The Quran Verse
Surah 38:44:
'Take in your hand a bundle of rushes and strike with it and do not break your oath.' Indeed, We found him patient...
According to Islamic tradition (Tafsir), during his agonizing illness, Job became angry with his wife and swore a sacred oath to give her 100 lashes once he recovered. Upon his miraculous healing, God did not want the righteous, long-suffering wife to be brutally beaten, but also required that Job not break his oath. God's solution was to tell Job to bind 100 thin blades of grass together and strike her just once.
Critics label this a blatant legal fiction (Hilah)—a theological loophole designed to technically satisfy the letter of a vow while completely violating its moral spirit. To the critic, an omniscient deity providing a technical workaround to facilitate the physical striking of a spouse reduces divine law to a game of semantics and completely misses the existential grandeur of the Biblical Book of Job.