expression was widely used by them. They lived in Waterdown, Ontario; Emerson, Manitoba; and Woodstock, Ontario; they were mostly in farming. Isn’t the INTERNET wonderful?

By: Tom Christopher

Tom Christopher — Sat, 11 Aug 2012 00:33:06 +0000

My father, a Connecticut Yankee with a taste for colorful expressions, used to use that one too. I always wondered why a turkey? No turkeys in the ancient Middle East.

By: Jason

Jason — Wed, 02 May 2012 16:30:46 +0000

@Rick Dostie same here, our family used it a lot here in Maine as well. I just used it at work today when a co-worker asked if I wanted to contribute to a pizza for lunch today, lol. I said, “I can’t today. I am poor as Job’s turkey until tomorrow.”

By: Bill White

Bill White — Wed, 18 Apr 2012 16:04:21 +0000

Interesting to learn this. The expression is used in Tennessee Williams’ play Cat On a Hot Tin Roof – set in Mississippi in the 1950′s. I’m in a production of it right now and we have been wondering about that expression.

Incidentally, I did know someone named Poe. A friend’s maternal grandparents had that name – they were from Charlotte, NC.

By: j.r. fishburne

j.r. fishburne — Fri, 16 Dec 2011 13:58:16 +0000

my family used the expression in ocean springs, mississippi in the 1880s.

By: Rick Dostie

Rick Dostie — Thu, 07 Jul 2011 17:27:12 +0000

The expression is not limited to the South. I’ve heard it for years here in Maine, and have often used it myself. I did wonder where it came from, and figured it did refer to the Book of Job, a part of the Bible which many people don’t know from Adam’s off ass.

By: Bill Brandon

Bill Brandon — Thu, 30 Jun 2011 22:15:15 +0000

Some expressions are not as dead as one might think. “Poor as Job’s turkey” was a common phrase in my father’s family. They were mostly from Tennessee (one great-grandmother was from Missouri) and moved to Texas after the Civil War. I still use the phrase today, and perhaps my children and grandchildren will as well.

By: Robert Sutherland

Robert Sutherland — Mon, 01 Dec 2008 09:24:40 +0000

You might be interested in this online commentary “Putting God on Trial: The Biblical Book of Job” (http://www.bookofjob.org) as supplementary or background material for your study of the Book of Job. It is not a sin to question God, to demand answers from God. There is a time and a place for such things. It is written by a Canadian criminal defense lawyer, now a Crown prosecutor, and it explores the legal and moral dynamics of the Book of Job with particular emphasis on the distinction between causal responsibility and moral blameworthiness embedded in Job’s Oath of Innocence. It is highly praised by Job scholars (Clines, Janzen, Habel) and the Review of Biblical Literature, all of whose reviews are on the website. The author is an evangelical Christian, denominationally Anglican. He is also the Canadian Director for the Mortimer J. Adler Centre for the Study of the Great Ideas, a Chicago-based think tank.