JOB – CHAPTER 2

JOB AGAIN IN SATAN’S NET

Verses 1-8:

His Future Testing

Verses 1, 2 report that there came a time when the sons of God (servant angels of God) Job 1:6, also called “saints” or holy ones, Job 5:1, a ministering band of unfallen angels, appeared before or in the presence of God, to report their activities, Heb 1:14; Psa 34:7. Satan also “came among them to present himself before the Lord.” He had a report to give on his relations with Job. Note that in Job 1:6 Satan “came among the sons of God” as an impostor, of his own accord, but he asserted that he had been going to and fro (hurrying, rushing about) in the earth, walking hastily up and down in it, like a caged lion or tiger, like a fish in a bowl, with fear, yet, seeking whom he might devour, Job 1:7; Mat 12:43; 1Pe 5:8; See also Gen 3:1; Psa 109:6. He will continue his work of deception and destruction until he is cast into the bottomless pit, prepared for him, his angels, and those who forget God, Rev 20:10; Mat 25:41; Psa 9:17.

Verse 3 relates the Lord’s inquiry of Satan, as a testimony, for the record’s sake, whether or not he had considered or approached His servant Job, a perfect, upright man, who feared God, and who eschewed or avoided an evil pattern of life. Then the Lord certified to Satan that Job was a man of integrity, tho the Lord had been moved (motivated) by Satan to destroy him, ruin him, or swallow him up, without a cause, 1Kg 8:61; Job 9:17; Job 27:5-6; Pro 1:12.

Verses 4, 5 recount Satan’s reply that “skin for skin” all that a man had he would give for his life, Job 1:11. Of course he lied, being the father of lies, Joh 8:44. Many men have forfeited their lives out of love for God, family, and country, not forfeited these to save their own skin. Satan further challenged the Lord to put forth His hand “of destruction” and touch his flesh and bone and Job would “curse thee to thy face,” a second lie he here told, v. 9, 10; Job 19:22.

Verse 6 states that the Lord granted Satan permission to do anything further he cared to do to Job’s skin-body, except he could not take his life. He had been given power to destroy al that Job had, his possessions, and his family, and he had done this; yet Job held his fidelity, his integrity, his unwavering trust in God, Job 1:12; Job 2:3; Job 27:5-6; Pro 3:5-6.

Verses 7, 8 relate that Satan then went forth of his own will, accord, and purpose from the presence of the Lord. Then, by the permissive power of God, Satan smote Job’s body with sore or malignant, putrefying boils, that became as one scab sore, a black burning sore or boil, referred to also as “the botch of Egypt,” Psa 38:4-8; Isa 1:6. This covered him from the sole of his foot to the crown of his head. Job, thus afflicted by Satan, took a “potsherd,” an instrument made for scratching the sores that were too disgusting to touch, and sat down in ashes, in deepest humiliation, there to suffer and to scratch, as a deep mourner, Gen 18:27; Joh 3:6; Eze 27:30.

Fuente: Garner-Howes Baptist Commentary

Notes

Job. 2:4. Skin for skin; yea, all that a man hath will he give for his life. The expression skin for skin acknowledged to be a proverbial one. Its precise meaning not so obvious, though its general drift, as used by the Evil One, is sufficiently apparent. The Septuagint and Vulgate translate as we do; the one rendering the preposition by , and the other by pro. The Chaldaic has: Member for member. So BERNARD, who renders the words: Limb for limb. Martins French Version has: Every one will give skin for skin. Some, as PARKHURST and WEMYSS, render the phrase: Skin after skin. Others, as PINEDA and TIRINUS: Skin upon skin, i.e., all skins; or, according to POOLE, all outward things. YOUNG translates: A skin for a skin. The meanings thus reducible to four:

1. The skin of another for ones own skin. So VATABLUS, TIRINUS, SEB. SCHMIDT, MAIER. Skin, in this view, is regarded by some as equivalent to body, as in chap. Job. 16:15; Job. 18:13; Job. 19:26; like Horaces Pelliculam curare jubet. So ROSENMOLLER and HUFNAGEL. By others it is viewed as equivalent to life: what a man holds as dear to him as his skin, i.e., his life, he will give to save his life. So GESENIUS and HUPFELDT, after ORIGEN who says: A man will give a skin, which is sold for money, to save his own skin, i.e., his life. Others: Job will give the skin of his cattle, even that of his children, to save his own. So GREGORY, EPHREM SYRUS, MERCER, PISCATOR, DRUSIUS, NOYES, &C. Like that of Terence: Proximus sum egomet mihi. In this view, the proverb is explained by what follows.

2. Like for like; i.e., any one gives that; men part with anything for a full equivalent. So CODURCUS, HIRZEL, CONANT: Equivalent for equivalent. MAURER: Job may well give up the rest to keep his life. FAUSSET: One thing for another. EWALD: All is subject to barter. UMBREIT: One article is given for another; but life is dearest to all: Job is satisfied so long as he is not obliged to give up that. CODURCUS: The origin of the proverb in the general practice of barter, or in the use of animals instead of men in sacrifice. POOLE: Skins or spoils of beasts in early ages the most valuable property men could acquire; hence became the chief representative of property. GOOD and BOOTHROYD: Skin an equivalent for riches, furniture, &c. PINEDA and SCHULTENS: In the expression skin for skin, GOOD thinks the word issued in two different senses,property is given for life. COBBIN remarks that probably ransoms used also to be paid in skins. CAREY sees in the proverb a sort of reductio ad absurdum: a man will not part with his skin unless you supply him with another; on no terms will he part with his life: hence Job, to save his life, will part with his religion.

3. Limb for limb; or, one thing parted with to save the rest: a less noble member will be given up for a nobler one, as an arm for a head. So MENOCHIUS, MUNSTER, A. CLARKE, &C. The view of some of the fathers: a man will put up his hand to ward off a blow from his eye. So GREGORY, OLYMPIODORUS. Dr. LEE: Men willingly give up a worse thing for a better: hence, much more will a man give up all he has for his life. COCCEIUS: Job can easily afford to part with all while he keeps his life,his possessions being as it were a skin or covering to his person to protect and warm him: the one of themthe less valuablehe easily lets go to keep the other. So SCHLOTTMANN, DELITZSCH, and ZCKLER in Lange, who regards the life to be preserved as not so much the animal or life-function, as the soul which causes and conditions it.

4. Skin upon skin. So Dr. THOMASS, in The Homilist: likesovereign after sovereign; all the sovereigns a man has, &c.; skin, equivalent to property; life dearer than all. Job willing to have skin upon skin taken from him to save his life. SCHULTENS remarks that the Arabs call possessions the outer skinfriends and relations the inner one. According to OLSHAUSEN, the meaning is: So long as thou dost sot touch his person, he will not attack thee. COLEMAN thinks an allusion is made to the terrific skin-disease with which Satan purposed to afflict Job. CONANT regards the rendering of the copula vaw before all by yea, as embarrassing the sense, by anticipating the readers judgment of the relation of the two clauses, and proposes to read it as usual: And all that a man hath, &c. UMBREIT, and after him FAUSSET, would put skin and life in the two clauses in antithesis to each other, and render the copula but. So DE WETTE: People give up other things; but they take care of their lifethe highest value put upon that. According to BARNES, the idea is: If Job was so afflicted as to have his life endangered, he would give up his religion to save it.

SIXTH PART OF INTRODUCTION.PREPARATION FOR JOBS FURTHER TRIAL

I. Second Celestial Council (Job. 2:1). Again there was a day, some time after the events already related. Not said how long. Heavenly things represented under the figure of earthly ones, in condescension to our capacity. In heaven no succession of day and night (Rev. 21:25).The sons of God came, &c. Same scene represented as before. Gods providence continually exercised, and extending to all times and events. His angelic ministers continually serving Him in their respective spheres (Rev. 22:3). His state is kingly; thousands at his bidding speed, &c. Good to rememberThey also serve who only stand and wait. Angels intensely interested in the salvation of men, and employed in helping to promote it (Act. 8:26; Act. 10:3).Satan also came. Summoned, or expecting a fresh permission. Like Saul of Tarsus, breathing out threatening and slaughter, and eager to get out a fresh commission of destruction (Act. 9:1).To present himself before the Lord, having previously received a commission. This, therefore, omitted in the former account. Men, angels, and devils, amenable to God.

II. Gods testimony to Jobs steadfastness (Job. 2:2). From whence comest thou? Happy for us that Gods eye is continually on Satans movements (Luk. 22:31-32).From going to and fro. Active and restless as ever. Says nothing of the harm he has done. An evil doer seldom has the courage to speak the whole truth (2Ki. 5:25).Walking up and down in it. God says the same thing of him, but tells us how (1Pe. 5:8). As Job still retained his integrity, so Satan his assiduity. Believers neither to be ignorant of his devices, nor forgetful of his zeal.(Job. 2:3). Hast thou considered my servant Job? Job still Gods servant. Gods estimate of His people not diminished by their sufferings. Precious testimony to the poor persecuted church at Smyrna (Rev. 2:9). Still holdeth fast his integrity. Perfect and upright as before. Still, notwithstanding these severe and accumulated trials. Holdeth fast, implying exertion. Hard to hold out in such a storm. Satans efforts to rob Job of his integrity, Jobs to retain it. Whatever a godly man loses he will keep his integrity. If you love my soul away with it, said a martyr at the stake, when tempted with a pardon to recant. Two things never to be let goChrists righteousness, and a good conscience. The Epistle to the Hebrews written to strengthen tried believers to hold fast their profession (Heb. 3:14; Heb. 4:14; Heb. 10:23; Heb. 10:35; Heb. 10:39). God a concerned and compassionate observer of his peoples conduct under trials (Jer. 31:18; Hos. 14:8). Commends their conduct in them, without at once delivering them from them. What is well done is sure, sooner or later, to receive His approving testimony. God neither conceals our graces nor our improvement of them. To continue good while suffering evil, the crown of goodness. A good man persevering in evil times an object of Divine admiration [Seneca].Gods further commendation of Job now enlarged. Grace grows in conflict. Although thou movedst me against him. Implies successful urgency (So 1Ki. 21:25). Spoken after the manner of men. Satan an excellent orator if he but have an audience [Trapp].Thou movedst me. God afflicteth not willingly (Lam. 3:33). Satan an earnest pleader against the saints: Christ as earnest for them (Joh. 17:11; Joh. 17:15; Joh. 17:17). Satans malice and calumny the occasion of Jobs sufferings, and so of his subsequent glory. Gods secret purpose to exhibit the reality and preciousness of His servants faith. All questioning of the efficacy of Christs redemption and the power of Divine grace, to be for ever silenced. Not only events themselves purposed by God, but the way and occasion of their occurrence.To destroy him, Marg., to swallow him up. Satans cruel intention. Satans object in trial is to destroy; Gods, to prove and purify. Gods sympathy with His suffering people. What Satan called a touch, God calls destruction. Awful judgment to be left in the hands of the roaring lion (1Pe. 5:8).Without cause.

(1.) Without any special sin of his to merit it. This testimony to be remembered throughout the book. Believed and maintained by Job; denied by his three friends. The cause of his perplexity and distraction aggravated by their opposition. Tried believers often ignorant of Gods thoughts concerning them, and of the cause and object of their trial.

(2.) Without ground or necessity for it. Satans charge proved by the result to be unfounded.

III. Satans farther accusation (Job. 2:4). Satan answered the Lord. Satanic impudence. Though defeated, he has still an answer for God. Boldness acquired by a course of iniquity. A whores forehead (Jer. 3:3).Skin for skin. A proverbial expression. A mere question of barter. Job has yet a whole skin. He will part with anything to save his life. Will give up what he has, to save himself. We must give up our beards to save our heads [Turkish Proverb].All that a man bath he will give for his life. Not only his property and children, but probably his religion too. The test not yet sufficiently severe. The screw needs only to be driven a little farther. Satan argues still on the principles of mans selfishness. His words too often verified in fallen humanity. Peruvians sacrificed their firstborn to redeem their own life when the priest pronounced them mortally sick. Cranmer, in a moment of weakness, at first recanted in order to escape martyrdom. Abraham, when left to himself to save his life, gave up Sarah, and instigated her to tell a lie (Gen. 12:12-13). Yet the statement a libel upon the race. Satan true to his character. Self-preservation a powerful instinct, but not supreme. With a good man, subordinate to the principles of morality and religion. Yields to faith, hope, and charity. Paul counted not his life dear to him that he might finish his course and ministry with joy (Act. 20:24). Daniel, Stephen, and all the noble army of martyrs give Satan the lie. Men and women have died, refusing to accept deliverance, to obtain a better resurrection (Heb. 11:35). Welcome, death! said Hugh MKail, on the martyrs scaffold. Welcome, if need be, the axe or the gibbet; but evil befall the tongue that dares to make me so infamous a proposal, said Kossuth, in reply to the Sultans proposal to save his life by renouncing Christianity.Touch his bone and his flesh (Job. 2:5). Strike home at his person. Person nearer than property or children. Intensest pain and suffering intended. The iron to enter the soul. Satans cruelty. A merciless tormentor (Mat. 18:34). Unwearied in his efforts to destroy Always needful to prepare for new assaults. Satan acquainted with the tendency of great bodily suffering. Pain, a powerful means of disquieting and weakening the mind. Without disordering its faculties, able to exhaust its energies and sink it into despondency. A piercing shaft in Satans quiver. A thorn in the flesh Pauls great temptation (2Co. 12:7; 2Co. 12:9). Men blasphemed God because of the pain (Rev. 16:9). This Satans expectation in regard to Job.He will curse thee, &c. Same assertion as before. Satan unwilling to yield. Men, lost to all right principle themselves, have no faith in the virtue of others.

IV. The renewed permission (Job. 2:6). He is in thine hand. Before, only his property and children; now, himself. Saints, for trial, mysteriously given for a time into Satans hand. The persecuted church at Smyrna (Rev. 2:10). Unknown to us how far bodily affliction may be from Satans hand (Luk. 13:16). Though God lengthens Satans chain, he never loosens it. The saints never in Satans hand without Christ being with them (Dan. 3:25; Psa. 23:4; Psa. 91:15; Isa. 43:2).But save his life. Satans permission in regard to the saints always limited. He might scratch with his paw, but not fasten his fang [Trapp]. Jobs life to be endangered, but not destroyed. Life and death in Gods hand, not Satans. A mercy to have life spared (Jer. 39:18). Precious blessings still for Job to experience, and important work still for him to do. A man immortal till his work is done. The limit set in Jobs case, not prescribed in Christs. Christ, as the Shepherd, smitten to death in the room of the sheep (Zec. 13:7; Joh. 10:11).

Fuente: The Preacher’s Complete Homiletical Commentary Edited by Joseph S. Exell

6. The second trialbodily suffering (Job. 2:1-8)

TEXT 2:18

2 Again it came to pass on the day when the sons of God came to present themselves before Jehovah, that Satan came also among them to present himself before Jehovah. (2) And Jehovah said unto Satan, From whence comest thou? And Satan answereth Jehovah, and said, From going to and fro in the earth, and from walking up and down in it. (3) And Jehovah said onto Satan, Hast thou considered my servant Job? for there is none like him in the earth, a perfect and an upright man, one that feareth God, and turneth away from evil: and he still holdeth fast his integrity, although thou movedst me against him, to destroy him without cause. (4) And Satan answered Jehovah, and said, Skin for skin, yea, all that a man hath will be give for bis life. (5) But put forth thy hand now, and touch his bone and his flesh, and he will renounce thee to thy face. (6) And Jehovah said unto Satan, Behold, he is in thy hand; only spare his life.

(7) So Satan, went forth from the presence of Jehovah, and smote Job with sore boils from the sole of his foot unto his crown. (8) And he took him a potsherd to scrape himself therewith; and he sat among the ashes.

COMMENT 2:18

Job. 2:1-3Job. 2:1-3 a repeat Job. 1:6-8 almost verbally. In Job. 2:3 b without cause is the very same adverb as appears in Job. 1:9 translated as for nothing. It is Satans cynicism, not Jobs integrity, that goes for nothing. Now Satan begins his sustained attack on the individual as against the corporate. Jobs ultimate concern is neither things nor family, but his integrity before Yahweh. Strip him of all his values and security symbols and he will still reverence God. The verb translated holds fast literally means to hold firmly or tenaciously to something. One may also hold firmly to anger (Mic. 7:18; or to deceitJer. 8:5). In Job. 27:6 we are told that he holds firmly to his innocence. The verb translated movedst or incited me against him generally is used in a negative senseJob. 36:18; Deu. 13:7; Jos. 15:18. Yahweh even gives Satan his due for instigating the experiment.

Job. 2:4The proverbial saying skin after skin is meaningful only because of the following phraseall that a man has he will give for his life. Then the Lord gives Satan permission to get under Jobs skin, anything short of his death. The Hebrew word translated his life (napso) means himself as a person.[38] Satan does not want Job dead because then he could never prove that Jobs piety rested in self-interest. A martyr for a cause is hardly an appropriate example of radical self-interest.

[38] See the indispensable comparative study of Hebrew psychological terms used metaphorically in Edouard Dhorme, LEmploi metaphorique des noms de parties du corps en hebreu et in akkadian (Paris, 1923).

Job. 2:5God has permitted Satan to only lightly touch Job, i.e., externally and superficially. Now, from skin to skin into the depths of Jobs beingflesh and bone. Surely now Job will revolt against Yahweh when He afflicts his bones and flesh. Such is Satans shrewd strategy. But stripped of honor and health, Job still fears God.

Job. 2:7Job is afflicted with some unnamed but disfiguring disease which causes continual pain and sleeplessness. The first disease has been identified with leprosy, because the ancients considered elephantiasis as a disease peculiar to Egypt.[39] The Hebrew word means to be inflamed, hot Thus the disease which afflicts Job is an inflammation of the skin which causes sores and boils. We do not seek to minimize Jobs agony and alienation, but it seems idle to seek a precise identification of his disease. The symptoms of his despicable disease are presented throughout the Jobian drama: (1) inflamed eruptionsJob. 2:7; (2) intolerable itchingJob. 2:8; (3) disfigured appearanceJob. 2:12; (4) maggots in his ulcersJob. 7:5; (5) terrifying dreamsJob. 7:14; (6) running tears which blind his eyesJob. 16:16; (7) fetid breathJob. 19:17; (8) emaciated bodyJob. 19:20; (9) erosion of the bonesJob. 30:17; (10) blackening and peeling off of his skinJob. 30:30.[40]

[39] Pliny, Natural History, XXVI, 7ff; and Lucretius, VI, 1105ff.

[40] A document from the Dead Sea Scrolls, The Prayer of Nabonidus reveals that he is afflicted with the same disease as is Job. See R. Meyer, Das Gebet des Nabonid, 1962, p. 16, A 2f.

Job. 2:8Because of the intolerable itching, Job takes a broken piece of pottery to scrape himself. How much Lord? He sat among the ashes. This describes the dunghill (mazbaleh) outside of town. Here the rubbish was thrown. Children, outcasts, and dogs came here. When tragedy came, men came here to sit (Isa. 47:1; Jon. 3:6), or roll in the ashes (Jer. 6:26; Mic. 1:10); or to throw ashes on their heads (Eze. 27:30).[41]

[41] See Dhorme, Job, p. 19 for description.

Fuente: College Press Bible Study Textbook Series

II.

(1) And Satan came also.See Job. 1:7. St. Peter applies to Satan the verb from which we have peripatetic.

Fuente: Ellicott’s Commentary for English Readers (Old and New Testaments)

THE FIFTH AND SIXTH TEMPTATION, Job 2:1-10.

Job 2:1-2. See note on Job 1:6-7.

Fuente: Whedon’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments

Job 2:3 “And the LORD said unto Satan, Hast thou considered my servant Job, that there is none like him in the earth, a perfect and an upright man, one that feareth God, and escheweth evil? and still he holdeth fast his integrity” Comments – Bob Nichols said, “God had faith in the faith of Job. [14] Jesus also had faith in the faith of Peter (Luk 22:31-32). God watches over our faith and knows our strength. He is the one who determines how much Satan can tempt us. Paul writes, “There hath no temptation taken you but such as is common to man: but God is faithful, who will not suffer you to be tempted above that ye are able; but will with the temptation also make a way to escape, that ye may be able to bear it.” (1Co 10:13)

[14] Bob Nichols, “Sermon,” Kampala, Uganda: Miracle Center Cathedral, 2 November 2008.

Luk 22:31-32, “And the Lord said, Simon, Simon, behold, Satan hath desired to have you, that he may sift you as wheat: But I have prayed for thee, that thy faith fail not: and when thou art converted, strengthen thy brethren.”

Job 2:3 “although thou movedst me against him, to destroy him without cause” Comments – If Satan himself can move God with a petition, how much more will God move heaven and earth for His children. Did not the legion of demons Jesus to enter into the swine and He allowed them? (Luk 8:32)

Luk 8:32, “And there was there an herd of many swine feeding on the mountain: and they besought him that he would suffer them to enter into them. And he suffered them .”

Job 2:6  And the LORD said unto Satan, Behold, he is in thine hand; but save his life.

Job 2:6 Comments – Note in Job 1:12; Job 2:6 how Satan is bound to obey God’s Word.

Job 1:12, “And the LORD said unto Satan, Behold, all that he hath is in thy power; only upon himself put not forth thine hand. So Satan went forth from the presence of the LORD.”

Job 2:9  Then said his wife unto him, Dost thou still retain thine integrity? curse God, and die.

Job 2:9 Comments – It seems Satan would have tried to destroy all of Job that he could, especially his wife. Perhaps she was spared because a husband and wife are one flesh.

Job 2:10  But he said unto her, Thou speakest as one of the foolish women speaketh. What? shall we receive good at the hand of God, and shall we not receive evil? In all this did not Job sin with his lips.

Job 2:10 “In all this did not Job sin with his lips” Comments – In Job 1:22, Job had his lips bridled, as in Jas 3:2. Thus, Job qualified as a perfect man, just as he is called in Job 1:1.

Job 1:22, “In all this Job sinned not, nor charged God foolishly.”

Jas 3:2, “For in many things we offend all. If any man offend not in word, the same is a perfect man , and able also to bridle the whole body.”

Job 1:1, “There was a man in the land of Uz, whose name was Job; and that man was perfect and upright, and one that feared God, and eschewed evil.”

Fuente: Everett’s Study Notes on the Holy Scriptures

Prologue Job 1:1 to Job 2:13 serves as a prologue to the book of Job, providing the setting for the speeches that are to follow. This opening story describes Job’s prosperity and righteous standing before God. Satan comes before God’s throne and challenges God’s standard of righteousness upon the man Job. God allows Satan to take everything away from Job, his possessions and his children, but requires that Satan spare his life. Still, Job exhibits God’s standard of righteousness.

In the prologue to the book of Job (Job 1:1 to Job 2:13), God reveals His predestined divine plan and purpose for mankind (Job 1:1-5), which is prosperity for those who walk upright before Him; and God calls Job to demonstrate righteousness and prosperity to his generation (Job 1:6 to Job 2:13). Regarding God’s predestination, Job’s godly character and prosperity serves as a testimony of mankind’s divine predestination upon earth, which reflects God’s original divine commission in the Garden of Eden (Gen 1:26-28), which is to be fruitful, multiply, and take dominion upon the earth. Regarding man’s divine calling, after prospering Job, God then called this man to demonstrate to his generation the fact that Job’s prosperity was a result of divine blessings, rather than from Job’s own abilities. Thus, it was necessary for God to remove Job’s prosperity entire, and restore it two-fold as a sign to his generation that Job’s prosperity came from God because of his right standing before God. Job’s suffering and restoration of blessings was intended to establish righteousness in the heart of the men of his generation so that He could prosper them as well. Unfortunately, it was necessary for Job to suffer in order to serve as a testimony to his generation.

God reveals His divine destiny and calling to establish righteousness, or full redemption, for mankind through the testimony of Job’s prosperity in every area of his life. However, the method that full, eternal redemption is obtained for mankind will be through suffering, and God called His Son Jesus Christ to suffer loss by divesting Himself of His heavenly prosperity, and taking on the seed of man, born of a virgin, and suffer on the Cross (Php 2:5-8), to be resurrected and seated at God’s right hand, and enjoying a greater prosperity by bringing many sons of men to glory (Php 2:9-11, Heb 2:10). Thus, Job serves as a type and figure of Christ’s redemption for mankind. For this reason, the issue of suffering is immediately presented to the reader in this opening passage of Scripture (Job 1:6 to Job 2:13). Job is called by God to go through a season of intense suffering beyond what any righteous man has endured in the past. However, he will be redeemed by God in the closing scene and be used to redeem his three friends. Thus, we see Job as a type and figure of Christ, who endured suffering so that He might redeem his generation. As we serve the Lord in this way we become like Christ in that we are used as divine instruments to bring about redemption for our generation.

Satan’s Access to God’s Throne The opening narrative text to the book of Job (Job 1:1 to Job 2:13) tells the story of Satan coming before God’s throne and accusing one of His saints named Job. The question is often asked if Satan still has access to God’s throne today as in the days of Job. Rev 12:10 tells us that Satan, the accuser of the brethren, spends day and night accusing Christians of their faults before God.

Rev 12:10  And I heard a loud voice saying in heaven, Now is come salvation, and strength, and the kingdom of our God, and the power of his Christ: for the accuser of our brethren is cast down, which accused them before our God day and night.”

We also find in Rom 8:33-34 a description of how Jesus Christ stands at the right hand of the Father to intercede for those whom Satan has accused.

Rom 8:33-34, “Who shall lay any thing to the charge of God’s elect? It is God that justifieth. Who is he that condemneth? It is Christ that died, yea rather, that is risen again, who is even at the right hand of God, who also maketh intercession for us.”

Paul also warned Timothy about the adversary’s opportunities to speak reproachfully against those with sin in the lives (1Ti 5:14). We ask the question, “To whom is Satan speaking reproachfully?” The implied answer in this passage of Scripture is that he is speaking to God about the faults of the saints.

1Ti 5:14, “I will therefore that the younger women marry, bear children, guide the house, give none occasion to the adversary to speak reproachfully.”

This tells us that when we sin, we must be quick to confess our sins so that Jesus Christ is given the authority to intercede in our behalf to the Father. We also have the story in Job 1-2 of how Satan stood before God and accused Job of being unrighteous in his heart. The Lord said, “and still he holdeth fast his integrity, although thou movedst me against him, to destroy him without cause.” (Job 2:3) Thus, we see that Satan’s accusations have the potential to move God against us. Job cried out for a redeemer to plead for his innocence, but there was none before Jesus’ First Coming (Job 9:33). However, today we have an intercessor.

Job 9:33, “Neither is there any daysman betwixt us, that might lay his hand upon us both.”

The Work of Satan in Scripture Job 1:1 to Job 2:13 serves as the prologue to the poetic book of Job. This prologue is written as a narrative, and the actual poetic parallelism does not begin until Job 3:1.

Note the destruction caused by the Adversary in chapters 1 and 2 of Job. When comparing this to Joh 10:10, which refers to Satan as the “thief” that “cometh not, but for to steal, and to kill, and to destroy”, we see that Satan’s works are the same then as they are today.

Joh 10:10, “The thief cometh not, but for to steal, and to kill, and to destroy: I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly.”

Fuente: Everett’s Study Notes on the Holy Scriptures

Job Stricken with a Severe Disease

v. 1. Again there was a day, some time after Satan had exhausted his efforts to shake the piety of Job by the destruction of his property and the slaughter of his children, when the sons of God, the angels, as ministers of Jehovah, came to present themselves before the Lord, and Satan came also among them to present himself before the Lord, as on the previous occasion, 1:13.

v. 2. And the Lord said unto Satan, From whence comest thou? And Satan answered the Lord and said, just as he had done before, From going to and fro in the earth and from walking up and down in it, in his restless, ceaseless endeavor to harm the works of the Lord and to lead men into sin.

v. 3. And the Lord said unto Satan, Hast thou considered My servant Job, namely, by concentrating his attention upon him, that there is none like him in the earth, a perfect and an upright man, one that feareth God and escheweth evil? Cf 1:1. And still, in spite of the severe affliction which had come upon him, he holdeth fast his integrity, to his piety and to the perfection of his righteousness before men, although thou movedst Me against him to destroy him without cause, namely, by giving Satan permission to send such great misfortunes upon him, part of which included the use of the forces of nature, which God; in a manner of speaking, placed at his disposal. Note the divine irony in the language of Jehovah, especially as contrasted with the baffled sneering of Satan.

v. 4. And Satan answered the Lord and said, in the rage due to his failure, Skin for skin; yea, all that a man hath will he give for his life. The meaning of this proverbial saying is that nothing outward is so dear to a man but that he will gladly give it for something similar; the life of a man, however, cannot be replaced, and therefore a man will sacrifice everything else for the sake of his life.

v. 5. But put forth Thine hand now and touch his bone and his flesh, striking at him even from a distance in making a pass for his life, and he will curse, renounce and reject, Thee to Thy face.

v. 6. And the Lord, willing to permit even this test of Job’s integrity, of the sincerity of his righteousness and piety, said unto Satan, Behold, he is in thine hand, namely, to afflict with severe diseases; but save his life, the latter could be imperiled in the proposed test, but he must not be deprived of it.

v. 7. So went Satan forth from the presence of the Lord and smote Job with sore boils from the sole of his foot unto his crown, the disease being the worst form of leprosy, with horrible ulcers or boils and a swollen condition of the joints, which rendered the afflicted person almost helpless.

v. 8. And he took him a potsherd to scrape himself withal, evidently to relieve the intolerable itching of the festering sores; and he sat down among the ashes, to indicate that he was submerged in grief and mourning. The few words paint a picture of such utter degradation and misery after the great happiness which Job had enjoyed, that the contrast is extremely shocking. It is but seldom that a believer is so severely tried as was Job, and therefore his example serves to encourage and inspire the children of God for all times.

Fuente: The Popular Commentary on the Bible by Kretzmann

EXPOSITION

Job 2:1-13

This chapter concludes the “Introductory section.” It consists of three parts. Job 2:1-6 contain an account of Satan’s second appearance in the courts of heaven, and of a second colloquy between him and the Almighty. Job 2:7-10 contain the sequel to this colloquy, viz. Satan’s further affliction of Job, and his conduct under it. Verses 11-13 contain an account of the arrival of Job’s three special friends to mourn with him and to comfort him; and of their behavior during the first seven days after their arrival

Job 2:1

Again there was a day when the sons of God same to present themselves before the Lord, and Satan came also among them. There is no “again” in the original. The words used are an exact repetition of those contained in Job 2:6 of Job 1:1-22. But they mark, no doubt, a second occasion on which the angelic host came to present themselves before the throne of God, and Satan came with them. To present himself before the Lord. These words are additional to those used in the former passage. We may gather from them, that, whereas on the former occasion Satan came only to observe, and with no intention of drawing God’s special attention to himself, he now had such intention, and looked forward to a colloquy. He anticipated, doubtless, that the circumstances of Job’s probation would be referred to, and he had prepared himself to make answer.

Job 2:2

And the Lord said unto Satan, From whence comest thou? And Satan answered the Lord, and said, From going to and fro in the earth, and from walking up and down in it (see the comment on Job 1:7, of which this is an almost exact repetition).

Job 2:3

And the Lord said unto Satan, Hast thou conquered my servant Job, that there is none like him in the earth, a perfect and an upright man, one that feareth God, and escheweth evil? Thus far is identical with Job 1:1 (quod vide). The rest of the verse is additional, having reference to the conduct of Job under his earlier trials (Job 1:20-22). And still he holdeth fast his integrity. This has been justly called “the key-note of the whole book” (Cook). Satan had declared that Job’s integrity rested on no solid basis, and would easily be overthrown and disappear. God, confident in his servant’s faithfulness and truth, had allowed him to assail it. What was the result? God declares it with his own mouth. Job’s “integrity” had not been wrested from him; he still maintained it (Job 1:21, Job 1:22), as he was about to do till the end (Job 42:1-6). Compare the ideal “just man” of Horace

“Justum et tenacem propositi virum

Non civium ardor prava jubentium,

Non vultus instantis tyranny
Menta quatit solida, neque Anster,

Dux inquieti turbidus Hadriae .

Si fractus illabatur orbis,
Impavidum ferient ruinae.”

(‘Od.,’ 3.3.)

Although thou movedst me against him (see Job 1:9-11), to destroy him; literally, to swallow him up; i.e. to ruin him, overwhelm him with calamities. Without cause; i.e. “when he had done nothing to deserve such treatment.”

Job 2:4

And Satan answered the Lord, and said, Skin for skin. No doubt a proverbial expression, resembling “Eye for eye, tooth for tooth; Tit for tat,” and the like; but not expressive of retaliation. Satan means that, to keep his own “skin” intact, a man will sacrifice another’s “skin;” even that of his nearest and dearest. Job, he insinuates, submitted to the loss of his children without a murmur, because he feared that otherwise God would stretch forth his hand against his person, and smite it or destroy it. He cannot imagine any motive for submission and apparent resignation but a selfish one (comp. Job 1:9). Yea, all that a man hath will he give for his life; i.e. “a man will submit to the loss, not only of all his possessions, but even of those whom he loves best, to save his own lifehe will do anything for that.” So the “false accuser.” All the numerous acts of self-sacrifice which human history presents, and has presented from the first, are ignored.

Job 2:5

But put forth thine hand now, and touch his bone and his flesh; i.e. “his person”any part of his body. And he will curse thee to thy face (see the comment on Job 11:11).

Job 2:6

And the Lord said unto Satan, Behold he is in thine hand; i.e. “he is in thy power, to do with him as thou pleasest”except in one respect. Again it is strongly marked that Satan’s power is under God’s control, and extends only so far as God shows. But save his life; rather, only spare his life (Revised Version). The didactic purposes for which God was allowing his faithful servant to be tried in the furnace of affliction would have been frustrated by Job’s removal from the earth. Individually he might equally well have been compensated in another world; but then the lesson of his example to living men, and the lesson of his story to all future generations of mankind, would have been lost. Besides, God but rarely, in the old world, gave a faithful servant, still in the full vigour of life (Job 42:16, Job 42:17), “over unto death” (Psa 118:18).

Job 2:7

So went Satan forth from the presence of the Lord (comp. Job 1:12, ad fin.). Satan, we may be sure, is always anxious to quit the immediate presence of God; for “what communion hath light with darkness?” (2Co 6:14). But now he had a special motive for haste in his anxiety to put Job to the test. Doubtless he was confident that he would triumph. And smote Job with sore boils. “With a malignant inflammation” (Lee). It has been generally concluded, from the scattered notices of his malady contained in the Book of Job (especially Job 7:4, Job 7:5; Job 17:1; Job 19:17-20; and Job 30:17-19), that the disease with which Satan “smote Job’ was elephantiasissometimes called Elephantiasis Arabuma marked and strongly developed form of leprosy (Rosenmuller, Michaelis, Professor Lee, Canon Cook, Stanley Leathes etc.). Elephantiasis is thus popularly described by Canon Cook, in the ‘Speaker’s Commentary,’ vol. 4. p. 26; “An intense heat, a burning and ulcerous swelling, or leprosy in its most terrific form, taking its name from the appearance of the body, which is covered with a knotty, cancerous bark like the hide of an elephant; the whole frame is in a state of progressive dissolution, ending slowly but surely in death.” A modern scientific work gives the following more exact, but more technical, account of the disease: “A non-contagious disease characterized by recurrence of febrile paroxysms, attended by inflammation, and progressive hypertrophy of the integument and areolar tissue, chiefly of the extremities and genital organs; and occasionally by swelling of the lymphatic glands, enlargement and dilatation of the lymphatics, and in some cases by the coexistence of chyluria, and the presence in the blood of certain nematode haematozoa, together with various symptoms of a morbid or depraved state of nutrition”. The disease is not now regarded as incurable, though, without an entire change of scone and climate, it is regarded as very seldom cured. From the solo of his foot unto his crown. Elephantiasis is generally local, attacking some part of the body, as, especially, the extremities or the genital organs. But in the worst forms, the entire body suffers.

Job 2:8

And he took him a potsherd to scrape himself withal. “The surface of the integuments,” says Dr. Quain, “is often much inflamed, and sometimes discharges a serous ichor, or chyle-like fluid, according to the extent to which the lymphatics are engaged in the particular ease”. This “serous or lymph-like fluid” is occasionally “acrid and offensive.” Job seems to have used his potsherd to scrape it away. And he sat down among the ashes. Not as a curative process, or even as an alleviation of his pains, but simply as was the custom of mourners (comp. Isa 47:3; Isa 58:5; Jer 6:26; Eze 27:30; Jon 3:6). The LXX. renders, “on the dung-heap;” but this meaning, if a possible one, is highly improbable.

Job 2:9

Then said his wife unto him, Dost thou still retain thine integrity? Job’s wife had said nothing when the other calamities had taken placethen she had “refrained her tongue, and kept silence,” though probably with some difficulty. Now she can endure no longer. To see her husband so afflicted, and so patient under his afflictions, is more than she can bear. Her mind is weak and ill regulated, and she suffers herself to become Satan’s ally and her husband’s worst enemy. It is noticeable that she urges her husband to do exactly that which Satan had suggested that he would do (Job 1:11; Job 2:5), and had evidently wished him to do, thus fighting on his side, and increasing her husband’s difficulties The only other mention of her (Job 19:17) implies that she was rather a hindrance than a help to Job. Curse God, and die; i.e. “renounce God, put all regard for him away from thee, even though he kill thee for so doing.” Job’s wife implies that death is preferable to such a life as Job now leads and must expect to lead henceforward.

Job 2:10

But he said unto her, Thou speakest as one of the foolish women speaketh; rather, as one of the vile (or impious) women speaketh. Nabal, the term used, is expressive, not of mere natural folly, but of that perversion of the intellect which comes on men when their hearts and understandings are corrupted and degraded.. (see 2Sa 13:13; Psa 14:1; Isa 32:6). What? shall we receive good at the hand of God and shall we not receive evil? Job remembers all the good which he has received of God during his past life, all the blessings and prosperity bestowed on him (Job 1:2, Job 1:3), and asksWould it be fair or right to take all the good things as a matter of course, and then to murmur if evil things are sent? He accepts both prosperity and affliction as coming from God, and expresses himself as willing to submit to his will. But he has, perhaps, scarcely attained to the conviction that whatever God sends to his faithful servants is always that which is best for themthat afflictions, in fact, are blessings in disguise, and ought to be received with gratitude, not with murmuring (comp. Heb 12:5-11). In all this did not Job sin with his lips. Thus far, that is, Job “kept the door of his mouth” strictly, righteously, piously. Later on he was not always so entirely free from fault.

Job 2:11

Now when Job’s three friends heard of all this evil that was come upon him. It is not to be supposed that Job had no more than three friendsindeed, Elihu the Buzzite appears later on as one of his friends (Job 32:2-6)but he had three contemporaries with whom he was especially intimate, old men (Job 32:6), with whom he was probably accustomed to confer from time to time, and who were in the habit of giving him their advice. All three, apparently, lived at a distance; and it seems to have been some weeks before the news of his misfortunes reached them. When the news came they held communication one with another, and agreed to pay him visits of condolence at a certain definite time, which was determined upon between them. Some monthsat least twoseem to have elapsed between the date of Job’s latest affliction and the time of their arrival (Job 7:3). They came every one from his own place. They had separate homes, and probably lived at some considerable distance from one another. Eliphaz the Temanite. There was an Eliphaz, the son of Esau by his wife Adah, who had a son Teman (Gen 36:4; 1Ch 1:35, 1Ch 1:36); but it is not supposed that this can be the person here intended. The name Teman did not become geographical until the descendants of this Eliphaz’s son had multiplied into a tribe, when they gave name to the portion of Arabia which they inhabited. This tract seems to have been either a part of Edom, or in its immediate vicinity (Gen 36:42, Gen 36:43; Jer 49:7, Jer 49:8, Jer 49:20; Eze 25:15; Oba 1:8, Oba 1:9), but cannot be located with accuracy. The Temanitee were celebrated for their wisdom, as we learn from Jeremiah, who says (Jer 49:7), “Concerning Edom, thus saith the Lord of hosts; Is wisdom no more in Teman? is counsel perished from the prudent? is their wisdom vanished?” Job’s friend was probably among their wisest men at the time; and his discourses certainly show a considerable knowledge of human nature. They do not, however, solve the riddle of the universe. And Bildad the Shuhite. Bildad is a name which does not occur elsewhere in Scripture, neither is there any other mention of Shuhites. Conjecture has identified the Shuhites with the Saccaei of Ptolemy (‘Geograph.,’ 5.15), whom he places in the neighbourhood of Batanaea and Trachonitis. But the Saccaei are unheard of till Ptolemy’s time, and seem to be a tribe of very small importance. Perhaps Bildad belonged to the people known to the Assyrians as the Tsukhi, or Sukhi, who dwelt on the Middle Euphrates from about Anah to Hit. And Zophar the Naamathite. Zophar, or rather Tsophar, is another unknown name. There was a Naamah, a city, in south-western Judaea (Jos 15:41), to which Zophar may have belonged, though probably a region, rather than a city, is here intended. For they had made an appointment together; or, agreed together, by message or letter probably. To come to mourn with him and to comfort him. A good intention, at any rate, and one agreeable to the apostolic injunction to us to “weep with them that weep” (Rom 12:15). That they failed to carry out their intention (Job 16:2; Job 21:34) was owing to a want of judgment, and, perhaps, in part, to a want of love.

Job 2:12

And when they lifted up their eyes afar off, and knew him not. Job was seated on an ash-heap outside his dwelling (verse 8). The three friends, who had probably met by agreement at some point near his residence, and drew nigh together, saw the figure at some distance, and looked to see who it was. But Job was so disfigured by the disease that they failed to recognize him. They lifted up their voice, and wept. In the clamorous manner of Orientals (comp. Herod; 2.14; 3.119; 8.99; 9.24; and AEschylus, ‘Persae” passim). And they rent every one his mantle (see the comment on Job 1:20), and sprinkled dust upon their heads toward heaven (comp. Jos 7:6; 1Sa 4:12; 2Sa 1:2; 2Sa 13:19; Neh 9:1; Eze 27:30; Lam 2:10; and see also Homer, ‘I1.,’ 18.22-24; Helioder, ‘ Hist. AEth.; 1.)

Job 2:13

So they sat down with him upon the ground seven days and seven nights. Professor Lee supposes that this is not to be taken literally. “It means” he says, “that they sat with him a considerable length of time before they opened the question discussed in this book, not that they sat precisely seven days and seven nights, and said not so much as one word to him”. But the period of” seven days” was appropriate to mournings (Gen 1:10; 2 Samuel 31:13; Eze 3:15), and if they could stay with him one day and one night without speaking, why not seven? Food would be brought them, and they might sleep rolled up in their begeds. The long silence may be accounted for by the fact that “among the Jews,” and among Orientals generally, “it is a point of decorum, and one dictated by a fine and true feeling, not to speak to a person in deep affliction until he gives an intimation of a desire to be comforted” (Cook). So long as Job kept silence they had to keep silence, at least so far as he was concerned. They might speak to any attendants who drew near, and they might speak one to another. Note the words which follow: And none spake a word unto him None spake to him; but no etiquette imposed complete silence on them. For they saw that his grief was very great. So great that he could not as yet bear to be spoken to.

HOMILETICS

Job 2:1-6

A new trial moved for.

I. THE OLD OCCASION RETURNED.

1. The gathering of the sons of God. The recurrence of this celestial scene reminds us of:

(1) the immutable sovereignty of Jehovah, who, on this second occasion as on the first, still appears enthroned amidst the principalities and powers of heaventhe devils also being subject to him (cf. 1Pe 3:22);

(2) the permanence of moral obligation in the heavenly world and amongst angels as well as on the earth, neither lapse of time nor change of circumstances having the slightest effect in releasing God’s intelligent creatures from the bonds of responsibility; and

(3) the constancy and cheerfulness with which the inhabitants of the upper world delight to do God’s holy willan example of obedience proposed for the study and imitation of believers (Mat 6:10).

2. The reappearance of the adversary. If, on the former occasion, the entrance of Satan amongst God’s celestial sons might permissibly be regarded as an impertinent intrusion, in the present instance his return must be held as having taken place in accordance with a tacit understanding that, in due course, he should appear to report the result of his experiment with the patriarch, which, perhaps, may explain the introduction of the words, “to present himself before the Lord,” omitted from the account of the first assembly.

II. THE OLD CONTROVERSY RESUMED.

1. The patriarch‘s enemy interrogated. “From whence comest thou?” Note

(1) God’s universal cognizance of things that transpire on earth (Job 28:10, Job 28:24; Job 34:22);

(2) God’s perpetual surveillance of the devil in his movements; and

(3) God’s constant watchfulness against his attacks (Rev 3:10).

2. The patriarch‘s piety commended. “Hast thou considered my servant Job?” (see homiletics on Job 1:1, Job 1:8). Whether or not containing “a covert sneer at the baffled adversary,” the question reminds us of:

(1) God’s faithfulness towards his people. Nothwithstanding all that had occurred, Job was still God’s servant, and God as ready to own him for his servant as when the patriarch was rejoicing in the fulness of prosperity (Isa 44:21; Isa 54:10).

(2) God’s judgment concerning his people. God can always distinguish between a man and his surroundings. The Omniscient judges no one by his material environment, but by the character of his heart (1Sa 16:7; 2Sa 7:20; Psa 7:9).

(3) God’s affection for his people. As Job’s afflictions had not destroyed his piety, so neither had they alienated God’s love. Never in the day of calamity does Jehovah renounce his saints, but rather, because of tribulation, clings to them with fonder affection (1Sa 12:22; Psa 91:15; Rom 11:2; 2Ti 2:19; Rev 2:9).

3. The patriarch‘s sincerity attested.

(1) The Divine satisfaction with the patriarch. “He still holdeth fast his integrity.” Constancy in piety is a rare jewel in the saint’s casket, lends a special lustre to his other virtues, is ever highly prized by its possessor, and never fails to elicit Heaven’s commendation. The Divine approbation also, besides being an ample recompense for all the saint’s trials (Rom 8:18), is the only sure test of genuine religion (2Co 10:18), the greatest honour a saint can receive (Mat 10:32), and the final portion of those who hold fast their integrity to the end (Mal 3:17; Rev 3:5).

(2) The Divine indignation against Satan. “Although thou movedst me to destroy him.” See the widely differing estimates of trouble taken by God and Satan. What the devil called a touch God calls a swallowing up: that marks the tenderness or God’s heart. Note the different relations in which God and Satan stood to Job’s afflictionGod acting, and the devil tempting; marking God’s sovereignty, but Satan’s responsibility. “God’s afflicting of his people is (so to say) a blowing of the bellows to kindle his displeasure against wicked instruments (Isa 47:5, Isa 47:6; Zec 1:15)” (Hutcheson).

(3) The Divine sorrow about himself. “Thou movedst me without cause.” Indicating the reluctance with which God in any case proceeds against a saint (Lam 3:33), and the regret which he felt in this case, since he knew so well there was no sufficient reason for entertaining a suspicion against the patriarch’s piety. Let it teach us that “though all men have sins enough to be the meritorious cause, yet oftentimes sin is not the moving cause of their afflictions” (Caryl).

III. THE OLD CALUMNY REVIVED. Job’s victory in the previous conflict is by the devil:

1. Tacitly admitted. Satan finds it impossible to repel the statements advanced by Jehovah concerning his servant. Saints should study to live so that their piety cannot be contradicted, however much it may be aspersed by Satan and wicked men, and that God, when he speaks in commendation of their integrity, may be justified.

2. Reasonably explained. On the ground that the trial was not severe enough. “Skin for skin,” etc.a proverb, which, however explained (see Exposition), practically charges the patriarch with unnatural barbarity in disregarding the loss of his children since his own skin was saved, as well as with intense and revolting selfishness in making the supreme consideration, in all his thoughts and calculations, the preservation of his own life.

3. Wholly undervalued. As in his (the devil’s) estimation, proving nothing and contributing nothing to the solution of the grand problem in debate. Hence he does not hesitate to suggest that the matter should a second time be submitted to the ordeal of trial.

IV. THE OLD PROPOSITION REPEATED. “But put forth thine hand now;” which demand was certainly:

1. Presumptuous; considering by whom it was made, Satan, and to whom it was addressed, Jehovah; thus showing the illimitable pride of the devil (Isa 14:12, Isa 14:13, Isa 14:14).

2. Unnecessary; remembering the person against whom it was directed, and the issue of the preceding trial to which he had been subjected.

3. Cruel; seeing that Job had already been afflicted by the double stroke of bankruptcy and bereavement, and this was a request that God would aggravate his misery by laying his hand upon his person. But who would ever look for humane and tender feelings in a devil?

4. Malignant; when regard is had to its object and motivethe latter being hostility to God and hatred of piety; the former the overthrow of Job’s religion and the damnation of Job’s person.

V. THE OLD PERMISSION RENEWED. “Behold, he is in thine hand.” The patriarch was again delivered up into the power of the adversary.

1. Sovereignly; God having a perfect right to dispose of the persons of his people, no less than their properties.

2. Really; to be tried in whatever manner his Satanic ingenuity might devise, always, of course, within the prescribed limits.

3. Immediately; from this time forward being rendered accessible to the hostile assaults of the adversary. Yet:

4. Reservedly; with certain restrictions as to his life, which was not to be taken from him. And also, one cannot help thinking:

5. Confidently; without the slightest apprehension of an unfavourable issue to the trial, so high was the estimation in which God held his servant.

Learn:

1. Concerning the devil. That he is seldom satisfied with only one attempt against the virtue of a saint; that he is exceedingly unwilling to admit himself defeated on the field of spiritual conflict; and that he ever plants his fiercest batteries against the citadel of a saint’s integrity.

2. Concerning the saint. That he need hardly anticipate a long period of exemption from either trials or temptations; that whatever calamities befall him, he should labour to discern God’s providential hand in their occurrence; and that he, may confidently trust God will not give him over completely to the devil.

3. Concerning God. That though he may suffer his saints to be tried, he does not cease to love them; that though he may lengthen Satan’s chain, he doesn’t loosen it; and that, though he may sometimes listen to Satan’s charges against the saints, he never believes them.

Job 2:4

The value of life.

I. MORE VALUABLE THAN MATERIAL POSSESSIONS.

1. In origin; being the breath of God’s Spirit, while they are only the work of God’s hand.

2. In nature; being conscious of its own existence, while they are only dead, insensate things.

3. In capacities; being possessed of intellect, reason, conscience, will, while they have only properties and qualities peculiar to matter.

4. In design; being intended for the conscious enjoyment of God, while they can never consciously enjoy, but only obediently and passively glorify, their Maker.

II. LESS VALUABLE THAN SPIRITUAL POSSESSIONS.

1. In character; being a natural endowment, while these are essentially gifts of grace.

2. In usefulness; without these being a failure so far as realizing its appropriate end is concerned, whereas these enhance the dignity and capabilities of life.

3. In happiness; life with grace being immensely more enjoyable than mere existence without Job 2:4. In duration; life being doomed to decay and dissolution, while the riches of the soul endure for ever.

LESSONS.

1. Prize life as a gift of God.

2. Adorn life with the grace of God.

3. Use life for the glory of God.

4. Return life (when it is called for) into the hands of God.

Job 2:4

Satan’s proverb.

I. THE IMPORT OF IT. That a man will part with everything about him to save his life.

II. THE FALSEHOOD OF IT.

1. Men will part with all outward things to save life.

2. Some men will even part with a good conscience to save life.

3. But there are those who would rather die than renounce their integrity.

Job 2:7-10

The patriarch’s second trial.

I. THE TWOFOLD ASSAULT UPON THE PATRIARCH.

1. The infliction of a loathsome disease.

(1) Its author. Satan. That diseases generally come through violation of hygienic laws is matter of everyday observation and of special scientific affirmation. But that Job’s malady had a diabolic origin, as had also many of the physical ailments that prevailed in the East about the time of Christ, must be accepted on the ground of revelation. And as in Christ’s day Beelzebub was permitted to wield a larger influence than usual over men’s bodies, that the power of Christ in destroying the works of the devil might be the more conspicuously displayed, so the exceptional ability of Satan to produce bodily malady in Job’s case existed solely for a special purpose. It would therefore be contrary to good theology as well as sound science to ascribe the “ills that flesh is heir to” to diabolic rather than to natural causes.

(2) Its nature. “Sore boils;” supposed, and with probability, to have been a malignant form of elephantiasis, a disorder having many of the characteristics of leprosy. From incidental allusions scattered throughout the poem, it appears to have been an exceedingly painful disease, accompanied in its early stages by severe bodily itching (Job 2:8; Job 9:17, Job 9:18), and attended in its progress with extreme debility, and utter prostration of mind as well as body, leading to disturbed slumbers, terrifying dreams, and even suicidal temptations (Job 6:4, Job 6:11, Job 6:14; Job 7:4, Job 7:13, Job 7:14). A quickly spreading disease, rapidly covering the body with pustules, or boils, sometimes from head to foot (Job 2:7; Job 7:5). A certainly corrupting disease, producing emaciation, and causing rottenness in the flesh and bones (Job 13:28; Job 16:8; Job 33:21). A truly loathsome disease, rendering the wretched sufferer an object of disgust even to his nearest relatives and friends (Job 19:13-19) and ultimately, though not immediately, a mortal disease (Job 16:22; Job 17:1; Job 30:23).

(3) Its design. To try the patriarch

(a) by wearing out his strength, and so rendering him more accessible to the entrance of diabolic temptations;

(b) by making him an object of abhorrence to mankind, and so in a manner cutting him off from human sympathy; and

(c) by leading him to regard his malady as a special visitation from Heaven, and so tempting him to entertain harsh thoughts of Jehovah.

2. The injection of a vehement temptation.

(1) The time when it was made. Not at the beginning of his malady, but after it had somewhat developed, when his strength was impaired, his nerves were unstrung, and his mind was depressed, and when, no longer permitted to enter the dwellings of men, he sat himself down upon the mezbele, or ash-heap, outside his dwellingan object of loathing and disgust to passers-by.

(2) The person through whom it was directed. Not the devil himself, since then it would scarcely have acquired the force of a temptation; nor even a friend like Eliphaz, Bildad, or Zopharcounsellors who afterwards fared rather badly at Job’s hands; but she who of all on earth was his nearest and dearest-his wife, the bride of his youth, the mother of his noble sons and fair girls now dead, the companion of his joys and sorrows. Beyond question, it was politic to attack the patriarch through his wife; and probably for this reason she was sparednot because having her was a greater trial to the good man than losing her would have been, but because the devil wanted a tool against her husband (of. Adam’s temptation through Eve).

(3) The counsel which was offered. “Bless God” (sc. for the last time; i.e. “renounce him”), “and die!” perhaps words of wifely sympathy wrung from her loving bosom by the cruel sufferings which had been heaped upon her husband; certainly words of passionate vehemence calculated to bear down the opposition of a sufferer growing every day feebler through incessant pain; and words of much plausibility, suggesting a thought which seemingly had much in its favour, that his sufferings were to be ascribed purely to his religion; but also words of essential wickedness, since not only was the thought they suggested untrue, but the advice itself was wrong.

II. THE TWOFOLD VICTORY OF THE PATRIARCH.

1. The inroad of physical disease he met with patient submission. “He took a potsherd and scraped himself withal.” Indulging in no complaints against Providence for afflicting him, and, when the malady had so far developed that his presence became offensive to his friends and neighbours, quietly retiring to the ash-heap. Admirable meekness! Exquisite patience! Incomparable submission! “In all this Job sinned not with his lips.”

2. The entrance of wifely temptation he encountered with:

(1) Deserved rebuke. “Thou speakest as one of the foolish women speaketh.” Language distinctly bearing that the popular estimate of Job’s wife, which makes her to have been a sort of Oriental shrew, is incorrect, implying as it does that the patriarch was surprised to hear her talk so much out of character, not like a saint and the wife of a saint as she was, but like one of the foolish or ungodly women. Carried away by the tumultuousness of her womanly feeling, in a moment of passionate thoughtlessness she had lost her self-control, and given utterance to desperate words, which were such as to call for censure; and the faithful husband, much as he loved his wife, and laden as he was himself with misery, did not shrink from administering the needful admonition.

(2) Lofty resignation. “Shall we receive good at the hand of the Lord, and shall we not receive evil?” The voice, not of stoical indifference, or of heartless despair, or of cold, callous, reluctant acquiescence in a fate which cannot be escaped, but of intelligent and cheerful submission to a providence which he recognizes to be at once righteous and good. “In all this Job sinned not with his lips.”

Learn:

1. That God’s saints in this world have sometimes to endure trial upon trial

2. That periods of protracted suffering are spiritually more dangerous than sharp and sudden strokes of greater severity.

3. That the fiercest trials often arise at unexpected moments, and from least anticipated quarters.

4. That the most painful temptation a good man can experience is the temptation to renounce his religion.

5. That Satan’s mercies (e.g. in sparing Job’s wife) have always somewhat of cruelty in them.

6. That the greatest outward blessings may sometimes prove a snareJob’s wife, and Adam’s.

7. That it is perilous for good men or women to give way to passion.

8. That in times of violent emotion a strong guard should be set upon the door of the lips.

9. That good people may sometimes give very bad advice.

10. That the devil’s prime aim in tempting men is to make them renounce God, and die.

11. That God’s people should on no account let go their integrity.

12. That those who have been recipients of God’s mercies should not repine when for their good he changes the dispensation.

Job 2:9, Job 2:10

Job and his wife.

I. A FOOLISH WOMAN.

II. A FAITHFUL HUSBAND.

III. A THANKFUL SAINT.

IV. A SUBMISSIVE SUFFERER.

Job 2:9, Job 2:10

Four voices.

I. THE VOICE OF FOLLY. “Curse God, and die.”

II. THE VOICE OF REBUKE. “Thou speakest as one of the foolish women speaketh.”

III. THE VOICE OF GRATITUDE. “We receive good at the hand of the Lord.”

IV. THE VOICE OF SUBMISSION. “Shall we not receive evil?”

Job 2:9, Job 2:10

(along with Gen 3:1-6).

Job and Adam: a parallel and a contrast.

I. A PARALLEL.

1. Both were tempted.

2. By Satan.

3. Through their wives.

4. To renounce their allegiance to God.

II. A CONTRAST.

1. In the times of their temptation. Adam when at the summit of felicity; Job when in the depth of misery.

2. In the modes of their temptation. Adam, assailed by the thought that God had unjustly deprived him of good; Job, by the suggestion that God had unrighteously afflicted him with evil.

3. In the results of their temptation. Adam fell; Job stood. See

(1) in Adam the representative of all men; and

(2) in Job the foreshadowing of the God-Man.

Job 2:11-13

The patriarch’s third trial; or the coming of the friends.

I. THE HONOURABLE NAMES THEY BORE.

1. Eliphaz the Temanite. Probably a descendant of Teman, the son of Eliphaz, the son of Esau by his wife Adah (Gen 36:10, Gen 36:11; 1Ch 1:35, 1Ch 1:36); belonging to the race of Teman, which extended over a considerable portion of Arabia, about midway between Palestine and the Euphrates; very likely the oldest of the three friends.

2. Bildad the Shuhite. Perhaps sprung from Shush, the youngest son of Abraham by Keturah (Gen 25:2), and residing in a district of Arabia, not far from the Temanite country; may be reasonably supposed the second oldest of the friends.

3. Zophar the Naamathite. Otherwise unknown except through this book; though, from his acquaintance with Bildad, Eliphaz, and Job, it may be inferred he also was a person of distinction. Probably all three were, like the patriarch in his prosperity, powerful Arabian sheiks.

II. THE EXCELLENT CHARACTERS THEY POSSESSED.

1. Points of agreement.

(1) Intellectual ability. Without alleging that air three stood upon the same platform in respect of mental calibre (which they did not, Eliphaz holding unmistakably the preeminence), it is apparent that they all were thinkers of no mean capacity. It is a special ornament to men in high social position to be possessed of corresponding mental faculties; besides immensely adding to their personal enjoyment and public usefulness (cf. Ecc 10:16).

(2) Religious principle. Unquestionably good men, who not only revered Jehovah, but practised the Divine will so far as they understood it. They were likewise sincerely desirous of promoting Job’s highest welfare, while they unfeignedly sympathized with him in his appalling trouble. If we cannot quite adopt their speculative and religious formulas, any more than we can commend their wisdom or kindness in lecturing the patriarch as they did; on the other hand, it is due to them not to estimate their characters from the gall and wormwood outpoured on their devoted heads by Job, when stung to madness through their reproaches.

(3) Mistaken views. All three were equally astray in the fundamental doctrine they propounded in the course of their debate with the patriarch, viz. that suffering was so indissolubly associated with sin that the one was the measure of the othera theory which Job strenuously combats throughout the poem; thus giving rise to what we designate the second problem of the book, viz. as to the precise relation subsisting between sin and suffering as they appear on earth.

2. Points of difference.

(1) Eliphaz, a man of erudition, a person given to profound spiritual reflection, a seer who discerned spirits, dreamed dreams, and enjoyed intercourse with the unseen world, may be held to represent the prophet of the period.

(2) Bildad, of smaller build and narrower vision, a strong traditionalist in religion, with a profound veneration for the ancients, who accepted his theology from his ancestors without putting ugly questions as to its truth, and was prepared, by quoting maxims and citing proverbs of hoary antiquity, to contend for the faith once delivered to the saints, was probably designed to typify the sage of the time.

(3) Zophar the Naamathite, an echo of his friends as to sentiment, as to manner more boisterous and arrogant than either, full of commonplaces and conventional dogmas, which he enunciated with imposing dignity and tremendous authority, may be regarded as the good man of the day‘ the vulgar but sincere formalist, who says sharp and bitter things, and always means what he says, as well as says what he means (Cox).

III. THE MELANCHOLY TIDINGS THEY RECEIVED. How they learnt the news of Job’s evil fortunes is not related, but the fact that they did reminds us of:

1. The rapidity with which evil tidings usually spread; since it was obviously not long before the report of their friend’s calamities reached their ears.

2. The organic unity of society; which renders it impossible for any one to either suffer or rejoice alone (cf. 1Co 12:26).

3. The special susceptibility of friendly hearts for learning of others’ woes.

IV. THE MUTUAL APPOINTMENT THEY MADE. A token of:

1. Lively interest in the patriarch‘s welfare. Seeing they must have communicated with each other concerning their neighbour’s evil hap, thus showing they were not indifferent to what had occurred.

2. Loving sympathy with the patriarch‘s distress. For they meant to mourn with him and to comfort him, not to treat him to a mere call of ceremony.

3. High appreciation of the patriarch‘s worth. Since they planned to go together to the scene of sorrow, which, if it did spring from a due regard to their own dignity as princes, was perhaps also traceable to their Sense of what was owing to the rank and worth of their old friend. It says much for the three neighbours that they did not neglect Job now that he was a poor, diseased leper.

V. THE FERVENT EMOTION THEY DISPLAYED.

1. Tearful sympathy. Catching a sight of their former neighbour, whom they had known and revered in his prosperity, now sitting on the ash-heap, outside his house, and hardly recognizing, in the emaciated features on which they gazed, the noble form of the quondam prince whose glory outshone the radiance of all his contemporaries, they lifted up their voices and wept. Orientals are proverbially more emotional and lachrymose than phlegmatic Occidentals; but still it must have been an affecting spectacle to behold the three great princes moved to tears by the patriarch’s distress.

2. Genuine amazement. “They rent every one his mantle.” A symbol of horror and astonishment, as in the case of Jacob (Gen 37:34), Jos 7:6, Ezr 9:3, Caiaphas (Mat 26:65).

3. Profound sorrow. “They sprinkled dust upon their heads towards heaven;” i.e. threw handfuls of dust into the air, as the Arabs still do, that it might fall upon their heads, in token that they were deeply moved by the troubles and calamities that had fallen on their friend.

VI. THE PECULIAR ATTITUDE THEY ASSUMED. It is unnecessary to suppose that they were absolutely silent, but merely that they spake nothing to him during all that period, certainly not in any way alluding to the cause of his distress. And this silent attitude may have been expressive of

(1) ceremonial propriety‘ if this was the customary manner of Oriental mourning, which is doubtful; but was more probably dictated by

(2) delicate sensibility‘ which forbade them to intrude upon the solitude of a sorrow so overpowering as that which they beheld; and

(3) reverential awe‘ as seeing in the patriarch one upon whom the hand of God was visibly laid (cf. Gen 34:5; Leveticus Gen 10:3; Psa 46:10; Eze 3:15); if it did not also spring from

(4) rising suspicion‘ the thought beginning to thrust itself into view, which indeed, according to their philosophy, could not long be repressed, that the agonized and wretched sufferer before them must have been, notwithstanding his previous high reputation for piety, a hypocrite at bottom, whose disguised insincerities and secret iniquities had at length drawn down upon him the just judgment of a holy and incensed God.

Learn:

1. That good men may often misunderstand God’s truth, misconstrue God’s providence, and misjudge God’s people.

2. That good men should always study to be distinguished for sympathy towards the suffering and sorrowing.

3. That good men who aspire to be brothers of consolation should not forget that silence is sometimes more soothing than speech.

4. That good men should never cherish secret suspicious of those whom they seek to comfort.

HOMILIES BY E. JOHNSON

Job 2:1-10

Renewed assaults and temptations of the adversary.

The first scene in this drama of affliction has closed, and a fresh one opens, bringing, however, no happy change, no alleviation, but rather an aggravation of the hero’s woe. A second time the adversary of mankind appears in the heavenly court to launch his malicious shafts of accusation against the servant of God. His purpose is now more intent, his aim more deadly, than ever. But we, as spectators, can see a bright light still steadily shining above the cloud in that unsmiling favour and kindness of the Eternal, who cannot, will not, desert his own. Looking more closely to the particulars, we see

I. THE PITY OF GOD FOR HIS SUFFERING SERVANTS. (Job 2:1-3.) Jehovah looks down and beholds “his servant Job,” as he stands unshaken amidst a very hurricane of calamity, holding to his integrity as something dearer than life; and he condescends to expostulate with the accuser. Has not the trial gone far enough? Is not the test that Job has already undergone sufficient to satisfy the most sceptical observer of his truth? Must the furnace be heated still another degree? But the adversary is not content; and it would appear that, if further trial is demanded, the demand is not to be resisted, according to the laws of heaven. The moral government of the world may require this. Thus, while the pity of God would relieve from further suffering, his righteousness-which is his adherence to fixed lawmay require its continuance, until every doubt concerning a particular character be solved. But the language ascribed to the heavenly Father is, meanwhile, full of the tenderest compassion. There is individualizing regard. There is recognition of integrity and innocence. There is profound sympathy. We are reminded of the touching words of Psa 103:1-22; “He knows our frame; he remembers that we are dust.”

II. In opposition to this, we observe THE MALIGNANT PERSEVERANCE OF THE DEVIL.

1. His specious plea against Job. (Verses 4, 5.) In the form of a proverb he launches a keen insinuation: “Skin for skin;” like after like; one thing after another will a man give for dear life. Job has only made a barter after all He loses all his property; but then he has that left which outweighs all the rest. The loss of goods teaches him to prize the health which is left. He feels the greatness of this blessing as he never felt it before. Any circumstance which teaches us the worth of a common blessing is so far an advantage to us. An eminent living man has said that, given health, we have no right to complain of anything in the world. Job, then, has only been half tempted after all; and the trial will only run its full course when it has assailed this last great, chief blessinghis health of body and of mind. Such is the “case” of the devilish prosecutor against Job.

2. The final test permitted. (Verses 6-8.) The All-disposer grants the permission: “He is in thy power; but spare his life!” And then a sudden poison strikes through the sufferer’s blood; he becomes from head to foot a mass of disease and loathsomeness, sits in ashes, scraping himself with a potsherd, to allay the fearful irritation of his malady. His mind is, of course, deeply affected by the illness of his body. Natural hope is extinct. It is a life in ruins. Yet that Divine and immortal principle we call the soul is still intact, still glimmers like a bright spark amidst the embers of a dying fire.

III. TEMPTATION IN THE GUISE OF AFFECTION. (Verses 9,10.) And now what remains of conscious life is to know one further shock; and the hand of woman, the voice of a wife, is employed to urge the tottering sufferer over the brink on which he sits, into despair and total renunciation of faith and God. Then his wife said to him,” Dost thou still hold fast to thine innocence? Say farewell to God, and die!”

1. This is a second signal instance in which, in the Old Testament, woman plays the part of the tempter. There is instruction in this pointed fact. Woman is the weaker vessel, in mind as in body. She has less firmness of intellectual texture. Her weakness as well as her strength lies in feeling. She is quick in impulses, both of good and of evil. She represents passion, and man represents strength. On the whole, she is less capable of strong, profound, patient convictions, less able to take a large view of questions, to look beyond the present and immediate aspects of things. Here is the picture of a lively temper, quick to feel resentment at pain or gratitude for good; but a shallow understanding, unused to meditation and reflection on the deeper meanings of life. Her language is that of haste and passion. But this serves to bring out by contrast the calm, reflective piety, the convictions established by lifelong thought and experience of her husband.

2. The rebuke of Job to his wife.

(1) “Thou speakest as one of the foolish women;” that is, thy language is like that of a heathen, not of one who has been trained in the knowledge and worship of the true God. The heathen turn fickly from one god to another as pleasure and pain or the caprice of fancy may suggest. For their gods are but idols, creatures of their own imagination, which they take up and cast down as children with their toys. But there is only one God for me! And that God, the eternally Wise and Good in all that he gives, in all that he withholds!

(2) There are two sides of life‘ and the one must be taken along with the other. Here, too, the language of manly reasonableness and of intelligent piety speaks out Life is a garment woven of both pleasure and pain, of seeming good and evil. The one conditions the other. All experience teaches that constant happiness is the lot of none. Why, then, should I expect to be an exception? Surely we are but crude scholars in life’s great school, so long as we think we are entitled to immunity from any particular form of suffering. We are still children who think they have a right to their own way, and are astonished to find themselves withstood. “Who told thee thou hadst a right to be happy? Art thou a vulture screaming for thy food?”

“Couldst thou, Pausanias, learn

How deep a fault is this!

Couldst thou but once discern

Thou hast no right to bliss!”

Here, then, the weakness of distrust and the folly of despair in the human heart, represented by Job’s wife, stand opposed to the nobleness and grandeur of a fathomless confidence in the Eternal. God is the Author at last of all we suffer. Is that a reason for forsaking God? No, replies faith; it is a reason for reposing more entirely upon his everlasting arms. “If my bark sinks, ’tis to another sea.”J.

Job 2:11-13

A picture of friendship.

In this short section we have a beautiful picture of true friendship in its prompt sympathy, its ready offices. The three intimate friends of Job, on hearing of his troubles, arrange to visit him and offer the comfort of their presence and condolence. We are reminded

I. OF THE BLESSING OF FRIENDSHIP. Sympathy is the indispensable need of the heart. It deepens the colour of all our pleasures; it throws a gleam of light athwart our deepest gloom. “Rejoice with them that do rejoice; and weep with them that weep.” Our joys do not burst into flower till they feel the warm atmosphere of friendship. Our heaviest griefs only cease to be crushing when we have poured our tale into the ear of one we love. One of the humblest, yet best offices a friend can render to a sufferer is to be a good listener. Draw him out; get him to talk; movement and change of mind are what he needs. Exertion, if only the exertion of speech, will do him good. Do not pour upon him a cataract of well-meaning but stunning commonplaces. Imitate the kindness of Job’s friends, but not their want of tact and perception. Let him only feel that in your presence he can relieve himself of all that is on his mind, and will not fail to be kindly understood.

II. SEASONABLE SILENCE IN THE PRESENCE OF SORROW. On the arrival of the friends, seeing the heart-rending condition of the noble chieftain, whom they had last seen in the height of his health and prosperity, now sitting in the open air, banished by disease from his dwelling, defaced by that disease beyond recognition, an utterly broken man, they express their grief by all the significant gestures of Eastern mannersweeping, rending their clothes, sprinkling dust upon their heads. They then take their places by his side, and keep a profound and mournful silence for a week, as Ezekiel did when he visited his countrymen captives by the river Chebar. What exquisite manners are taught us in the Bible! And the great superiority of its teaching in this respect over the common teaching of the world is that it founds all manners upon the heart. It is truth, love, sympathy, which can alone render us truly polite, refined, and delicate in our relations to others, teaching us always to put ourselves in thought in the other’s place. “There is a time to keep silence.” In great grief we recognize the hand of God, and he bids us be still and own him. Our smaller feelings bubble, our deeper ones are dumb. There are times when reverence demands silence, and a single word is too much. Leave the sufferer alone at first. Let him collect himself; let him ask what God has to say to him in the still, small voice that comes after the earthquake and the storm. “Sacred silence, thou that art offspring of the deeper heart, frost of the mouth, and thaw of the mind!” Sit by your friend’s side, clasp his hand, say simply, “God comfort you, my brother!” In the earlier stage of a fresh and sudden grief this will be enough. We cannot doubt that the wounded heart of Job was greatly comforted by the silent presence of his sympathizing friends. It was better than all their spoken attempts at consolation. Let us thank God for friendship and for true friends; they are messengers from him. “God, who comforteth them that are cast down, comforted me by the coming of Titus!”J.

HOMILIES BY R. GREEN

Job 2:1-10

The severer tests of faith.

Job has triumphed in the severe ordeal. His possessions, his servants, his family, have been torn from him. In the bitterness of his sorrow he has “rent his mantle,” and shown the signs of his humiliation by cutting off the hair of his head. But in the paroxysms of his grief he has “held fast his integrity;” he “sinned not, nor charged God foolishly.” So far he has passed through the fire unscathed, and belied the false accusations of the adversary. But further trials are at hand. It is in accordance with the spirit and purpose of the book to represent the lowest condition of human sorrows. Besides loss of possessions and loss of his beloved children, Job must needs be subjected to the loss of healthto a dire and painful and loathsome disease. All this is aggravated by the unwise taunts and advice of his wile, and the prolonged and irritating accusations and false views of his friends. It is a condition of extreme suffering unrelieved by any human consolations. Job is alone in his sufferings, unsustained, his pain even increased by the very voices that should have brought comfort to him. Up to the time of his friends’ visit Job has remained unmoved in his uncomplaining integrity. “In all this did not Job sin with his lips.” The test to which he was subjected by the severe and reproachful and unhelpful words of his friends is presented in its detailed relation throughout the book. We learn

I. THAT IT IS POSSIBLE FOR EVEN THE RIGHTEOUS MAN TO SUFFER IN THE EXTREMEST DEGREE. It is one part of the purpose of the book to illustrate this truth for sufferers in all time, to make known that “many” may be “the afflictions of the righteous.”

II. THAT THE PURPOSE OF THESE EXTREME AFFLICTIONS IS THE TESTING AND PERFECTING OF VIRTUE, which, even in the ease of the righteous, is necessarily imperfect. Reading through this book, it would appear that the work of Satan is to test virtue. Satan is called “the agent of probation.” He displays a malignant and antagonistic spirit. But whatever may seem to be the motives on the one side, it is obviously the Divine purpose to make the testing an occasion of blessing to him who is tested. “When he is tried he shall receive a crown of life.” Satan must be considered as a servant of the most high God, whose agency is employed in the spiritual discipline of the righteous. The conditions of temptation to evil are so intimately identified with all those of the human life, that we can only think of them as a necessary part of the present constitution under which human life is held. By it virtue is exposed to injury; but in its fires virtue is purified and perfected.

III. THAT THE TRIUMPH OF VIRTUE IN RESISTING TEMPTATION TO EVIL AND TO IMPATIENCE UNDER THE OPPRESSION OF PAIN, IS THE UTMOST TRIUMPH OF THE HUMAN SOUL, AND ENSURES THE HIGHEST REWARD. He who subjects the delicate life to the fierce blast of evil will not so expose it as needlessly to endanger its highest interests. Temptation does not appeal to the virtue of the heart, but to its remaining faultiness, which it exposes for destruction, and so proves its own beneficent action.

IV. In the history of Job we further learn that EVEN LOFTY VIRTUE MAY RE BOWED DOWN, AND SHOW SIGNS OF WEAKNESS BEFORE FINALLY TRIUMPHING.

V. We also learn THE WISDOM OF PATIENTLY SUBMITTING TO THE TRIALS OF LIFE, HOWEVER SEVERE. Rebelliousness brings no ease to the troubled spirit. The only alternative offered to Job was, “Curse God, and die.” The better course is to retain integrity, to sin not, nor charge God foolishly.R.G.

Job 2:11-13

Human impotence in presence of great sorrow.

The prompting of pure and faithful friendship leads Job’s friends to hurry to his help. They “come to mourn with him and to comfort him.” When yet afar off they lift up their eyes and behold their friend. But, alas! disease has wrought so great a change in him that they know him not. Then “they lifted up their voice, and wept.” In their wild, ungoverned passionate grief “they rent every one his mantle,” and seizing the dust of the ground they cast it in the air toward heaven, and let it fall on their heads in token of their grief. Thus with signs of deep suffering in sympathy with their friend they cast their cry with the sand upwards to heaven. Then, with great skill, the writer indicates the helplessness of men in the presence of overwhelming Sorrow. “They sat down with him on the ground seven days and seven nights, and none spake a word unto him: for they saw that his grief was very great.” So the sorrow that extorted the wild cry of pity closed the lips of consolation. We behold the men staggered by the bitterness of their friend’s lot. He cannot help himself, and they cannot help him. How true a picture of all deep Sorrow! It is to be said by every severe sufferer as by the typical One,” Of the people there was none with me;” for even tender, loving sympathy cannot penetrate to the depths of another’s sufferings. With these feelings we gaze on the sufferer, feeling how painful it is to be unable to extend a helpful hand or to speak an effectual word. It is humiliating to us. It is abasing to our pride.

I. THE CAUSES OF OUR IMPOTENCE IN PRESENCE OF SEVERE SUFFERING ARE:

1. Our inability to descend to the depth of the sorrow of another. It is only as we ourselves are sufferers that we can know what others feel. We must have drunk of the same cup if we would know its bitterness.

2. But even though we have suffered as we see others suffer, no words, even of the tenderest pity, can effectually relieve the mourner. Hollow human words, words of merely pretended sympathy, only wound the sufferer more deeply; while words of true friendship, cooling and cheering as they may be, can take up no part of the burden. For a time they draw off the mind of the sufferer from his sorrow, but it returns as a flowing tide.

II. THE PAINFULNESS TO A TRUE FRIEND OF CONSCIOUS INCOMPETENCE EFFECTUALLY TO AID THE SUFFERER. Days or hours of silence are days or hours of keen suffering to the faithful friend unable to stanch the wound, to abate the fever, to restore the lost possession or the lost friend. By all we are driven to

III. THE TRUE AND ONLY EFFECTUAL SYMPATHIZER, THE GOD–MAN, who, having suffered, and having power to descend to the lowest depths of the human heart, and having the Divine resources at command, the power to inspire the word of consolation and supporting strength; and who, measuring the need of the sufferer, can abate the severity of bodily pain or mental anguish. To the sufferer the welcome of this honest sympathy opens the door for the incoming of the true Healer and Comforter and Helper, who can give strength to the feeble, and, above all, can sanctify sorrow and calamity to higher ends, and make all things work together for good. He can brighten hope and sustain faith and strengthen patience, can soothe the fretted spirit, and give peace and joy and life.R.G.

HOMILIES BY W.F. ADENEY

Job 2:4

Satan’s old saw

(Browning). Satan was defeated in the first trial, but not convinced. With persistent malignity he proceeded to suggest a more severe test. It was no fault of his that the first test, hard as it was, had not gone to the utmost extremity; for he had been expressly limited by the words, “Only upon himself put not forth thine hand” (Job 2:12). He had gone to the full length of his tether, but that had not satisfied him; so he must apply for a larger privilege of mischief-making. He requests permission to touch the parson of Job, either quoting or coining the proverb which Browning has called “Satan’s old saw.”

I. THE FORCE OF THE PROVERB. Take it how you willthat a man will sacrifice a less vital part to save a more vital part, holding up his arm to shelter his head; or that he will give the lives of his cattle, slaves, children, to save his own body’s skin; or that he will sell hide after hide of precious skins from his warehouse, i.e. all his property, for his lifethe proverb plainly means that a man will make any sacrifice to save his life.

1. There is an instinct of self-preservation. Here we come to an impulse of nature. When in a state of nature all creatures try to save their own lives at any coat. Even the would-be suicide, when once he finds himself drowning, screams for help, and clutches madly at the rope that is flung to him. Accordingly, juries usually bring in a verdict predicating an unsound mind in the case of any one who has succeeded in taking his own life. Now, this instinct of self-preservation is a gift from the Author of nature; it is innocent because Divine, and powerful because primitive.

2. Life is a first condition of all experience and possession. If a man loses his life he loses his all. He may sacrifice many things for the sake of one coveted endselling all he has to buy one pearl of great price; he may risk his life on a great venture; but if he loses his life he can obtain nothing in return. “What is a man profited if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own life?” (Mat 16:26).

3. Life is seen to be supremely valued. Starving men become cannibals. In the siege of Jerusalem women boiled their own children for a last meal, natural affection itself being sacrificed to the instinct of self-preservation. Desperate men sell their lives dearly.

II. THE FALSITY OF THE PROVERB. We must be on our guard how we quote texts from Scripture. This is especially important in the Book of Job, where the form is dramatic. The proverb before us is in Scripture; yet it is not from God, but from the devil. This very fact should make us suspicious about it. It looks like truth, but it comes from the “father of lies.”

1. It denies the higher life. Satan refers to a natural instinct. But that instinct does not cover the whole of our being. His lie is the more deadly because it is the exaggeration of a truth, or rather because it is the statement of one truth which needs to be qualified with another truth. Bishop Butler has taught us that human nature in its fulness includes conscience. But conscience may go against the lower part of our nature. The higher life may dominate and suppress the instincts of the lower.

2. It ignores the fact of self-sacrifice. Satan uttered his saw as though it were a generalization from wide experience. We may have our fine theories as to how things ought to be; he will tell us how he finds them really existing in the world. The devil only perceives the lower life, only perceives the selfish side of man. He is the “spirit that denies,” because he is blind. But self-sacrifice is as much a fact as self-preservation. The cross is its great witness. The good Shepherd giving his life for the sheep is the triumphant refutation of Satan’s old saw. So in a secondary way are Job in his fidelity, and every martyr and hero and Christ-like man.W.F.A.

Job 2:7, Job 2:8

Job’s leprosy.

Satan has now obtained permission to go a step further, and lay his hand on the person of God’s servant. He uses the new privilege with skilful ingenuity, selecting the most horrible and loathsome disease, and smiting Job with the worst form of leprosyelephantiasis.

I. THE MISERY OF THE INFLICTION.

1. It touches the man himself. Hitherto the blows have fallen on his outer world, though, indeed, they have come very near to him in striking his children. Still, he has not felt them directly. Satan has drawn a marked line between these external troubles and personal troubles (verses 4, 5). Now he crosses the line. Every man must feel what touches himself, though some may be too callous, too unimaginative, or too unsympathetic fully to appreciate what is outside them. No man can feel his brother’s toothache as acutely as he feels his own.

2. It lays hold of his body. Bodily pain is not the worst form of suffering. A broken heart is infinitely more pitiable than a broken skin. Still, bodily pain has this about it, that it cannot be denied or eluded. It is a very tangible and unquestionable fact.

3. It is loathsome and disgusting. Elephantiasis makes its victim an object of repulsion, hideous to behold, shunned by all his fellows. Job had been a prince among men, living in universal respect. He now comes down, not only to poverty, but also to a condition of visible degradation and disgust. To the man of sensitive feelings shame is worse than pain.

4. It is hopeless. Elephantiasis was thought to be incurable. Job took no medical remedies. He only retired to his ash-heap, seeking temporary alleviations. The worst agony can be endured with some patience if there is a prospect of cure; but even a milder complaint becomes intolerable if there is no hope of escape.

II. THE BEHAVIOUR OF THE SUFFERER. The most significant thing about the narrative here is that so little is said about the behaviour of Job. As yet we have no word from him under his fearful malady. The silence is eloquent.

1. Great suffering stifles thought. This is a merciful provision of Providence. We could not bear both to feel acutely and to think profoundly at the same time. There is a sort of mental anodyne in fearful bodily pain. Its paroxysms act as an anaesthetic to the finer feelings of the soul When the worst of the bodily pain is over the mind recovers itself; but at first it is stunned and crushed into numbness.

2. True fortitude accepts alleviations of suffering. Job does what little he can to relieve the intolerable torments of his disease. He has no idea of attitudinizing as a martyr. Small sufferers may try to make the most of their pains, foolishly nursing them, and obviously playing for pity. This is not the case with the great tragic heroes. The depth of their sufferings are known only to God.

3. Bitter distress seeks solitude. Job retired to the ashes. His complaint made this action necessary; his mood must also have welcomed the retirement. In bitter distress the soul would be aloneyet not alone, for God is present as truly among the ashes as in the gorgeous temple.W.F.A.

Job 2:9

Husband and wife.

I. THE WIFE‘S TEMPTATION.

1. Its source. Job is now tempted by his own wileby her who is nearest to him, and who should be almost his second self. Chrysostom asks, “Why did the devil leave him his wife?’ and replies, “Because he thought her a good scourge by which to plague him more acutely than by any other means.” Certainly the temptation which comes through one whom we love is the most powerful. Christ met the tempter in a favourite disciple. It is the duty of love not simply to sympathize, but also to give good counsel; it is its error only to show sympathy by aggravating the evil tendencies of a trouble.

2. Its excuse. Men have been too hard on Job’s wife for this one foolish saying of hers, forgetting how huge was her affliction. Indeed, a great injustice has been done her, and while sympathy and admiration have been lavished on the husband, the partner in distress has scarcely received a glance of pity. But his troubles were her troubles. She had been in affluence, the happy mother of a happy family. Now she is plunged into poverty and misery, bereft of her children, with her once honoured husband in disease and corruption. Is it wonderful that she should utter one hasty, impatient word?

3. Its point. We cannot say that Job’s wife urged him to curse God; for she my have meant, “renounce God.” At all events, let him give up the struggle and commit suicide. It is the Stoic’s advice. Others since have advised euthanasia in unbearable sufferings. It needed a brave heart to resist such an appeal. Only those who have been plunged into the lowest depth know the fearful inducement to despair of life and go

“Anywhere, anywhere, out of the world.”

II. THE HUSBAND‘S REPLY.

1. Its reprimand. Job quietly tells his wife that she is talking like one of the foolish or ungodly women.

(1) There is patience in this reprimand; he does not angrily repudiate her hasty advice.

(2) It is discriminating. Job sees at ones the defect. His wife has forsaken her higher plane of living, and fallen down to conventional ideas of the world. There was this excuse for her, however, that her conduct was not without precedent, though the precedent was not worthy to be followed.

(3) It is generous. Job delicately hints that her words are unworthy of her. He implies that she is not herself one of the foolish women. Often the best and most effective reprimand is an appeal to a person’s self-respect.

2. Its resignation.

(1) It recognizes God as the Source of all things. Job does not seem to be aware that Satan has a hand in his calamities. He attributes them wholly to God. Thus he fails to see one side of the dread mystery of iniquity. Yet there was truth in what he said. Nothing happens but by God’s permission.

(2) It admits the justice of God’s dealing. How fair is Job! And how unfair are many men in accepting boundless mercies without a thought of gratitude, and then shrieking with rage at the first twinge of adversity! If we struck the balance between our blessings and our troubles, should we not find the former vastly outweighing the latter? And if we accept the blessings from God, should we not be prepared to take the reverse of them also?

3. Its self-restraint. “In all this did not Job sin with his lips.” It is uncharitable of the Targum to add, “But in his thoughts he already cherished sinful words.” If thoughts of rebellion were beginning to riseand Job was but mortalthe brave man silenced them. It is much to learn how to “be still.”W.F.A.

Job 2:11-13

Job’s comforters.

We now enter on a new scene, one that prepares for the main action of the drama. Hitherto the court of heaven, the roving errands of Satan, the personal and domestic afflictions of Job, have engaged our attention. Now the light of the larger human world is let in on this scene. Job is not in purgatory, shut off from companionship of living men. Indeed, his greatest trouble is yet to come from the blundering conduct of that companionship.

I. TROUBLE SHOULD COLLECT FRIENDS. We see very much of the faults of Job’s three friends in the course of the poem. Let us be fair to them, and recognize their good points. They were true friends; they did honestly desire and attempt to render to Job all the consolation that was in their power. They aimed at being “friends in need.” False friends fall off in the hour of trouble. Such a spectacle as that of Job on his dungheap would not invite the crowd of sycophants that swarms about the table of the great man. No doubt Job had been pestered with plenty of such pretended friends in the old days of his fame. Doubtless one blessing among his many calamities was that he was now relieved of their presence. But three genuine friends still hold to him and seek him out in the time of his deepest distress. It is well to go to the house of mourning. But few are they who know how to conduct themselves when them.

II. SYMPATHY IS THE BEST COMFORT. The three friends were amazed at the sight which presented itself. They were prepared to see trouble) but no imagination could picture so huge a distress as that of Job. It needed to be witnessed to be believed. The sight of it calls forth natural sympathy. Although the decorous Orientals proceeded at once to adopt the conventional forms of mourning, there is every reason to believe that their sympathy was genuine and heartfelt. It is only the heart made callous by selfishness that is incapable of sympathy. In this most Divine attribute of human nature we may recognize the root of what is moot fruitful in good. Sympathy is the spring of all the most helpful service, and when the service is impossible, the sympathy itself is consoling; for it is much to know that friends feel with us in our trouble.

III. SYMPATHY MAY BE SHOWN IN SILENCE. Those seven days sad seven nights of silence are a sublime spectacle. Job’s comforters began well. It would have been good for their reputation if they had gone home at the end of the week. Then they would have been known as model comforters instead of becoming bywords for tormentors. We often make a mistake in thinking we ought “to say something.” Great distress should hush hasty words. There are times when the gentlest words sound harsh on pained ears. What is wanted in trouble is not advice, but sympathy; and this is best shown by the unbidden tear, the silent pressure of the hand, the look of love. We feel a sad separation from one who is in great sorrow, for sorrow is naturally lonely. Only Christ can perfectly enter into it. He needs no words.W.F.A.

Fuente: The Complete Pulpit Commentary

CHAP. II.

Satan again caluminates Job before God, whose body God permits him to afflict, but not so as to take away his life. Job is smitten by Satan with sore boils. He reproves his wife. His three friends, Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar, come to mourn with him.

Before Christ 1645.

Job 2:1. Again there was a day Again it was the day. Heath.

Fuente: Commentary on the Holy Bible by Thomas Coke

HISTORICAL INTRODUCTION

PROLOGUE

Job 1:1-22, Job 2:1-13

1. Jobs Character and Course of Life. (Job 1:1-15.)

1There was a man in the land of Uz, whose name was Job; and that man was perfect and upright, and one that feared God, and eschewed evil. 2And there were born to him seven sons and three daughters. 3His substance also was seven thousand sheep, and three thousand camels, and five hundred yoke of oxen, and five hundred she asses, and a very great household; so that this man was the greatest of all the men [sons] of the East.4And his sons went and feasted in their houses, every one his day [Now his sons were wont to hold a feast at the house of each one on his (birth)-day], and [they] sent and called for their three sisters to eat and to drink with them. 5And it was so, when the days of their feasting were gone about, that Job sent and sanctified them [that he might make atonement for them, Z.], and rose up early in the morning, and offered burnt offerings according to the number of them all: for Job said, It may be that my sons have sinned, and cursed, [renounced, bid farewell to] God in their hearts!Thus did Job continually.

2. The Divine Determination to try Job through Suffering

a. The milder form of trial by taking away his possessions

(Job 1:6-22.)

6Now there was a day [it came to pass on a day, or, on the day] when the sons of God came to present themselves before the Lord [Jehovah], and Satan came also among them. 7And the Lord said unto Satan, Whence comest thou? Then Satan answered the Lord, and said, From going to and fro in the earth, and from walking up and down in it. 8And the Lord said unto Satan, Hast thou considered my servant Job, that [for] there is none like him in the earth, a perfect and an upright man, one that feareth God and escheweth evil?9Then Satan answered the Lord, 10and said, Doth Job fear God for nought? Hast thou not made an hedge about him, and about his house, and about all that he hath on every side? Thou hast blessed the work of his hands, and his substance is increased [spread abroad] in the land. 11But put forth Thine hand now, and touch all that he hath, and [verily] he will curse Thee to Thy face. 12And the Lord said unto Satan, Behold, all that he hath is in thy power [hand], only upon himself put not forth thine hand. So Satan went forth from the presence of the Lord.

13And there was a day [it came to pass on the day], when his sons and his daughters were eating and drinking wine in their eldest brothers house: 14and there came a messenger unto Job, and said, The oxen were ploughing, and the [she] asses feeding beside them: 15and the Sabeans fell upon them, and took them away; yea, they have slain [smitten] the servants with the edge of the sword; and I only am escaped alone to tell thee. 16While he was yet speaking, there came also another, and said, The fire of God is fallen from heaven, and hath burned up the sheep and the servants, and consumed them; and I only am escaped alone to tell thee. 17While he was yet speaking there came also another, and said, The Chaldeans made out three bands, and fell upon the camels, and have carried them away, yea, and slain the servants with the edge of the sword: and I only am escaped alone to tell thee. 18While he was yet speaking there came also another, and said, Thy sons and thy 19daughters were eating and drinking wine in their eldest brothers house: and behold, there came a great wind from [beyond] the wilderness, and smote the four corners of the house, and it fell upon the young men [people], and they are dead; and I only am escaped alone to tell thee.

20Then Job arose, and rent his mantle, and shaved his head, and fell down upon 21the ground, and worshipped, and said: Naked came I out of my mothers womb, and naked shall I return thither: The Lord [Jehovah] gave, and the Lord [Jehovah] hath taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord [Jehovah]. 22In all this Job sinned not, nor charged God foolishly [nor uttered folly against God].

b. The severer trial, the loss of health.

(Job 2:1-10).

1Again there was a day [and it came to pass on a day (Z.), or: Now it was the day] when the sons of God came to present themselves before the Lord and Satan also came among them to present himself before the Lord. 2And the Lord said unto Satan, From whence comest thou? And Satan answered the Lord, and said, From going to and fro in the earth, and from walking up and down in it. 3And the Lord said unto Satan, Hast thou considered my servant Job, that [for] there is none like him in the earth, a perfect and an upright man, one that feareth God and escheweth evil? and still he holdeth fast his integrity, although thou movedst Me against him to destroy him without cause. 4And Satan answered the Lord and said, Skin for skin, yea [and] all that a man hath will he give for his life. 5But put forth Thine hand now, and touch his bone and his flesh, and he will curse Thee to Thy face. 6And the Lord said unto Satan, Behold he is in thine hand; but 7[only] spare his life. So Satan went forth from the presence of the Lord, and smote Job with sore boils from the sole of his foot unto his crown. 8And he took him a potsherd to scrape himself withal; and he sat down among the ashes. 9Then said his wife unto him, Dost thou still retain thine integrity. Curse [renounce] God, and die! 10But he said unto her, Thou speakest as one of the foolish women speaketh. What! shall we receive good at the hand of God, and shall we not receive evil? In all this did not Job sin with his lips.

3. The Visit of the Friends and their Mute Sympathy as an Immediate Preparation for the Action of the Poem

Job 2:11-13.

11Now when [or, Then] Jobs three friends heard of all this evil that was come upon him, [and] they came every one from his own place; Eliphaz the Temanite, and Bildad the Shuhite, and Zophar the Naamathite; for [and] they had made an appointment together to come [or: they met together by appointment] to mourn with him, and to comfort him. 12And when they lifted up their eyes afar off, and knew him not, they lifted up their voice and wept; and they rent every one his mantle, and sprinkled dust upon their heads toward heaven. 13So they sat down with him upon the ground seven days and seven nights, and none spake a word unto him: for they saw that his grief [affliction] was very great.

EXEGETICAL AND CRITICAL

1. Jobs character and course of life. Job 1:1-15.

Job 1:1. There was a man in the land of Uz, whose name was Job. Literally, A man was in the land of Uz, etc.: the order of the words as in 2Sa 12:1; Est 2:5. On the name see Introduction, 1, and Note. , Vulg.: in terra Hus; LXX.: . Comp. the more precise definition: (in the addition at the end of the book) which gives with general accuracy the position of the country. For we are certainly constrained to place it in the region lying North-East of Edomitis towards the Arabian desert. We cannot identify it with any locality within the land of the Edomites, nor with that land itself, as some writers, ancient and modern, have undertaken to do. For 1. In Job 1:3 Job is represented in general terms as belonging to the , the sons of the East, i.e., as a North Arabian, an inhabitant of the Syro-Arabian desert which extends eastward from Transjordanic Palestine to the Euphrates (comp. 1Ki 5:10 [A. V.: Job 4:30] Isa 11:14; Jer 49:28; Eze 25:4).2. The Sabeans and Chaldeans are, according to Job 1:15; Job 1:17, neighbors, dwelling in adjacent territory.3. The () mentioned by Ptolemy V., Job 19:2, as neighbors of Babylonia on the West, under the Caucabenes, are assuredly none other than the inhabitants of the country we are considering.4. Jer 25:20 sq., clearly and definitely distinguishes between Uz and Edom. The expression in Lam 4:21, O daughter of Edom, that dwellest in the land of Uz, does not affirm the identity of the two countries, but rather refers to an expansion of the boundaries of Edom which at some time took place, so as to include the land of Uz (comp. Ngelsbach on both the passages cited).5. In Gen 10:23, Uz, the patriarchal founder of the country, after whom it was named, appears as the immediate descendant of Aram; in Gen 22:21, as the son of Nahor, the brother of Abraham; and in Gen 36:28 as the grand-son of Ser, the ancestor of the Horite aborigines of Idumea. None of these passages in Genesis brings Uz into genealogical relation to Edom, though they clearly make him appear as geographically his neighbor.6. Again Job 2:11 of our book (Eliphaz the Temanite), also Job 32:2 (Elihu the descendant of Buz; comp. Gen 22:21, where the same Buz appears as the son of Nahor and the brother of Uz) argue for a relation of co-ordination between the countries of Uz and Edom.7. Josephus (Ant. I., 6, 4) names , the son of Aram (Gen 10:23) as the founder of Trachonitis and Damascus. This reference, resting as it does on a primitive tradition, contains an indirect contradiction of the supposition that Uz was an Idumean province; rather is the inference probable that at one time it extended further North, as far as South-eastern Syria.8. The Syro-Arabian tradition of the Middle Ages and of modern times fixes the place where Job lived at a considerable distance North, or North-East from Ser-Edom, to wit, in the fruitful East-Hauranitic province el-Bethenije (Nukra), which Abulfeda calls a part of the territory of Damascus, and within which at this day are pointed out a Place of Job (Makam-Ejb) and a Monastery of Job (Dair-Ejb), both situated south of Nawa on the road leading north to Damascus (comp. Fries in the Stud. und Krit., 1854, II.; and especially J. C. Wetstein: The Monastery of Job in Hauran, and the Tradition of Job, in the Appendix to Delitzschs Commentary, II. 395 sq., Clark, Edinb.). We are indeed scarcely to look for the home of our hero so far North as these sacred localities of the Christian-Mohamedan tradition concerning Job, or as the location favored by the hypothesis of Bochart, Ilgen, J. H. Michaelis, etc., which regards the valley al-Gutha situated not far from Damascus, as the Uz of Scripture. At the same time the considerations here presented make it far more probable that it belonged to the territory of East-Hauran (not necessarily of Hauran in Palestine, or the eastern portion of Manasseh), than that it was identical with any locality in Edom South, or South-West from Palestine. [The so-called universalism of the writer is apparent here. His hero is a stranger to Judaism and the privileges of the peculiar people, living in a foreign country. The author saw that God was not confined to the Jew, but was and must be everywhere the father of His children, however imperfectly they attained to the knowledge of Him; he saw that the human heart was the same, too, everywhere, that it everywhere proposed to itself the same problems, and rocked and tossed amidst the same uncertainties; that its intercourse with heaven was alike, and alike awful in all places; and away down far in that great desert stretching into infinite expanse, where mens hearts drew in from the imposing silence, deep, still thoughts of God, he lays the scene of his great poem. He knows, Jew though he be, that there is something deeper far than Judaism, or the mere outward forms of any dispensation, that God and man are the great facts, and the great problem their connection. Davidson]. And that man was perfect and upright, and one that feared God and eschewed evil. These four attributes, of which (literally integer, whole, complete) here denotes moral integrity, and hence blamelessness, while denotes uprightness, righteousness,are not simply co-ordinate, but the first furnishes the foundation of the second, and the last two conjointly of the first two, (Hahn). For the fear of God and eschewing evil are obviously mentioned as the ground or source of blamelessness and uprightness (comp. Pro 1:7); the religious characteristics serve to explain the moral. The before is thus explanatory, and might, as in Job 1:8 and Job 2:3, be dispensed with. [Lee remarks well on that it seems to be synonymous with the Greek , 1Co 2:6; 1Co 14:20, etc., and to signify complete in every requisite of true religion, thoroughly furnished unto all good works, rather than perfect in the abstract; and hence Job 2:3 is rather the exercise of true religion, than perfection or integrity in the abstract. Delitzsch defines thus: , with the whole heart disposed towards God and what is good, and also well-disposed toward mankind; in thought and action without deviation conformed to that which is right, , fearing God. and consequently being actuated by the fear of God which is the beginning (i.e., principle) of wisdom; , keeping aloof from evil, which is opposed to God. Ewald and Davidson cor-relate and , as descriptive of the inner qualities of a righteous man, and as descriptive of his outer life].

Job 1:2. And there were born to him seven sons and three daughters. The description of his piety is immediately followed by that of his prosperity, showing first of all how he prospered in his family, how rich he was in children. The high significance which attached to this species of wealth and happiness, according to the Old Testament view, may be seen from Job 21:8; Job 21:11; Job 29:5, of our book, and also Psalms 127, 128. The number of sons, it will be observed, far exceeds that of daughters; this being in accordance with the tendency, prevalent alike in ancient and in modern times, to magnify the importance of those by whom the family life and name are perpetuated, and to regard that man as specially fortunate, who is blessed with a preponderance of male descendants (comp. Pro 17:6). The number of sons, moreover, and the number of daughters, are sacred numbers of special symbolical significance, their sum likewise forming a sacred number; and again, in the summary which follows of the patriarchs possessions, we find the same numbers recurring, as multiples of one thousand. It has already been shown in the Introduction, 8, near the beginning, how in these unmistakably ideal numerals we recognize, notwithstanding the prose form, the essentially poetic character of the Prologue; and the same is true of the Epilogue (see Job 42:12-13).

Job 1:3. His substance also was seven thousand sheep and three thousand camels, etc. [It is a large, princely household. Del.] Although Job is not to be regarded as a wandering Bedouin, but as a settled prince, or Emir (Job 1:4; Job 1:18; Job 29:7; Job 31:32), who also engaged in agriculture (Job 1:14; Job 5:23; Job 31:8; Job 31:38 sq.), his wealth is nevertheless, after the manner of those countries, estimated according to the extent of his flocks and herds (), together with the servants thereto appertaining. Dillm.Five hundred yoke of oxen, and five hundred she asses. , a yoke, i.e., pair, oxen being worked in pairs in tilling the land (Job 1:14). Only the she asses are mentioned (comp. on the other hand Gen 12:16; Gen 32:15), as forming the most valuable part of this species of cattle property. In Syria even yet they are far more numerously owned than the males, and sold at three times the value of the latter; and this not so much for the milk as for breeding (comp. Wetzstein in Delitzsch; also Rosenmllers Altes und Neues Morgenland, III., 319).And a very great household (very many servants). , precisely as in Gen 26:14, brought into connection with wealth in cattle, which, as the more important, is mentioned first. The Targ. takes to be the same with , 1Ch 27:26, meaning husbandry. This interpretation, which the Septuagint seeks after its fashion to combine with the common one ( , ), is condemned by the analogy of the parallel passage in Gen 26:14, as well as by the singular unanimity with which exegetical tradition favors the signification we have given.So that this man was the greatest of all the sons of the East. [Vav consec. imperf. summing up the issue of the foregone: all which made Job the greatest of the Orientals. Davidson.] On see above on Job 1:1, also Introd., 5. For in the sense of rich and distinguished, see Gen 24:35; Gen 26:13; Ecc 2:9. [The sons of the East are the inhabitants of the regions East of Palestine. Although elsewhere the term designates the Arabians, who constitute the principal element of the population between Canaan and the Euphrates, here it cannot be referred specially to them, for Job was not an Arabian, and Uz belonged rather to the Aramaic race. Hengst. Schlottmann calls attention to the fact that the name Saracen is Arabic for men of the East. E.]

Job 1:4-5 describe and illustrate Jobs remarkable piety, presenting a single characteristic of the same, which at the same time prepares the way for a better understanding of the narrative which follows. [These verses serve a threefold use in the narrative: primarily, they furnish the historical occasion for the terrible calamities which follow; incidentally, they contain a striking illustration of Jobs tender and conscientious piety; and, finally, they present a pleasing picture of patriarchal family life in its affectionate harmony and joyousness.E.]

Job 1:4. Now his sons were wont to hold a feast in the house of each one on his birth-day.Lit.: And his sons went and made a feast, etc. The verb went here, as the perf. consec. shows, refers not to an action which took place once, but to one which was wont to recur at definite times. [It does not exhibit the whole religious expression of Jobs life, but only one remarkable custom in it; hence being independent, vav has not the imperf. consecutive, but the simple perf., expressing here a single past action which the connection shows to have been customary. Dav.] Since denotes not the ordinary daily meal, but, as the derivation from proves, a feast of entertainment, a banquet attended with wine-drinking (Job 1:13), a , convivium, it is impossible to take (Accus. tempor.) in the sense of a daily recurrence of these meals, thus assuming that every week the dinner passed round in rotation to each of the seven brothers (Hirzel, Oehler, Kamph., Del. [Hengstenberg, Words.]). This would be a living in riot and revelry, all the more unbecoming since by such an arrangement the parents would be excluded altogether from the family-circle, whereas the sisters would be, contrary to Eastern custom, the habitual companions of their brothers at the table. Evidently denotes a day marked by special observance and feasting (comp. Hos 1:11; Hos 2:15; Hos 7:5); whence it would seem to have been either some annual festival, of general observance, such as the harvest festival, so widely observed in antiquity, or the spring festival (so Ewald, Vaih., Heil., Hahn, Dillm. [Dav.]); or else the birth-day festival of either one of the seven brothers (Rosml., Umbr., Welte, Schlott. [Wem., Carey, Rod., Bar., Elz.]). The latter seems to be most favored by Job 3:1, where (as also in Hos 7:5) evidently stands in the sense of birth-day (Gen 40:20); with this moreover stands in special harmony what we find in Job 1:13; Job 1:18, to wit, that special prominence is twice given to the circumstance that Jobs calamities came to pass on the day when his firstborn son was lost; this very coincidence of those fearful visitations with the birth-day festival of his first-born (the , the firstling of his strength, comp. Gen 49:3). constituting for the unfortunate father a tragic climax of sorrow, such as could not have befallen him had any other festivity been the occasion which brought the children together to undergo their common doom. The opening words of the verse following are indeed cited against this view; the fact, it is alleged, that we find mentioned there a cycle of days as the days of their feasting, and that it was not until they were ended that Job performed his purification, requires, on the assumption that these days were the birth-days of the seven sons, that the cycle should be distributed over the entire year, which would lead us to the untenable conclusion that but one expiation was offered in the year, namely, at the end of the last birth-day festival (comp. Dillm.). But why this conclusion should be pronounced untenable certainly does not appear. Moreover there is nothing at all to prevent our supposing that the birth-days of the seven sons, or indeed of all the ten children, were not very far apart, that, e.g., they all fell within one half-year. And then, over and above all, it would seem that excessively fine-spun speculation as to the question how the author conceived the circulation or the expiration () of the festal days must result in some violence to the character of the narrative, which is not rigidly historical, but poetic and ideal. For this reason we must reject Schlottmanns endeavor to represent each of the birth-day festivals mentioned in the account as lasting several days, thus assuming that Jobs expiatory sacrifice was made at the close of each such festival. This supposition would make it necessary for us to read quite too much between the lines, to say in Job 1:4 that means the first in each series of feast-days, while in Job 1:5, by are meant the several days of each festival of days (with which, however, the verb , to go round, devolvi, does not agree).

[Zcklers argument in favor of the birth-day theory is ingenious and suggestive, but not altogether satisfactory. The account in the text is so brief and general as to make absolute certainty impossible. The impression, however, which the narrative most naturally makes on the reader is: (1) That the days of the feast followed each other in immediate succession; in other words, that the seven feasts were given on seven successive days in the houses of the seven brothers in regular order from the oldest to the youngest; and (2) that at the end of the week, probably on the morning of the eighth day, Jobs sacrifice was offered. This is the simple and natural deduction from the narrative as it stands, and it is not easy to harmonize with it the theory that the feasts were held on a series of birth-days, separate from each other by an interval, longer or shorter. The suggestion that each birth-day feast lasted several days, and that Jobs sacrifice was offered at the end of those days, is clearly shown by Z to be unwarranted, and at variance with the statement conveyed by the . We are thus reduced either to (a) the daily theory, advocated by Hirzel, etc.; or to (b) the theory of an annual festival (spring or harvest, or both). But such an interminable carousal as (a) would imply, is, as Z. shows, highly improbable, and not to be assumed without the gravest necessity. In favor of (b), on the contrary, may be urged: (1) The prevalence in antiquity of those simple season-festivals. (2) The especial probability that such feasts would be observed in a patriarchal community, like Jobs family, belonging, as it evidently does, to the period of transition from a pastoral nomadism to a settled agricultural life. (3) The correspondence between the number of Jobs sons and the seven days of the festival week. (4) The absence of Job, which would be unnatural if these were birth-day festivals, may be at least more readily accounted for on such an occasion of simple secular merry-making as, e.g., a harvest festival. (Schlottmann well remarks that if the festival had been religious in its character, Job, as patriarchal priest, would have stood more in the foreground).

Z.s remark that the double mention of the fact that the fatal feast was held in the house of the first-born, becomes doubly significant, if the day were his birth-day, is certainly striking, but of less weight than the other considerations presented above. The specification of the place of entertainment imparts greater reality to the narrative; the further specification of the house of the first-born still further deepens the tragic impression of the story, by suggesting that the calamity struck the banqueters on the very first day of their festivities.E.]And sent and called for their three sisters to eat and to drink with them.This invitation which was always extended to the sisters (who, we are to suppose, were living with their mother), is made specially prominent as showing the inner mutual relation which the father had established among his children (Hirzel). [And they used to send and invitean independent fact; the author lifts it out of dependence to emphasize it, for the purpose of showing the beautiful harmony and affection of Jobs family one to another, and the generous and free-hearted magnificence of the sons, and also the possibility of the coming catastrophe which swept away sons and daughters at once. The father had no relish for this kind of enjoyment; but no peevish dislike of it, or of those who had, being a wise and liberal man, wishing the happiness of all about him, and pleased to see them enjoy themselves in their own, not his way, so only they do it innocently and religiously. The sons of Job seem to have had establishments of their own, and the daughters lived apart with the mother. On the irregularity of fem. with fem, noun, comp. Gen 7:13; Jer 36:23(where the gend. are both right and wrong); Zec 3:9. Dav.]

Job 1:5. And it was so, when the days of their feasting were gone about, i.e., when the period through which their mutual invitations ran, that which embraced their frequent birth-day festivals, had run its course (, comp. that which has been said above against Schlott). [Good: And it came to pass, as the days of such banquets returned, etc., which is not only opposed to the plain meaning of the verb, but at variance with the obvious design of Jobs sacrifice, which was retrospective, not anticipatory, offered for the sins which he feared they had committed, not for those which he feared they might commit. A similar rotatory system of banquets is said to prevail in China. They have their fraternities which they call the brotherhood of the months; this consists of months according to the number of the days therein, and in a circle they go abroad to eat at one anothers houses by turns. Semedos History of China, quoted by Burder, Oriental Customs.E.] is to be understood collectively, the days of the banquets, of entertaining not as a strict singular, of one feast distributed over several days.That Job sent that he might atone for them.He sent for them for this end; for the efficacy of sacrifices of purification depended on the presence of those in whose behalf they were made. , literally: and sanctified, consecrated them, defining the object of . How the sanctification took place, we are told in what follows. The term expresses not merely the preparation for the expiation, the lustration or washing preceding the sacrifice, as Rosmlr., Arnh., Hirz., Vaih., Heil., Dillm. affirm, on the strength of passages like Exo 19:10; Jos 7:13; 1Sa 16:5. [Zckler seems to regard the sanctification here as a part of the general rite of expiation which Job performed, and thus as taking place at the same time. The other theory, maintained by the majority of commentators (including, in addition to those named above, Hengst., Dav., Con.), is supported by the following considerations: (1) The general usage of the verb , the essential signification of which in its transitive forms is to dedicate, purify for holy service. See Ges. and Frsts Lex. (2) The analogy of the Mosaic and other rituals, in which preparatory rites of purification are the rule. It is true that the author of the book is careful to put himself and his characters outside of the Mosaic system,1 and avoids even here, as we shall see below, any identification of Jobs sacrifices with the Mosaic. Preparatory riles, lustrations, and the like, are however common to all religions, and there is no reason to suppose that the author would shrink from introducing a feature of such general observance because it belongs to the Mosaic ritual. It is in harmony with this that we find (3) in Exo 19:10 the direct recognition of a preparatory rite of purification (the same word being used there as here), before the Sinaitic code had been given, whereby the prevalence of such a rite in the pre-Mosaic period is clearly implied (comp. Gen 35:21). (4) The order of terms in the passage under considerationsent, purified, rose early, offeredcertainly agrees best with the supposition that on the evening of the seventh day he sent and secured the purification of his children, their preparation for the solemn holocaust of the morrow, and then rose early on the morning of the eighth day, and in presence of his assembled children consummated the sacrifice. Had only one sacrificial rite been designated, the natural order would have been rose, sent, purified, offered. (5) The absolute use of makes it exceedingly doubtful whether we can with Z. render it: and he sent for them. At the same time, as Z. admits, the impressiveness and efficacy of the sacrifice required that those for whom it was made should be present. This leaves us no alternative but to regard the sanctification and the offering as two distinct rites, the former secured by Jobs mandate in his absence, the latter performed by him in person, and in the presence of his children. When to this we add the separation of the two verbs sanctified and offered by the verb rose early, the conclusion here reached seems irresistible.E.]And rose up early in the morning, and offered burnt-offerings, according to the number of them all.The comprehensive magnificence of the sacrifice made it necessary that he should rise early. [His rising early may also be taken as an indication of his zeal, and of his earnest desire to make the expiation as promptly as possible. Job made his offering in the morning because in the morning the feelings are most freely and most strongly inclined toward religious contemplation. The saying: Morgenstunde hat Gold im Munde (the morning hour has gold in its mouth), is true not only of work, but also of prayer. Hengst.E.] perf. consec. as in Job 1:4. [ refers not so much to bringing it up to the raised altar, as to causing it to rise in flame and smoke, causing to ascend to God who is above. Del]. , and according to the number of them all (accus. of nearer definition, Ewald, 300, c. [Green, 274, 2]). Job, it will be observed, offered burnt-offerings, not sin-offerings (so again in Job 42:8). This is quite in accordance with the pre-Mosaic patriarchal period, which, as all the historical references to sacrifices in the book of Genesis also show, was not yet acquainted with the sin-offering instituted later by Moses. [An indication of the care and skill with which our author preserves the antique coloring of his narrative.E.] Another genuinely patriarchal trait is furnished in the fact that Job, in his character as father, appears also in the character of priest of the household, offering its sacrifices. Comp. Introduction, 2.For Job said: in the first instance, naturally, to himself, or in prayer to God; but surely also in speech to others, as a formal statement of his principle, and explanation of his course. It is a needless weakening of the to explain with Ewald, Hahn, etc.: for Job thought.It may be that my sons have sinned, and renounced God in their hearts; to wit, in the intoxication of their abandonment to pleasure, in the wanton or presumptuous spirit produced by their merrymaking (comp. Pro 20:1; Isa 5:11; Isa 28:7, etc.). Thus it is that Job gives utterance here to that extraordinary earnestness and zeal in fulfilling the Divine will, which leads him to ascribe the highest importance to the avoidance, or, when necessary, the expiation of all sins, even of the heart and the thought. Comp. Job 31:24, sq. , to bless, to salute, is also used (e.g., Gen 47:10; 1Ki 8:66) of bidding farewell to [taking leave of], here, however, still more definitely in a bad sense, taking leave of one in a hostile spirit; dismissing, renouncing. So also in Job 1:11 and Job 2:5; Job 2:9. The word also admits of the signification to curse (comp. Psa 10:3 [?]; 1Ki 21:10); but most surely this is not the meaning here, where sins of thought simply are referred to. [The bifurcation of definitions, so that the same word is used in a good and a bad sense, is a well-known characteristic of the Hebrew in common with other Semitic languages. Thus , grace, is used Pro 14:34 in the sense of disgrace. Or, the word in its radical signification is a vox media, acquiring its ethical character from the specific application made of it, of which we have a happy illustration in , primarily to kneel, and so to invoke; hence to bless, or to curse, according to the nature of the invocation. And still further: from the meaning to invoke, comes to salute, which again may be to salute with good-will, or with ill-will; in the latter case (if at parting) to dismiss, warn off, renounce. Compare the analogous uses of and valere. Of the harsher definition, to curse, it may be observed that: (1) We are not restricted to it. The context does not absolutely require it. We are justified both by usage and analogy in adopting the milder definition, to forsake, dismiss. (2) It is more natural to suppose that the children of Job, nurtured, as they must have been, by so tender and conscientious a father, should have been betrayed, during their festivities, into a wanton thoughtlessness, a pleasure-loving alienation from God, than into positive blasphemy. (3) It is more natural to assume that the pious patriarch would be accustomed to fear the former, than the latter more heinous evil, in the case of his children. Mark the statement: thus did Job continually. (4) The qualifying predicate, in their hearts, agrees better with the idea of forgetting, or forsaking God in feeling, than with that of blasphemy. The latter would seek some overt expression. (5) Jobs loving and faithful solicitude for the spiritual welfare of his children is much more strikingly exhibited, if we regard it as prompted by anxiety lest they should have been guilty of even the most secret infidelity in thought or disposition, than if we assume the graver offence to be intended. Lee, following Parkhurst, thinks that Job suspected his children of a tendency to idolatry, and translates: It may be my sons have sinned and blessed the gods in their hearts. It is sufficient answer to this to say that it violates the usus loquendi of , and especially of in our book, that we are not constrained to render the verb: to bless, and that it is opposed to the internal probabilities of the case. The only false religion we know, from the internal evidence of the poem itself, to have existed at this period, was that of Sabiism, or the worship of the heavenly bodies; but there is nothing to render it even probable that the sons of Job were attached to this. Good. The author just quoted (Good) seeks to avoid what he considers the difficulty in the case by giving to the particle here a negative sense, under a philological canon, which he lays down as follows: that the imperfect negative may be employed alone in every sentence compounded of two opposite propositions, where it becomes the means of connecting the one with the other, such propositions being in a state of reciprocal negation; and he would translate: peradventure my sons may have sinned, nor blessed God in their hearts. His own illustrations, however, fail to establish his choice, as in every instance the connective particle has of itself a negative force, such as does not belong to the . It is certainly inapplicable to the simple structure of the Hebrew. Merx in his recent version violently and arbitrarily assails the integrity of the text here and elsewhere, where the like expression occurs. In his own text he substitutes for . It is enough to say of this change that, as appears from what has been said above, the necessity for it is altogether imaginary, and that the sole authority for it is the subjective non possumus of the critic.E. Job is afraid lest his children may have become somewhat unmindful of God during their mirthful gatherings. In Jobs family, therefore, there was an earnest desire for sanctification, which was far from being satisfied with mere outward propriety of conduct. Del. It is curious that the sin which the fathers heart dreaded in his children, was the sin to which he himself was tempted, and into which he almost fell. The case of his sons shows one kind of temptationseduction; and his own case the othercompulsion and hardship.Dav.]Thus did Job continually., was wont to do. Comp. Ewald 136, c. [Green 263, 4]. , literally, all the days, i.e., continually, always, so long as the particular occasion continued, or so often as it occurred anew. Comp. Deu 4:10; Deu 6:24; Deu 11:1; 1Sa 2:32.

[Where now such piety was to be found, and such conscientious solicitude to keep his whole house free from sin, there we might expect, judging after the manner of men, that prosperity would abide permanently. This at least we might expect from the stand-point of theory, which regards the outward lot as an index of the moral worth, which assumes piety and prosperity to be inseparable and convertible conceptions But in Heaven it was otherwise decreed. Dillmann].

2. The Divine determination to try Job through suffering. a. The milder trial, the taking away of his possessions, a. The preparatory scene in heaven, Job 1:6-12.

[Against human expectation and beyond human conception the direst suffering overtakes the pure, pious Job. Whence it came no believer could doubt; but why it came was for the sufferer and his contemporaries a great and difficult problem, with the solution of which they grappled in vehement conflict. The reader of the book would also have remained in entire ignorance of the Divine decree, and would have followed the labyrinthine sinuosities of the contending parties, not with superior discriminating judgment, but with an uncomfortable uncertainty, if the poet had here simply related the calamity into which the pious Job had been plunged by God. It was therefore a correct feeling which influenced the poet to indicate at the outset to the reader the Divine grounds of the decree, and thus to provide for him a polestar which would guide him through all the entanglement of the succeeding conflicts. This he does by disclosing to us those events, occurring in heaven, which led to the Divine decree concerning Job, the execution of which thereupon follows. No less fine a conception of the poet is the circumstance that the calamity which Job must bear does not overwhelm him all at once, but comes upon him in two visitations, lying somewhat apart in time; the first visitation deprives him of the greatest part of his riches and his children, the second plunges him into the most fearful, and, at the same time, the most hopeless [disease. Both visitations wound his feelings in different ways, until on all sides they are tried most thoroughly. Between the two is an interval of rest, in which the stricken one can collect his feelings, and set himself right before God. And as in the second visitation his suffering reaches its climax, so also does his virtue. Dillmann].

Job 1:6. Now it came to pass on a day.Gesenius, Ewald, Dillmann, etc., would translate , the day, or that day, giving to the article a retrospective construction. But this favorite mode of expression is found at the beginning of a narrative even when it cannot be considered to have any reference to what has preceded, and where accordingly the translation at the time specified is out of the question; e.g., 2Ki 4:18. The article here, therefore, is used because the narrator in thought connects the day with the following occurrence, and this frees it from absolute indefiniteness. Del. [We are justified by no analogy in explaining the article as designating the definite day to which that which follows belongs. Ewald rightly explains the day as an indefinite chronological link connecting what follows with what precedes. So also 1Sa 1:4; 1Sa 14:1; 2Ki 4:18. Compare . Mat 13:1. Schlott. Others (Dav., Bar., Con.) explain it of the day appointed for the Divine Court (Chald.: day of judgment at the new year), which is not essentially different from the view of Del. adopted by Zck. In any case it is to be observed that is not nominative, but accusative of time.E.]When the sons of God came to present themselves before the Lord.These words describe the convening of a heavenly assembly, of a celestial (Job 15:8; comp. Jer 23:18; Psa 89:8). Compare the similar description in 1Ki 22:19 sq., also Isa 6:1 sq. , the sons of God, i.e., the angels, heavenly spirits; a name to be found also in Job 38:7; Gen 6:2 [?]; and with slight modification in Psa 29:1; Psa 89:7; Dan 3:25. Elsewhere in our book we find them called servants, messengers (Job 4:18), or saints (holy ones, Job 5:1; Job 15:15). The name sons of God points to the peculiar manner of their creation, which took place before the lower spheres of nature or mankind were made (Job 38:4-7), as well as to the peculiarly high degree in which they partake of the Divine likeness, and enjoy inward communion with God. [The word son naturally expresses descent; and hence various related notions such as inheritor, the idea of similarity, relation, etc. So a son of God will be one inheriting the nature or character of God, one descended from Him, or like Him. This similarity may be of two kinds: first, in essential nature, that is, spirithence the angels as distinguished from man and agreeing with God completely in this respect are called sons of God; second, in ethical character, that is, holiness, in which sense pious men are called sons of God (Gen 6:2). In the former and in the latter sense the holy angels have a right to the title; and in the former sense, though not in the latter, Satan is still named a son of God as inheriting a spiritual nature, and appears in the celestial court. Dav].

, literally, to set themselves over, i.e., before Jehovah. (instead of which we have elsewhere, e.g., Pro 22:29) is a usage of language derived from the optical illusion of the one who is in the foreground seeming to range above the one in the background. Del. Comp. Job 2:1; Zec 6:5; also the similar expression in 1Ki 22:19. [, as if the King sat, and the courtiers stood over him (Isa 6:2, in a higher degree of the seraphim floating around him off the ground. Drechsler); but this is dubious, for is used where such sense is inadmissible (Jdg 3:19; with Jdg 6:31; Gen 24:30 Dav.] To set themselves before Jehovah is to assume the customary attitude of servants awaiting the command of their master.And Satan also came among them.[Literally, the Satan. In 1Ch 21:1 the name is used without the art.; i.e., has ceased to be appellative and become properSatan. In our book and Zechariah the art. is used, and we should perhaps render: the Satan, the adversary. In 1Ki 22:19, where a scene greatly resembling the present is discovered, the tempter bears no name; but his individuality is distinct, for he is characterized as the spirit. The use of the art. cannot be of any great weight as an argument as to the era of our book. Dav.] Concerning the signification of the name (instead of which we are not, with Eichhorn, Herder, Ilgen, Stuhlmann, etc., to read , , the world-spy, from , Job 1:7), as also concerning the relation of the representation of Satan in our book, to that of the other Old Testament books generally, see Doctrinal and Ethical remarks.

Job 1:7. And the Lord said unto Satan, Whence comest thou? , the sense being: whence art thou just now coming? the imperf. expressing the immediate present [Satan being conceived as in the act of making his appearance.E.] (Ewald, 136, b). The question is certainly not simply for the purpose of introducing the transaction (Dillm.); there lies more in it, to wit, the intimation that Satans ways are not Gods ways; that it is his wont to roam about, a being without stability, malicious, intent upon evil; that there is in his case a reason, which does not exist in the case of Gods true children, the angels, why God should inquire after his crooked and crafty ways, and compel him thereby to give an account of his restless, arbitrary movements. As Cocceius has truly said: Satan is represented as transacting his own affairs as it were without the knowledge, i.e., without the approbation of God. (Comp. Seb. Schmidt, p. 25, and Lud w. Schulze, in the Allg. literar. Anzeiger, 1870, Oct., p. 270). From going to and fro in the earth, and from walking up and down in it.Umbreit is right in calling attention to the curt brevity of this reply of Satans. It is also to be noted, however, that the answer is of necessity somewhat general, giving rise to the expectation that Jehovah will follow with a more particular question (comp. Delitzsch). describes the more rapid passage through a place, scouring it from one end to another (comp. Num 11:8) [of the people scattering themselves to collect manna]; 2Sa 24:2 [of the census taken when David numbered the people]; likewise the Synon. (Amo 8:12; Jer 5:1; Zec 4:10; 2Ch 16:9): describes the more deliberate movement of one who is traveling for observation (Zec 1:10-11; Zec 6:7; comp. Gen 3:8; also the of the adversary, who goes about espying whom he may devour, 1Pe 5:8). [Acc. to Ges., is a verb denominative from , whip, scourge; and is used in Kal. of rowing (Eze 27:8), i.e. lashing the sea with oars, and of running to and fro in haste, pr. so as to lash the air with ones arms as with oars, happily enough describing Satans functions, going about, inspecting, tempting, trepanning, taking up evil reports of all men (Dav.). The signification to compass (Sept. ) is not exact.E.]. Here belongs the Arabic designation of the devil as El-Harith, the busy-body, ever-active, zealous one. [In the life of Zoroaster (see Zend Avesta, by J. G. Kleuker, vol. 3., p. 11), the prince of the evil demons, the angel of death, whose name is Engremeniosch, is said to traverse the whole earth far and wide, with intent to oppose and injure in every possible way all good men. Rosenm.]

Job 1:8. Hast thou considered my servant Job?Literally, hast thou set thine heart on, etc. = animadvertere [animum advertere, for is animus, , anima, Del.], construed here with [of the object on which the attention falls, Del.], as in Hag 1:5; Hag 1:7; below, Job 2:3, with [of the object towards which it is directed, Del.]. For there is none like him in the earth, a perfect and an upright man, etc., for, giving the reason not for the title, my servant (Hirz.), but for the circumstance that Jehovah makes special inquiry after this man. The four qualities predicated concerning Job are repeated here from Job 1:1 (with the omission, however, of the Vav connective between the two pairs). In this, the impress of the epic-narrative character of this section of the book is visible, and it appears again in the refrain-like repetitions of Job 1:16-18. The same may be observed in the Mosaic account of the creation, Genesis 1. [The Deity reiterates the description of Job given by the historian; it is, therefore, a first principle and action of the drama that Job was sinless, keeping all the commandments with a perfect heart, and in spite of thiswhich Job himself knew, and which the author knewnay, because of this, he was grievously tormented. And herein just lay the problem for Job and the overwhelming strength of the temptation, leading him in the madness of despair, both physical and speculative, to renounce God to his face, and assert the government of the world to be hopelessly chaotic and unjust. Spirits like that of Job could not be reached in meaner ways; passion has long been mastered; there is nothing but his very strength and calmness and faith to work upon; his first principles, the laborious deductions of a religious life, and the deepest experience of a loving heartconfusion must be introduced there, between the mans notions of God and providence, and his necessary ideas of right on the one side, and on the other the actual appearance of the universe fearfully contravening them, thus leading him into atheism. His trial was not for his sin, but for his sinlessness, to prove and establish it. Jobs sufferings had no doubt relation to his sin, they gave him deeper views of it, and of Gods holiness; but that is not the great truth the book teaches. Dav. It is significant, as Hengstenberg observes, that in these preliminary transactions, which at length issued in Jobs trial, Jehovah takes the initiative. He directs Satans attention to the piety of Job; it is his use of the argument which Jobs character furnishes in favor of the reality of godliness in a human life that evokes the Adversarys malignity in the challenge which fires the train of Jobs calamities. To such an extent is the agency of Satan secondary and subordinate throughout, that not only must he receive Gods permission before he can proceed one step against Job, but the very occasion through which he obtains that permission is gratuitously provided for him by God. So absolute is the Divine Sovereignty. Thus completely are even the occasions of evil within the limitations of the Divine will. And thus is our confidence strengthened at the outset in the ultimate inevitable triumph of the Divine purpose.E.].

Job 1:9. Doth Job fear God for naught? [A little more literally: For naught hath Job feared God? , emphatic by position; , which above in Job 1:1; Job 1:8 is a participle, here a Pret. (Perf.) of that which has been hitherto, and still is.E.]. , gratis, from , gratia, here equivalent to gratuitously, groundlessly, without good reason [LXX. comp. the of Joh 15:25) without reward, or profit. [Genuine love loves God, ; it loves Him for His own sake; it is a relation of person to person, without any actual stipulations and claim. Del. Satan denies this of Job. Compare the three-fold use of in this book; by Satan of Job here; by God of Satan, Job 2:3; by Job of God, Job 9:17.E.] The question, which is asked in order to throw suspicion on the pure and disinterested character of Jobs piety, is thoroughly characteristic of Satan in his character of Accuser of men (, Rev 12:10; , Mat 4:1, etc.). [This question: Does Job serve God for naught? is the problem of the book. Dav.].

Job 1:10. Hast thou not made a hedge about him, and about his house, and about all that he hath on every side?The figure used here, borrowed from the enclosure of a garden or a field for protection against wild beasts (Mat 21:33), is somewhat analogous to the modern figurative expression: to make ones bed warm and soft for him. [ (without the final ) emphatic: Hast not Thou made a hedge about him? Thouthe Almighty One, whose protection is all-sufficient. Ought he not to serve Thee, his Defender and Benefactor? Would not self-interest prompt him to this?E.]. , sepire, to hedge about, as in Hos 2:8. [Here in a good sense, for protection; below, Job 3:23, in a bad sense, to straiten. Good remarks that to give the original verb the full force of its meaning, it should be derived from the science of engineering, and rendered: Hast thou not raised a palisade about him? But this last term is not sufficiently colloquial. Wemyss unnecessarily assumes the hedge here to be a guard of angels. The Arabic has: Hast thou not protected him with thy hand? The Chald. Paraphrase: Hast thou not covered him with thy word? The Coptic: Hast thou not been a fence to his possessions?E.] The preposition it is much better to derive from a verb , synonymous with the root , to cover, to veil [with which root it is also cognate: see Ewald, 217, m], than from the prepositions and , of which most regard the word as compounded (as is held even yet by Delitzsch, and Dietrich in his Ed. of Gesen. Lex.). There lies in the three-fold repetition of this word a special emphasis, which is still further strengthened by the addition, at the close of the question, of , round about, on every side, without leaving a gap through which harm might enter. Dillm.LXX.: Hast thou not hedged round the parts without him, and the inner parts of his house, and that which is without all his possessions round about?] Thou hast blessed the work of his hands. (as in Psa 90:17; Deu 2:7; Deu 14:29, etc.), a general designation of all a mans enterprises and activities. Compare as to sense the parallel passage, Gen 39:3 (where it is said of Joseph: the Lord made all that he did to prosper in his hand).And his herds spread in the land: literally, his stock of cattle, , breaks through in the land, like a flood breaking through an embankment ( , 2Sa 5:20), or like a herd breaking out of a fold. Comp. Gen 28:14; Gen 30:30; Gen 30:43; 2 Chron. 2:23; Isa 45:2[So the versions of Junius and Tremellius and Piscator: And his cattle for multitude have burst forth through the land. Conant: his substance is spread abroad in the earth, which, he thinks, is better than in the land, as it is the Adversarys object to express, in the strongest terms, the extent of Jobs possessions. On Thou hast blessed, etc., Wordsworth remarks: Even Satan confesses that Gods benediction is the source of all good to man.E.]

Job 1:11. But put forth thy hand now, and touch all that he hath., nevertheless, verum enim vero, introducing with strong emphasis the direct opposite of Jehovahs eulogy on Job (comp. Job 11:5; Job 12:7; Job 17:10; Job 33:1). [, Methegh accompanying Sheva. Green, 45, 4], with (as in Job 19:21), sometimes with (as in Job 2:5), to touch, to lay the hand on anything, with intent to injure or destroy. [Touch, or as it may be translated, smite, as below in Job 1:19. But the former sense is more appropriate here, as indicating how easily all this worldly prosperity would vanish at the touch of the Almighty. Conant. frequently of the evil touch which blasts; of the scattering wind (Eze 17:10); of the consuming touch of God (Job 19:21; Isa 53:4; Psa 73:14); the fiery effect of the divine touch (and look) marvellously told Psa 104:32. Dav. Satan wishes to make God the author of evil; but God does not inflict evil on Job; but allows Satan to put forth his hand (Job 1:12), and afflict him. Didymus, quoted by Wordsworth].

Verily he will curse Thee to Thy face. , not, will he not curse, etc. (and thus = an non, as in Job 17:2; Job 22:20), but the formula of an oath, with the apodosis omitted,=truly, verily (LXX.: ). It is more suitable to Satans insolent, reckless character to represent him as swearing that God is mistaken, than as questioning and calling upon God to watch and see, whether he is not mistaken [as e.g. Renans version: et on verra sil ne te renie pas en face.] , here again=valedicere, take leave of, as in Job 1:5, but strengthened here, so as to emphasize the shameless arrogance of the deed by the addition of , to thy face, literally upon thy face, as in Job 6:28; Job 21:31; Isa 65:3; comp. , Job 2:5; Job 13:15; , Job 16:8. [The refusal of Good and Lee to entertain any other meaning for than to bless leads them here, as also in Job 2:5, to forced and untenable constructions. Goods rendering: Will he then, indeed, bless thee to thy face? is entirely against the usage of the particles, , which elsewhere are strongly affirmative, not negative, and, moreover, leaves the qualifying clause, to thy face, meaningless. Lees rendering is even more objectionable: But put forth thine hand now, and touch all that he hath: if not (i.e. if thou continue thy favors), then in thy presence will he bless thee. A forced construction, and a feeble conclusion, entirely unworthy of the Satan of our book.E.].

Job 1:12. Behold, all that he hath is in thy power: literally, is in thy hand; is delivered to thee. The divine permission appears here at the same time as a divine command; for such a permissive activity, on the part of God, as would admit of his remaining purely passive, is altogether unknown to the Old Testament (comp. Isa 45:7). Rather do we find that whenever men are tempted, it is because they are left by God to be tried, because He forsakes them, or withdraws His hand from them (2Ch 32:31; Psa 27:9, and often)simple representations, parallel to that in the passage before us, and substantially equivalent to it (comp. Vilmar, Theol. Mor., 1871, I., p. 163). God, indeed, in decreeing that Job shall be tempted, has altogether other ends in view than those which are sought by the Adversary, who is commissioned to carry on the work of the temptation. While the latter desires, through his art as tempter, to compass the fall of Job, it is Gods will rather that he should endure the test, that thereby he may be not only lifted up by purification to the highest degree of virtue and piety, but also proved to be in truth a man of piety, who feared God, Satan and all other doubters to the contrary notwithstanding. That which is here put in operation is thus, on the part of God, a trial of Job, putting him to the proof; on the part of Satan, a veritable temptation to lead him astray. The motive from which the divine decree ordaining the trial proceeds is naught else than love, delivering and preserving the soul; that from which proceeds the action of the agent for the fulfilment of that decree is hate, the spirit which would murder body and soul, a diabolical satisfaction in causing a poor mans body and soul to be destroyed in hell (Mat 10:28; Luk 12:4 [where, however, God is meant, not the devil.E.]). Therefore does God annex to the permission which He here grants Satan the warning prohibition: only upon himself put not forth thy hand. For He well knows the lust of murder and the thirst for destruction which possesses him who is a murderer and a liar from the beginning. So Satan went forth from the presence of the Lord., literally, and Satan went out, i.e. out of the hall where the celestial assembly was convened. Immediately upon receiving the Divine license, he left the place, to begin the work of temptation in which he longed to engage. [He went forth at once, the ardor with which he entered on his work being thus set forth. Dillm. As Cain did (Gen 4:16), and as Judas did from the presence of Christ (Joh 13:30). Words.]

3. (b) Jobs actual trial in the execution of the decree on his possessions and family, Job 1:13-19.

[In the opening verses the author gave us a glimpse of the calm sunshine of Jobs domestic life, its happy unity and religious simplicity. In the next few verses he took us elsewhere, and showed the first far-gatherings of the storm; and now it breaks in unheard-of fury, scattering ruin and scathing all that was beautiful in earth and man. The heavenly and the earthly combine, and there results a tumultuous mixture absolutely appalling in its workings. Heaven and earth unite to sow destruction around Job; all the destructive forces in nature, mens evil passions and heavens lurking fire, are drawn out to overwhelm him. Man and heaven alternate in their eager fury for his ruinfirst the Sabean horde, then the lightnings, then the hasty and bitter Chaldeans, and finally the tempest. Only one escapes each stroke, and yet one, for the man must know the outside of his ruin, and he must know it at once; each wave must come higher than the foregoingthe cattle, least numerous; the flocks, a deeper loss; the camels, more precious still; and, cruelest of all, a loss unlike all elsethe childrenand each wave comes up before the preceding has time to recede. All antiquity and human thought cannot produce three such scenes as these; the first so lovely in its peace and righteousness; the second so awful in its far sublimity, unveiling to our eyes the hidden powers that play with and for us; and now the third, so wild in its fury and frantic in its malignant outburstsand all to be followed by one so dreadful in its calmness and iron composure, when a human spirit stands alone in its own conscious greatness, independent of earth, and defiant of hell. Dav.] All that the poet in Job 1:2-4 has described as the property of his hero, he now represents as in one day taken away from him. This is done in four stages, or by four strokes, following each other in immediate succession [and immediately announced to him, whence the German proverbial expression Hiobsposten, Jobs posts, applied to tidings of calamity. Compare in English the proverbial expression: Jobs comforters.E.] These four strokes are: (1) The loss of the oxen and the asses. (2) The loss of the sheep, representing the smaller cattle. (3) The loss of the camels. Each of these calamities was accompanied by the slaying of the servants in charge of the animals specified. (4) The loss of the children. In so far as the fourth of these losses was by far the most severe and painful, a gradation of woe appears in the series. [Ewald, followed by Dillmann and others, has remarked upon the peculiarity that the first and third of the calamities are ascribed to human, the second and fourth to celestial agencies.E. It is not accidental (says Hengstenberg) that there are just four catastrophes, divided into two pairs, and corresponding to the fourfold particularization of the righteousness of Job. In them may be seen a sort of irony of destiny touching his and all human righteousness.]

Job 1:13. And there was a day [literally: Now it was the day, or: It came to pass on the day, viz.: when Satan, in pursuance of his fell purpose, visited on Job the first installment of woe, his children having assembled in the house of their eldest brother to begin their festivities. On that same day, the first and brightest of the festal round, the fatal stroke fell.E.] when his sons and his daughters were eating and drinking wine in their eldest brothers house [in the house of their brother, the first-born], i.e., according to Job 1:4, were celebrating the birth-day of this first-born, on a day, therefore, which was one of especial joy to Jobs entire household. See above on Job 1:4-5.

Job 1:14-15. The first loss: that of the oxen and the she-asses, together with the servants in charge.

Job 1:14. Then came a messenger to Job, etc. Literally: And a messenger came, etc.The introduces the conclusion of the conditional sentence in Job 1:13 [i.e., when his sons, etc., then it was that a messenger came]. Comp. Job 1:19, and Ewald, 341 d.The oxen were ploughing, and the she-asses feeding beside them.The participial construction describes the condition which was disturbed by the calamity that befell them (Del., comp. Ewald, 168 c). [This remark includes the construction of the partic. with , which is not (with Frst, and others) to be regarded as a simple periphrasis for the narrative tense, as is usual in Aramean; on the contrary has its own force, defining the time of the continuous condition expressed by the participle.E.] The partic. stands in the fem. plur., , because is a collective noun, and, more particularly, because the females of the class, cows, are intended. Subsequently, however, and referring back to this , we find the masc. suffix in use as the more general or primary gender (Ewald, 184 c. [Green, 220, 1, b], and comp. Job 39:3-4; Job 42:15). , literally: on, or at, their hands. The meaning is not in their places, as some Rabbis and Bttcher explain it, referring to Num 2:17; Deu 23:13 [nor according to their custom, more solito, Schult; nor at some distance, Wem.]; but, as the connection shows, on both sides of them (comp. Jdg 11:26), or simply beside them (=, comp. Num 34:3).

Job 1:15. And the Sabeans fell upon them; literally: And Sabea fell, etc., as the name of a people, is used in the feminine (Ewald, 174, b); it is followed, however, by the masc. plur. [see Green, 197, d]. By here is meant not the rich, commercial Sabeans of Southern Arabia, referred to in Job 6:19, but the related branch of the same people in northeastern Arabia, who lived the nomadic life of predatory Bedouins, ranging from the Persian Gulf to Idumea, neighbors and kindred of the tribe of Dedan, who also lived in North Arabia; Gen 10:7; Gen 25:3. Genesis still further makes mention of three races of the name, the Cushite, (Job 10:9), the Joktanite (10:28), and the Abrahamic, or Keturic (Job 25:3), which shows in general the mixed character of this people. [Schlottmann, while agreeing with Zck. as to the branch of the family here referred to, shows on the authority of Pliny and Strabo, that the Sabeans of Southern Arabia were robbers as well as traders.E.]And they have slain the servants with the edge of the sword.The servants here were the young herdsmen in charge of the cattle [lit.: the young men; LXX., ; Jerome, pueros; Luther, the boys; so in slave communities servants are called boys.E.] With the edge; literally: according to the [mouth, i.e.,] sharpness of the sword ( ), i.e., unsparingly. [According to Ges. and Furst here denotes the instrument. The objection to Gesenius view is obviated by the near relation between the ideas of agency and instrumentality; and any other explanation of his examples is unnatural and forced. Con.And only I alone escaped to tell thee.[Chrysostom (Hom. 2 et 3 de patient. Jobi) fancies that the was Satan himself, who indulged himself in the gratification of bringing the ill tidings to Job. Dillm.] The paragogic in does not mark here the cohortative use of the verb, but simply makes more vivid the verbal notion, in order to show the haste with which he escaped. [I have saved myself with great difficulty. Del.] Comp. Gesenius, 49, 2; Ewald, 232, g. The clause is objective: in order that, in accordance with the Divine decree, I might tell thee.

Job 1:16. The second loss: that of the smaller cattle, with the servants in charge.While this one was yet speaking, there came another, etc.The same connection between the circumstantial participial clause and the principal clause, as in verse 13. (Ewald, 341, d) , the onethe other, and so again in Job 21:23; Job 21:25.The fire of God fell from heaven and burned up the sheep, etc.By the fire of God the author means the lightning rapidly repeating itself [see Exo 9:23], which might be particularly destructive to the flocks of smaller cattle (Psalms 78.), and the agency of which in suddenly burning and devouring is certainly described in 1Ki 18:38; 2Ki 1:12) (comp. Luk 9:54). [The expression: fire of God, indicates the poetic character of the description here given; and the entire sentence: the fire of God fell from heaven, is manifestly designed to show that Satan moved heaven and earth to combine in inflicting disaster on Job, so as to leave him without hope in either quarter.E.] It is less natural to assume a rain of fire and brimstone, like that of Sodom (Del.); neither does the language used suit the burning sulphurous south wind called the Samm (Schlott.), as a comparison with Psa 11:6 shows. [The latter theory moreover would result in making too little distinction between this calamity and the fourth.E.]

Job 1:17. The third loss: that of the camels, with their keepers. The Chaldeansformed three bands; lit.: Made three heads (Luther: drei spitzen), i.e., three army-bands or divisions. For in this sense, see Jdg 7:16; Jdg 9:34; 1Sa 11:11. As substantially parallel, comp. also Gen 14:15, where the same primitive tactics and strategy are described as practiced by Chedorlaomer and his vassal-kings. Without any authority, Ewald sees in this mention of the Chaldeans an indication of the composition of the book in the seventh century B. C., when the Chaldeans under Nabopolassar began to inherit the Assyrian power. Following Ewald, Renan observes that the Chaldeans first appear as such marauders about the time of Uzziah. But in Genesis we find mention of early Semitic Chaldeans among the mountain ranges lying to the north of Assyria and Mesopotamia (in Arphaxad, Gen 10:22, or Ur of the Chaldees, Gen 11:28; Gen 11:31; comp. the Charduchian range of Xenophon; and later, of Nahorite Chaldeans in Mesopotamia, whose existence is traced back to patriarchal times (Gen 22:22), and who were powerful enough at any time to make a raid into Idumea. Del. (Comp. also Dillmann, who, although an advocate of the later period to which the composition of the book is assigned, is careful not to try to make capital for his theory out of this passage).And set upon the camels., literally: to strip, to pillage. [According to Gesenius the primary meaning is to spread out; hence of an invading army, in Nah 3:16, of locusts. This sense best agrees with the prepositions with which it is construed: here , and so Jdg 9:33; elsewhere , 1Sa 27:8; , 2Ch 25:13.E.] The technical expression for such marauding invasions, or raids. Comp. Jdg 9:33; Jdg 9:44; 1Sa 23:27; 1Sa 30:14; Hos 7:1.

Job 1:18-19. The fourth loss: that of the sons and daughters.

Job 1:18. While this one was yet speaking, etc. Instead of (Job 1:16-17), we have here , which appears in connection with the participle, in the sense of while, also in Neh 7:3.The supposition of Schlott. [also of Hengst.], that this slight change of expression is made to distinguish the two following verses from the preceding, because they relate the greatest loss, is disproved by the circumstance that the change is too insignificant, being scarcely noticeable. The conjecture of Dillmann and some of the earlier commentators is more plausible, that instead of , we should read , defectively written, which in fact is the reading of some MSS.

Job 1:19. Behold there came a great wind from beyond the wilderness;i.e. hither across over the desert. [From the further side, gathering strength and violence as it approached from far. Isa 21:1; Jer 4:11; Hos 13:15. Dav.] As the land of Uz in our narrative stands west of the great North-Arabian desert [see on Job 1:1], the wind spoken of here is to be taken as a storm from the east, or possibly from the north-east rather. It is, moreover, evidently a whirlwind that is intended, for the house is smitten on its four corners, and is thus made to fall, like the house described in Mat 7:27. [The violence of the winds of the Arabian desert is well known. When Pietro della Valle travelled through this desert in the year 1625, the wind tore to pieces the tents of his caravan. Hirzel.]And smote the four corners,etc. [, in the masc., although the subject, , is first construed as fem. (). The use of the masc. belongs probably to the poetic vividness of the description. The change would be the more readily made in this case, as is sometimes, though rarely, masc.; comp. Job 41:8 (A. V. 16).E.]And it fell upon the young people;i.e. the ten children of Job, along with whom no special mention is made here of the servants in attendance, who probably perished with them, for the reason that their loss, in comparison with the far more grievous loss of his children, would not be taken into account by Job., here, and Job 29:5 (so also Rth 2:21), plur. of the epicene noun , which in the Pentateuch also is used both for a young man and a young woman. [Conant thinks, it is the less necessary to assume suck a usage here, as the attention of the messenger would naturally be directed to the fate of the sons in which all were involved. The view of Jarchi, as explained by Bernard: There was no occasion to mention the daughters, meaning thereby that the daughters were of little consequence, would meet with little favor at the present day. Ewald, speaking of the effect of this calamity on Job, remarks, it would add to the stunning force of the blow, that all this happened during the first day of a joyous festival, and consequently before the children could have incurred much guilt, according to the fathers apprehension as expressed in Job 1:4-5, so that the poet can furnish no sufficient occasion for their destruction in the greatness of their sin. This may be regarded as an additional and sufficient reason for assigning these calamities to the day when the entertainment took place in the house of the first-born, without having recourse to the theory that it was a birth-day feast. Wordsworths remark on the sweeping, all-embracing aspect of the destruction wrought is striking: Satan had said, that God had hedged in Job on all sides; but now Job is attacked on all sides; from the south by Sabeans; from the east by Chaldeans; from heaven by fire and whirlwind, or tornado, which assailed all the corners of the house of Jobs eldest son, in which his children were gathered together, and which fell upon them, and buried them in their hour of feasting.E.]

(y) Jobs Constancy and Patience. Vers.2022.

Job 1:20. Then Job arose, and rent his mantle, and shaved his head: both well-known oriental gestures, expressive of violent grief, rending the mantle, the outer garment, [an exterior tunic, fuller and longer than the common one, but without sleeves; worn by men of birth and rank, by kings and princes, by priests, etc. Ges.Comp. Job 2:12; Job 29:14], and shaving the head, including the beard [a sign of mourning among other nations, but not allowed to the Hebrews (Lev 21:5; Deu 14:1; comp. Eze 44:20), except to certain persons, e.g. the Nazarites. See Num 6:9. This, as Professor S. Lee observes, is another evidence of Jobs independence of the Levitical law: see Job 1:5. The Hebrews in time of mourning sometimes plucked off the hair, as well as rent the mantle: see Ezr 9:3. Words.] Jobs rising is mentioned simply as a preparatory motion, and as a sign of strong mental agitation, not as an independent gesture of grief. So also the clause which follows: and fell down upon the ground, is to be regarded not as an attitude of sorrow, but rather as preparatory to the worship of God in the immediate connection. This act of adoration () accordingly is presented in a twofold manner: first by the circumstantial preparatory clause, , then by the exact terminus technicus for adoration, . (Comp. Hoelemann, Ueber die biblische Gestalt der Anbetung, in his Bibelstudien, Part I., 1859.) [Jobs recognition of the quarter whence his sorrows came, and his feeling of Gods right to send them, and their ultimate (after some rockings) spiritual effect upon him, are finely exhibited in this verb. Human nature and grief has its rights firstthe heart must utter itself in words or actions; but the paroxysm over, a deeper calm succeedsa closer feeling of heaven, as after the thunder and tempestuous obscuration, the heavens are deeper and more transparent. Dav.]

Job 1:21. The devout expression of the sufferers lament and resignation is put in poetic form, in parallel members, clearly proving that the author of the prologue is the same with the author of the poem. Comp. Introd. 8.Naked came I out of my mothers womb., defectively written, as in Job 32:18; Num 11:11.And naked shall I return thither.The difficult word, , thither meaning into the womb (not as Bttcher explains, into the earth, as though Job, in speaking, pointed with his finger to the ground), may be explained in two ways: either with Hahn and Hupfeld, thither, whence I came, in coming out of my mothers womb, to wit, out of the state of nonentity [So Dav.: Mothers womb is considered synonymous with non-existence, and death is a return thither again into such a state]; comp. Job 30:23; Psa 9:18 (17 E. V.); or, more probably, by assuming a slight poetic ambiguity, by virtue of which womb in the second instance represents its counterpart, the bosom of mother earth: comp. Psa 139:13; Psa 139:15; Sir 40:1 [A heavy yoke is upon the sons of Adam from the day that they go out of their mothers womb till the day that they return to the mother of all things. Cyprian, quoting our passage, has it thus: Naked came I out of my mothers womb, and naked shall I go under the earth. Dans le second membre, says Renan, lauteur passe lide du sein de la terre, mre de tous les hommes.E.] The thought expressed here and elsewhere, as in Ecc 5:14 (15 E. V. see Comment. on the passage), that man departs hence as naked and helpless as he came here, is moreover only a deduction from that fundamental truth of antiquity announced in Gen 3:19 (Ecc 12:7). But to go further, and, taking in the sense of earths bosom, the interior of the earth, to find here the doctrine of the pre-existence of souls (J. D. Michaelis, Knapp, etc.), this is to do gross violence to the plain phraseology of the passage, and is, at the same time, to foist surreptitiously on our book a dogma of later times, nowhere to be met with in the Old Testament.Blessed be the name of Jehovah, blessed, praised, in a sense exactly opposite to that of Job 1:11, but chosen by the poet with express reference to the use there made by Satan of the word. Instead of the curse he wished for, the Tempter is compelled to hear from the sorely tried man God praised in benedictions. Job here gives evidence of being a believer in Jehovah, a confessor of the only true and eternal God, as his threefold use of the name proves. In his later discourses, this name retires before the name of God in general use in the patriarchal age, and occurs again only once (Job 12:9). Comp. Introd. 5. [Faith, expressing itself in the most vivid language, seizes on the most elevated, joyous, expressive name. As in regard to the matter, so also in regard to the name, Job is here raised above himself. Hengst.]

Job 1:22. In all this Job sinned not., not in all that which Job said and did (Muntinghe, Rosenm., etc.), which would be a very flat statement; but in all that befell him, in all these dispensations. The LXX. correctly: . The expression reaches back beyond Job 1:20-21, although without excluding that which is here related as said and done by Job. And showed no folly toward God: lit. and gave forth no folly toward God;i.e. uttered against Him nothing foolish, nothing senseless (, the same as the adj. , meaning stale, insipid, Job 6:6; comp. Job 24:12; Jer 25:18). Comp. Jerome: neque stultum quid contra Deum locutus est: and among the moderns more especially Rosenm., Rdiger (in Ges. Thesaurus, p. 15, 16), Oehl., Vaih. [Noy. Bar. appy, Con.]; Dillm. also, who explains: offered to God nothing unsavory, i.e., nothing to displease him. [It is curious to observe that in many languages, modern as well as ancient, wisdom is represented under the character of sapidity, or a palatable stimulus, and folly under that of insipidity, or anything devoid of stimulus. So while the Hebrew term here employed () means equally froth, insipidity, folly, or obtuseness of intellect, its opposite, which is , means, in like manner, taste, poignancy, discernment, superiority of intellect; terms which the Arabs yet retain, and in both senses. Good. For further illustration, G. refers to the proverbial Attic salt of the Greeks, for the flavor of wit and wisdom.To this should be added, that in Scripture these terms have an ethical, as well as an intellectual significance, so that as wisdom is one of the most important equivalents of piety, folly stands in the same relation to impiety. And so here. Job, in his trial, uttered nothing which betrayed a heart unsalted by wisdom and grace, no spiritual absurdity which betokened a spirit at variance with the Supreme Wisdom.E.] Altogether too inexact and free are the renderings, on the one hand, of Umbreit: and permitted himself nothing foolish against God; on the other hand of Ewald and Hahn: and gave God no offence. Contrary to usage is Olshausens rendering of as equivalent to abuse, reviling (he gave God no abuse, i.e., reviled him not: so the Pesh.) [Renan: he uttered no blasphemy against God]. The connection, however, forbids the explanation of Hirz., Stick., Schlott., Del. [Merx, Dav., Rd., Elz.]: he did not charge God with folly, attributed to him no foolishness. [So substantially E. V.: he did not charge God foolishly.] For at first Job shows himself far removed from that extreme violence of feeling which later in the history leads him once and again to the very verge of blasphemy, to represent God, for instance, as his cruel tormentor and persecutor. It would be very strange and quite premature for the poet to introduce here an allusion to those later aberrations.

5. (b) The severer trial: the loss of health, (a). The preparatory scene in heaven, Job 2:1-6. Job 2:1. Now it came to pass on a day.Not, of course, on the same day as that mentioned Job 1:13, but after a certain interval, which is not more particularly defined. The art. here, , as in Job 1:6 q.v. It will be observed that here there is a variation from the statement in Job 1:6 in the use of with Satan, as well as with the sons of God; indicating, as Del. and Dillm. have shown, that he, as well as they, appeared at this time in the heavenly assembly with a definite object. What that object was is made to appear immediately in the succeeding dialogue between Jehovah and Satan.E.]

Job 2:2. From whence comest thou?Here , instead of the earlier , Job 1:7; the only variation, and a slight one, of the language in that verse, which is otherwise repeated here word for word. The same is true of the following verse, at least of the first and longer part of it, which is an exact repetition of Job 1:8 with one slight variation, the substitution of for before .

Job 2:3. And still he holdeth fast to his piety, i.e., notwithstanding the heavy calamities which have visited him, he still maintains a blameless life. , the quality of the , Job 1:1. Comp. Job 27:5; Job 31:6; Pro 11:3 [the only passage where the word occurs outside of our book.E.]Although thou didst move me against him to destroy him without cause.Lit: And so thou didst move me against him, etc.; the imperf. consec. here not in the inferential sense, so that thou, etc. (Hirz., Stick., Hahn, Dillm. [Hengst.]), but adversative rather: and yet thou didst move me, etc. (Rosm., Ew., Umbr., Vaih., Heilig. [Noy., Rod., Wem., Bev., Con., Elz.]). With this construction the , without cause, un-deservedly, is by no means at variance; for this expression only enhances the reproachfulness of Jehovahs address.With , to excite, stir up against any one, comp. 1Sa 26:19; 2Sa 24:1 (but differently in Jos 15:18; 1Ch 21:1). [It does not signify, as Umbreit thinks, to lead astray, in which case it were almost a blasphemous anthropomorphism; it signifies instigare, and indeed generally to evil, as e.g., 1Ch 21:1; but not always, e.g., Jos 15:18; here it is certainly in a strongly anthropopathical sense of the impulse given by Satan to Jehovah to prove Job in so hurtful a manner. Del.], to destroy, to ruin [literally, to swallow up]; see Job 8:18; Job 10:8; Job 37:20); applied here to the crushing destruction of Jobs outward prosperity. Not without reason does Jehovah make choice of these strong expressions, here, just before; for Satans aim went beyond the limited power which was given him over Job. Del. Comp. our remarks above on Job 1:12. [The lofty Divine irony of Jehovahs language should not be overlooked, contrasting as it does so strongly with Satans baffled malignity and arrogant, scoffing unbelief. Schultens justly remarks: Ut in verbis Satan jactantia, ita in Dei responso irrisio se exerit.E.]

Job 2:4. Skin for skin.A proverbial expression, the independent meaning of which is obscure, and can be ascertained only from the connection. Now the following sentence, all that a man hath will he give for his life, is evidently parallel in sense, as appears from the repetition of , about, here for, instead of (as in Isa 32:14; comp. the same use of in Exo 21:23-25, and so frequently). It is therefore simply the application of the proverb to Jobs case. The meaning of the phrase therefore, it would seem, must be this: A man will give like for like; of two things having about equal value he will willingly let the one go, that he may save the other; and this in fact, Satan suggests, Job had done; he had willingly given up all that was his, in order to save his own life and his bodily health. Jobs property therefore is here represented as a skin, with which his person was covered, an integument enveloping him for protection and comfort (comp. Job 18:13; Job 19:26, where designates the entire body, the whole person corporeally considered). His physical life is represented as another such a skin. Of these two skins or integuments, the one of which lies nearer to him than the other, and is therefore dearer to him and more indispensable, he has surrendered the one, to wit, the outer, remoter, least necessary, in order to save and to retain the other. [As is said in the proverb: Like for like; so it is with man: all for life. Hirz. A proverbial saying, to the effect: A man freely parts with an external good, if he may thereby keep possession of another. So Job can well bear the loss of children and property, since the dearest earthly good, life and health, are left him. Vaih. So Ges., Dillm., Hengst., Con., Dav., etc.] This interpretation is beyond question the one best suited to the context, and is to be preferred to the others which have been proposed, viz.: a. That of the Targ., of several Rabbis, Schlott., and Del.A man will give a part of the skin, or a member, in order to preserve another part of the skin, or member; much more will a man give up all that he has to keep his life. This explanation is at fault in taking , which always means the whole skin or hide, for a member or a part of the skin.b. That of Ephraem, Rosenm., Hupf., in which is used in respect of the lost children and animals to designate their life, their existence. [According to this view the full expression would be: skin (of another) for skin (of oneself), as life for life in Exo 21:23; skin being used metaphorically for the body, or the life. The thought accordingly is: The bodies or the lives of others one will part with for his own.The objection to this view is that the two equivalents, or the two things compared here, are not so much what is anothers, and what is ones own, but rather ones own property and ones own life, or person.Goods explanation: Skin for skin is, in plain English, property for person, or the skin forming property for the skin forming person, is correct as to the application, but as an explanation of the proverb it is faulty in that it injects too much of the special application into the body of the proverb.E.] c. The interpretation of Olshausen, who refers to ver 5, and explains skin for skin to mean as thou treatest him, so he will treat thee; so long as thou leavest his (skin, i.e.,) person untouched, so long will he not assail (thy skin, i.e.,) thee in person. This, however, is at variance alike with the connection and with decorum. [Though it is the devil who speaks, this were nevertheless too unbecomingly expressed. Del. In addition to the above explanations, the following deserve mention: d. That of Parkhurst Schult., Wem., who render the clause: Skin after skin, or skin upon skin; i.e., to save his life a man would willingly be flayed over and over. This is unnatural in itself, a doubtful rendering of the preposition, and at variance with the analogous use of the same preposition in the following clause. Any explanation which requires a different use of the preposition in both clauses is certainly to be rejected. e. The view of Umbreit, who while agreeing with the explanation given above of the clause: skin for skin, explains differently its relation to the following clause. The proverb he regards as a mercantile one, meaning, one thing for another, everything is exchangeable in the market, any external good may be bartered for another; but life is an internal good of such value that nothing will buy it, and a man will sacrifice everything for it. His translation accordingly is: Skin for skin; but all that a man hath he gives for his life. This, however, is much less simple and natural than to regard the as connective, and the second clause as the application of the first. Especially decisive against it is the adversative at the beginning of Job 2:5, which on Umbreits theory would be deprived of all force. f. Merx in his version substitutes for the oriental proverb the German: Das Hemd sitzt nher als der Rock (The shirt is nearer than the coat), and explains: One skin envelopes another skin; the first (goods and children) has been taken away from Job, he must yet be stripped of the second (health). He maintains that never signifies for, instead; but he is condemned out of his own mouth, for in the very next clause he translates for his life! While it may be granted that is not exactly synonymous with , either may be appropriately rendered by for, the former corresponding rather to the Greek , or , the latter to . Although it does not stand for the of price, it nevertheless can, like in Exo 21:23-25, be used with the verb in the sense of instead, especially when the accessory notion for the protection of is retained in connection with it. Dillm.

The use of skin as the representative of value in the proverb is explained by the extent to which it was used as an article of utility and traffic. It was useful in itself and as a medium of exchange. Hence skin for skin would naturally mean value for value.E.]

Job 2:5. But put forth now Thy hand, and touch his bone and his flesh., verum enim vero, but verily, as in Job 1:11. [The connection of the two verses is as follows: Value for value; a mans life is worth everything, and all that he has he will give up to save his life. Buttouch that, put his life in peril, so that nothing that he has, or can do will save it, and assuredly he will curse thee. A simple statement of the connection is all that is necessary to refute some of the erroneous interpretations of the passage.E.] , to touch (in Job 1:11 construed with ) is here followed by . It is going too far, however, to assume, with Delitzsch, that this expresses increased malignity: stretch forth Thy hand but once to his very bones, etc. [Hengst. agrees with Hupfeld that here the bone is specially mentioned as in Psa 6:3 (2); Psa 38:4 (3): Psa 51:10 (8) as the basis of the body and of its condition, as the inmost seat and source of vital power and sensibility. Note the peculiar metaphorical use of , in Hebrew for self, self-same.Add also that the collocation of bone and flesh in Hebrew is in almost every instance expressive of a mans very self, his essential personality. Comp. Gen 2:23; Jdg 9:2; Job 10:11; Pro 14:30. Satans words here accordingly mean more than: touch his body; they mean: touch him; strike him in the vital parts of his being.

Verily, he will curse Thee to Thy face.As in Job 1:11. Satan, it will be noted, is more truly Satanic in this scene than in the former. As Dav. finely observes: In his former aspersion of Job he had only hinted that Jobs religion was not very genuine; it was profitable, and therefore carefully attended to. Here he goes a great way deeper, and maligns human nature in its very humanity. Man is not only irreligious (except for profit), but he is inhuman; what is usually regarded as possessions of the most irreligious men, love of kind and kindred, the deeper affections of family on which so much fine sentiment has been expendedthey are matters of profit too. Man cares little for friend or family, only he be safe himself: put forth Thy hand and touch his own bone and flesh, and his viperish nature will rise like the trodden serpent, and disown Thee to Thy face. The essence of sin in its ordinary human manifestation is to be unable to live from any higher motive than self; its essence in the life of Satan is to be unable to conceive of any higher motive than self. The spirit of evil in man often makes virtue tributary to self; the spirit of evil in Satan takes the very constancy of virtue as proof only of more intense selfishness. The devils logic in the case of Job: the more steadfast Job seems to be, the more inhuman must he be.E.]

Job 2:6. Behold he is in thy hand, only spare his life.Comp. Job 1:12. is to be distinguished from ; it denotes not the life-function, as such, which belongs to man as a spiritual and corporeal being, but its seat and medium, the soul (, anima). But as above in Job 2:4, so here, it must be rendered life [the term soul with us not being the exact equivalent of the above Hebrew, Greek, and Latin terms.E.] Comp. the like use of in Act 20:10, and elsewhere often in the New Testament., lit.: beware of, abstain from; i.e., take care that in imperiling his life by the infliction of painful disease, thou dost not deprive him of it.

6. () The fulfillment of the decree in Jobs terrible disease: Job 2:7-8.

Job 2:7. Then Satan went out (comp. Job 1:12) and smote Job with sore boils from the sole of his foot unto his crown;i.e., over his whole body.Comp. the description of the same frightful disease given in almost the very same words in Deu 28:35. [singular collective], used in Lev 13:18 sq., of the boils of a leper, and elsewhere of the carbuncles of the plague, refers here, as its use with the strengthening attributive shows, to the worst form of leprosy, the Lepra Arabica,[2] or Elephantiasis, called also lepra nodosa, or tuberculosa, on account of the frightful swollen pustules, or boils, which make the limbs of the sufferer, and especially the lower extremities, look like the lumpy, apparently jointless limbs of the elephant [also perhaps from its rendering the skin, like that of the elephants, scabrous and dark-colored, and furrowed all over with tubercles. Good]. By the Arabians it is named gudhm, the mutilating disease, because in its extreme stages entire members gradually fall away, such as fingers, teeth, hands, etc. Once in the Old Testament it is described as , the Egyptian ulcer (Deu 28:27). It is not limited, however, to Arabia and Egypt, but prevails also in the East Indies, inclusive of the Sunda Islands, and likewise in the West Indies, and even in the countries of Northern Europe, as in Norway, where it rages at times with fearful violence, often seizing on entire villages. It is not only contagious (according to the testimony of the ancients, e.g., of Aretus, the Cappadocian, it might be communicated by the mere breathing of the person diseased), but in many cases it also transmits itself from parents to children. [Dillman remarks that according to the most recent observations it does not seem to be contagious. So also the article on Medicine in Smiths Bible Dict. says: It is hereditary and may be inoculated, but does not propagate itself by the closest contact.E.] Finally, it is, as a rule, incurable; or at all events one of the most tedious diseases, protracting itself through twenty years or more. The identity of this disease with Jobs affliction was maintained long ago by Origen (c. Cels. Job 6:5), and is held by all modern expositors. This view is supported by the symptoms of the disease as they are further given in our book: the insufferable itching of the skin (Job 2:8); the skin cracking, and covered with boils now hard and crustated, and now festering (Job 7:5); the stinking breath (Job 19:17); the blackened and chapped appearance of the body caused by inward heat in the bones (Job 30:30); the danger of the limbs falling away (Job 30:17; Job 30:30); the extreme emaciation of the body (Job 19:20; Job 30:18); the anguished frame, made restless by nightly dreams, gaspings and tortures (Job 7:4; Job 7:13-15; Job 30:17), etc. [It first appears in general, but not always, about the face, as an indurated nodule (hence it is improperly called tubercular), which gradually enlarges, inflames, and ulcerates. Sometimes it commences in the neck or arms. The ulcers will heal spontaneously, but only after a long period, and after destroying a great deal of the neighboring parts. If a joint be attacked, the ulceration will go on till its destruction is complete, the joints of finger, toe, etc., dropping off one by one. Frightful dreams and fetid breath are symptoms mentioned by some pathologists. More nodules will develop themselves; and if the face be the chief seat of the disease, it assumes a leonine aspect (hence called also Leontiasis), loathsome and hideous; the skin becomes thick, rugose, and livid; the eyes are fierce and staring, and the hair gene rally falls off from all the parts affected. When the throat is attacked the voice shares the affection, and sinks to a hoarse, husky whisper.Art. Medicine in Smiths Bib. Dict. See also art. Leper]. Comp. below on Job 7:14; also the more particular description of the disease by Aretus the Cappadocian (translated by Mann, 1858, p. 221; comp. also Del., Vol. I., p. 70, n. Clarks For. The. Lib.); J. D. Michaelis, Einleitung ins A. T., I. 57 sq.; Winer, Real- Wrterbuch, I. 115 sq. (3d Ed.); Friedrich, Z. Bibel, 1848, I. 193 sq.; Hecker, Elephantiasis, oder Lepra Arabica, Lahr, 1838; Heer, De elephantiasi Grcorum et Arabum; Danielson and Boeck, Trait de la Spdalskhed, ou Elephantiasis des Grecs, a work published at the expense of the Government of Norway, Paris, 1848; Virchow, Die krankhaften Geschwlste, Vol. II. 1, Berlin, 1863 (which treats with especial minuteness of the distinction frequently overlooked between the Eleph. Grcorum and the Eleph. Arabum); also the narratives of travelers, e.g., Bruce, and recently of Bickmore (an American traveler in the East Indies), who, after giving a harrowing description of a village in northern Sumatra filled with sufferers from elephantiasis, declares with a shudder that one who has never seen such cases of leprosy can form no conception of the distortions which the human body can assume, and still live.

Job 2:8. And he took him a potsherd to scrape himself withal.The modern Orientals, when suffering from the same disease, make use of instruments prepared for scraping, made out of ivory or other material (comp. Cleric on the passage). [Scraping with a potsherd will not only relieve the intolerable itching of the skin, but also remove the matter. Del.] And he sat down among the ashes: lit.: and he was sitting (at the time) in the midst of the ashes; or while he sat in the midst of the ashes. [So most of the recent commentators. The participial construction describing the condition of the subject at the time of the affirmation in the principal verb. Comp. Gen 19:1; Jdg 13:9; and see Ewald, Gr. 168, 2 and 341, a. Schlott. finds in this clause evidence, that but a short time intervened between the former trial and the present. While he was yet sitting in ashes, mourning the loss of his children, he was smitten in his own person.E.] Sitting in the ashes is certainly the attitude of a mourner (comp. Job 42:6; Jer 6:26; Jon 3:6); but in this case, the attitude is occasioned not only by the loss of his children, but more especially by the new calamity which has befallen the sufferer. The LXX. enlarges upon the description in accordance with the Levitical law touching leprosy, as well as such passages as Psa 113:7 : . There is nothing in the Heb. text here to indicate the segregation of Job in his leprosy. Still it cannot be doubted, especially in view of Job 2:12 (see notes), that even as a non-Israelite, as an inhabitant of Haurn e.g., he was required to submit to such separation Comp. the information given by Wetstein in Del. (2:152), concerning the dung-heaps, the mezbele before the villages of Haurn, and the occupation of the same by lepers. [The dung is brought in a dry state in baskets to the place before the village, and is generally burnt once every month. The ashes remain. If a village has been inhabited for a century, the mezbele reaches a height which far surpasses it. The winter rains make the ash-heaps into a compact mass, and gradually change the mezbele into a firm mound of earth. The mezbele serves the inhabitants of the district as a watch-tower, and on close, oppressive evenings as a place of assembly, because there is a current of air on the height. There the children play about the whole day long; there the forsaken one lies, who, having been seized by some horrible malady, is not, allowed to enter the dwellings of men, by day asking alms of the passers-by, and at night hiding himself among the ashes, which the sun has warmed. There the dogs of the village lie, perhaps gnawing at a decaying car-case that is frequently thrown there. Wetzst.

7. () Jobs Steadfastness in Piety. Vers.9, 10.

Job 2:9. Then said his wife unto him.[The Chald. here gives the name of Jobs wife as Dinah, a trace of the old tradition that Job was contemporary with Jacob. The Sept. and Copt, contain a considerable addition to the text in the form of a lengthened and impassioned discourse by Jobs wife, detailing his sorrows and her own.E.] In place of Satan, who, from Job 2:6 on, disappears from the books history, Jobs own wife now appears against him to tempt him, to be, as it were, an adjutrix diaboli (Augustine). Dost thou still hold fast to thine integrity? , a question implying astonishment, although without a particle of interrogation (Ew. 324, a). Compare the question which Anna, the wife of Tobias, that apocryphal copy of Jobs wife, addresses to her blinded husband: , [i.e. as Sengelmann and Fritzsche correctly explain, one sees from thy misfortunes that thy virtue is not of much avail to thee. Del.]Renounce God and die! evidently in the bad sense of Job 1:11; Job 2:5; and thus equivalent, to: let God go, renounce thy allegiance to Him, give up at last praising and trusting Him, since verily nothing more remains for thee but to die! Hahn takes here sensu bono: Praise God all the time, thou shall presently see what thy reward is, even death! [So Ges. Lex.: Bless and praise God as thou wilt, yet thou must now die; thy piety towards God is in vain. Carey, Con.: The import of this taunting reproach I take to be: Bless God (if you will), and die! for that is all it will profit you.] But to this stands opposed the sharp rejoinder which Job makes in Job 2:10 to his wife, from which it may be clearly inferred, that on the present occasion she was to him, if not altogether a Proserpina et Furia infernalis (Calv.), still, in some measure, a (Chrysost.), to scourge him severely, an instrument of the Tempter (Ebr.). [Another argument against taking in the sense of blessing is brought forward by Hengst., to wit, that the words bear an unmistakable relation to the saying of Satan, twice repeated: Verily he will renounce Thee to Thy face. The wife is Satans instrument in the endeavor to secure the fulfilment of that prediction. It may be still farther suggested, that the spirit which manifestly prompted the first words of the wife seems more in harmony with the rendering renounce. She begins by expressing her astonishment, an astonishment evidently accompanied by deep indignation, that after such heavy blows Job should still hold fast to his integrity. Nothing could be more natural than to find her in the same breath vehemently urging Job to relinquish his integrity by bidding farewell to God.E.]

Job 2:10. Thou speakest as one of the foolish women speaketh.Folly here in the well-known Old Testament sense of godlessness, impiousness (Psa 14:1), or in the sense of that saying of Luthers: All those who are without the Holy Ghost, however wise they may be esteemed by the world in temporal affairs, power or business, before God they are fools or blind men. [The translation as one of the foolish women does not correspond to the Hebrew; is one who thinks madly and acts impiously. Del. means not simply a woman without understanding, but one who is a fool, who refuses to know more of God, who is an atheist, or a heathen. Dillm.] The reproof is thus a severe one; at the same time, the one, any one, has that in it which somewhat softens its severity: comp. 2Sa 13:13, [Job does not say to his wife: Thou art a foolish woman; but: Thou speakest as if thou didst belong to that class; thou art become unlike thyself. Hengst.] Shall we receive the good from God, and shall we not also receive the evil?The question consists of two members: the , standing at the beginning (instead of which we might have expected the more exact ), belongs logically to the second part, towards which the voice should hurry in reading the first part, which contains the premise of the other: this is frequently the case after interrogative particles, e.g., Num 16:22; Isa. 5:46. Del. For this anticipation of the , which has its logical connection with a later clause, comp. below Job 15:10 Hos 6:11; Zec 9:11; also the analogous syntactical construction of , ,. [Hence the rendering of by What? (E. V ) is inaccurate. The first division of the verse is translated by Ges., Ew. (Hupf., Dillm., Ren ), and some others affirmatively, and the second division interrogatively. Thes. I, p 294, bonum accepimus a Deo, nonne etiam malum suscipiamus? But the Heb. has the same form in both divisions; and the interrogative tone in both is a far more spirited expression of the thought. Con.] The word , to receive is found elsewhere in prose only in the post-exilic literature, and in Aramaic. Its appearance here, however, should not greatly surprise us, as we meet with it in proverbial poetry. Pro 19:20. [It is worthy of note as a fine exhibition of the sympathetic genius of the author, that whereas as in Job 1:21 he uses the name Jehovah, here he uses the name Elohim. There the religious consciousness of Job, deeply stirred by his losses, but realizing nevertheless the full blessedness of uninterrupted communion with God, and pouring itself forth in that sublime soliloquy which is for all ages the doxology of the chastised believer, seizes on that name which to the Old Testament saint most fully expressed in his eternal perfections and glory on the one side, and in his personal relations to man on the other. Here, the same consciousness, deep, genuine, unfaltering as ever, but striving on the one hand to maintain itself against the depressing influence of physical ill, on the other hand to repel the daring suggestion of atheistical folly, consecrated as the suggestion was through Satanic skill by all the associations which love had sealed upon the lips that spoke it, seizes on that name of the Supreme Being which most fully expresses his power over the forces of nature, and which most effectually silences the sneer of the godless heart. There Job speaks rather as the chastised child, in the attitude of benediction, blessing the name of Jehovah; here he speaks rather as the chastised creature, in the attitude of resignation, vindicating the ways of Elohim.E.]In all this did not Job sin with his lips.Compare the similar judgment rendered by the poet at the conclusion of the first trial, Job 1:22. That Job has thus far escaped all sin of the lips (comp. Job 27:4; Psa 34:14 (13); Psa 59:8 (7); Psa 140:4 (3); Pro 24:2, etc.), is here emphasized indeed only by way of contrast with the violent expressions which soon follow, which he was provoked to utter by the three friends, and in which he assuredly did sin. The intimation that he had already sinned in his thoughts (Targ., Diedrich), is scarcely conveyed by the , however true in itself the remark of Delitzsch: The temptation to murmur was now already at work within him, but he was its master, so that no murmur escaped him.

8. The visit of the friends, and their mute sympathy, as an immediate preparation for the action of the poem, Job 2:11-13.

Job 2:11. Then Jobs three friends heard of all this evil that was come upon him.[The question whether the article should be used with friends cannot be determined with absolute certainty, the form of expression in the Hebrew being ambiguous, and the circumstances not being fully known. By some (Dav., Con., Ren., Elz.) it is omitted, although by most it is recognized; and this on the whole seems best. Although there is nothing to justify the Sept. in describing these friends as kings, there is good reason for regarding them as persons of universal consideration by virtue of their station, their age, and their wisdom. Comp. Job 12:3; Job 13:2; Job 15:17 sq.; Job 18:3; and Elihus remarks in Job 32 See also below on Eliphaz. And the concerted demonstration which they here make of their sympathy with Job would show that they were his friends in a peculiar sense. For these reasons the rendering the three friends of Job is to be preferred.E.] , as accentuated, is not the partic, fem., but the perf. with the art which stands in place of the rel. pron., as in Gen 18:21; Gen 46:27. [Ewald, however, justly criticizes the Masora in these and other passages on the ground that the partic. can just as well be assumed in them, and is besides the more obvious construction. See Gr., p. 802, n. 1.E.] That which is here related is to be understood as taking place not at the very beginning of Jobs sickness, but some months later (comp. Job 7:3), when the disease had made considerable progress, producing loathsome disfigurement of his person (comp. Job 2:12; Job 7:4 seq.; Job 19 Job 30.)And they came each from his own place.These places where they lived, which are mentioned in the sequel only in the most general way as countries, or regions of country, are not to be regarded as situated in each others immediate vicinity. The place where they came to, the object of , is to be thought of as some other place than that where Job lived. From this, their appointed rendezvous, they then proceeded to Jobs abode, to testify to him their sympathy (this being the meaning of , comp. Job 42:11, also , sympathy, Job 16:5), and to comfort him.Eliphaz the Temanite, etc.Since Eliphaz () appears also in Gen 36:4; Gen 36:10; Gen 36:12, as an old Idumean name of a person, there can be no doubt that his country, Teman (), a name which also occurs in Gen 36:11; Gen 36:15, in close connection with that of Eliphaz, is to be identified with the Idumean region of that name, whose inhabitants, not only according to our poem, but also according to the testimony of other Scripture writers, such as Jeremiah (Jer 49:7) and Baruch (Job 3:22 seq.), were particularly celebrated for their wisdom comp. also Obad. 8:9; also the , i.e., sons of knowledge, of wisdom, in (Macc. Job 5:4). We are scarcely to understand by it the Tm of East Hauran (which indeed may possibly be a colony of the Edomite Theman). As for the countries of the two other friends, Shuah (), the home of Bildad, is to be sought for somewhere in the eastern part of North Arabia, among the settlements of the Keturites, one of whom is called Shuah, Gen 25:2. The application of the name to Schakka, beyond Hauran, the of Ptolem., Job 5:15, is doubtful on account of the difference in sound of the names. [According to Carey it is identical with the Saiace of Pliny (6:32), now called Sekiale, or El Saiak about midway between the Elamitic Gulf and the mouth of the Euphrates]. Naamah, finally, must be one of the many Syrian regions of that name; it can hardly be the city of that name in the Shefelah, mentioned Jos 15:41 When out of a the LXX. makes out Zophar a (or , so Aristus, in Euseb. Prp. Ev. Job 9:25), it probably follows a tradition which pointed to Maon (now Mn), lying East of Petra, as his home.Again, as regards the etymology of the names of the three friends, it may be conjectured that means the man to whom God is his joy; , the son of strife (, in Arab. to strive, to wrangle); , perhaps the twitterer (i.e., , from , to pipe, to twitter). So GeseniusDietrich in their smaller dictionary; while Delitzsch, e.g., adopts entirely different definitions: thus = cui Deus aurum est, comp. Job 22:25, also the name Phasael, formed by transposition; so also Michaelis, Suppl. p. 37. Frst: El is dispenser of riches; Ges. in Lex.: God his strength]: =, sine mammis, one brought up without his mothers milk; = elasfar, the yellow, flavedo. Comp. Abulfedas Hist. ante-islamica, Ed. Fleischer, p. 168 [Frst: The shaggy, or rough]. The two latter names, being just those in respect to which the suspicion that they are a poetic invention could be in some measure justified, do not appear elsewhere in the Old Testament. [And they had made an appointment together to come, etc.; or more correctly: They met together by appointment; the proper meaning of the Niph. being, as Del. and Dillm. point out, not to appoint a place for meeting (which would be rather), but to meet in an appointed place at an appointed time.E.]

Job 2:12. And they raised their eyes afar off, and knew him not.Two things may be inferred from these words: (1) That Job was now staying not in his own house, but out of doors, in a place which furnished miserable shelter, serving as a retreat for lepers; comp. on Job 2:8 above [and especially the extract from Wetst. concerning the mezbele]; and (2) that the disease had already disfigured him so that he could not be recognized (comp. notes on Job 2:7).And sprinkled dust upon their heads toward heaven.In addition to the weeping and the rending of their mantles, these words describe a third and a particularly violent symbol and expression of their sympathizing grief. Gathering up the dust they fling it into the air, i.e., toward heaven, until it falls back upon their heads; thus indicating that by a heavenly, a Divine dispensation, they felt themselves to be bowed down to the dust in sorrow (comp. Eze 27:30; Lam 2:10, etc.)

Job 2:13. And they sat down with him upon the earth seven days and seven nights;i.e. as the sequel shows, in silence, and also without doubt fasting. This impressive demonstration of sympathizing sorrow reminds us, not of the seven days lamentation for Saul (1Sa 31:13), but rather of Ezekiels mourning, when he sat down for seven days astonished among the captives by the river Chebar (Eze 3:15). To lay stress on the number seven as rigidly historical is inadmissible in view of the poetic ideal character of the description. At the same time, the statement contains nothing impossible or improbable, nothing at variance with customs and modes of thought which are known to prevail in the east, especially among oriental sages, with whom moreover, ascetic practices are always to be associated. Their sitting down upon the ground still further characterizes them as mourners in all they did; comp. 2Sa 12:16; Eze 26:16; Lam 2:10.And none spake a word unto him: lit. without one ( ) speaking to him a word. This silence is to be understood as absolutenot as interrupted by occasional speech among themselves. [This seven days silence has been thought improbable, and it has been sought in various ways to modify the statement. A great mistake. For it is to be borne in mind that what is observable in the well-known phenomena of mystical absorption in the East is, in a less exaggerated form, a universal characteristic of orientals. Rest as well as motion has with them more positive power than with usa trait which Hamann, in the beginning of one of his most genial writings (the sthetica in nuce), mentions as characteristic of the primeval world of humanity: The rest of our ancestors was a profounder sleep; and their motion a reeling dance. Seven days they would sit in the stillness of meditation; and then they would open their mouth for winged sayings. Schlott.] The reason for the friends silence is given by the poet in the explanatory clause which follows: For they saw that the affliction was very great;i.e. they observed that Jobs painful condition, including the disease and the misery which caused it ( here accordingly not in a one-sided subjective sense, but also the objective sense of affliction, malady), was far too great to admit of their endeavoring to comfort him simply by words. It is therefore the overpowering sight of the nameless misery which has seized upon their friend that closes their mouth; although to this must be added the influence of the erroneous assumption, which controlled all of them, that Jobs terrible suffering had been occasioned by certain secret sins, the existence of which they had not before suspected, and which they had never deemed him capable of committing. And the fact that this erroneous assumption, which led them to look on their friend not only as one who was sorely afflicted, but as one who had fallen, lay at the bottom of their persistent mournful silence, and was even to be read on their countenances, must have made their presence to the sorely tried sufferer the more painful the longer it continued. And so their visit, which was undertaken according to Job 2:11 with the most loving intent, became, without their purposing it, a severe trial of his feelings (comp. Job 6:14 sq., especially Job 2:24)a trial which at length affected him more powerfully, and became more insupportable to him than all former ones, driving him at last into that passionate and intemperate outbreak, which even the lamenting and doubting challenge of his wife had failed to call forth. Comp. Vilmar (Past. Theol. Bltt. xi. 69): The temptation of Job becomes efficient by means of his friends. First of all, by their presence they cause his attention to be drawn exclusively to his own misery, and then by their reproaches they draw out from him, one after the other, the maintenance of his own innocence, his complaint because of the cruel misunderstanding of his friends, his dispute with them, and finally his dispute with God. [Thus a new trial awaits Job, one in which he cannot stand aloof from men, and go through in the secresy of his own soulfighting his dark adversaries alone, and conquering and becoming strong in his solitude: his conflict this time is with men, with the best and most religious of men, and with the loftiest creed his time has heard of. It is a tremendous conflict; when a man stands alone, with all parties and forms of faith and thought, and even the world, or outward God, against him, and only himself and strong conscience, and his necessary thoughts of the unseen God and instinctive personal faith in Him as his helpers. It does not appear what place, if any, Satan holds in this new conflict; his name disappears from the book. We cannot say, whether he silently acknowledged himself baffled and retired, having done his worst on Job, and so this new trial, not of his contriving, but of Gods, who will by its means bring Job to fuller knowledge of Himself that he may be at peace; and if so, how infinitely deeper is Gods knowledge of us than Satans, and with what unspeakably profounder skill he can touch the deepest springs of our nature, and so get behind, do what Satan will, all his possible contrivances, for greater is He that is in us than he that is in the worldor whether we are to understand this new fire to be also of the devils kindling. We prefer to have done with him, and view the remaining portion of Jobs exercise as between him and God alone, who, though the devil failed, and retired in confusion, will yet display to the universe more wondrous strength and more marvellously the talismanic touch of the divine hand upon the human heart. It seems so; much of the poem is monologue, the objections and interpellations of the friends are but used by God as spurs to stimulate the soul to exercise itself on him. No one can doubt the divine wisdom in using the friends to bring Job into fuller knowledge of itself; the violence of human dialectic and the many-sidedness of several minds presented before Job in much greater completeness all the phases of his relation to heaven than could have been accomplished by the mere workings of his own mind. Dav.

DOCTRINAL AND ETHICAL

The feature of the preceding Section of our book of greatest interest to the reader who would thoroughly investigate the Scriptures both from the speculative, doctrinal and ethical point of view, as well as from the apologetic, centre predominantly, indeed we may say exclusively, is the enigmatic figure of Satan.The Satan of the Prologue is the standing theme of certain introductory chapters, or of elaborate dissertations in most of the modern Commentaries on Job, both critical and apologetic. The following are the fundamental questions treated in this connection: Can we and should we assume a personal intermediate cause out of the circle of the highest created existences, that is, a mighty fallen angel, to account for that which is sinful in the actions and motives of mankind in general? Again: Should we attribute to this evil spirit, even within the sphere of the external life of nature and humanity, operations which produce ruin and destruction, thus exhibiting him as a cause, not only of moral evil, but, in a qualified sense, also of physical evil on earth? Again: May we assume that like the good angels, he has access to Gods throne, and so has, as it were, a place and a voice, or, at any rate, certain ministerial functions in the councils of heaven? Finallyand this is, after those more general questions, that which specially relates to the peculiarities of the Satanology of the Book of JobCan we assign the name, the functions, the whole appearance of Satan as the personal principle of evil, or, in a word, as the Adversary, to that more remote antiquity of the theocratic development, to which so many indications point as the most probable time to which to refer the composition of this book? Or are we constrained to regard the whole conception of Satan as the product only of a later development, say of a biblico-theological development moulded by influences proceeding from the Assyrian Babylon, or the Persians, and accordingly to bring down the composition, if not of the entire book, at least of the Prologue (together with the Epilogue, comp. Introd. 8), into a later age, subsequent not only to the time of Moses, but even to that of Solomon? With reference to the skeptical element which resides in each one of those questions, and at the same time with a view to obtaining a more concise and simple treatment of the same, the question may be put thus: whether the Satan of the Book of Job is to be rejected(1) on religious and moral grounds, as the product of a dualistic mythology, antagonistic to a pure monotheism, or (2) on physicotheological grounds as a superstition; or (3) on sthetic grounds as a pure poetic fiction; or (4) on grounds derived from the history of revelation, as a scriptural and theological anachronism.

1. The theory that there is a Satan cannot be rejected on religious and moral grounds, for the entire Holy Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments demonstrate the existence of such a being; never, however, in the dualistic sense of the religion of the Zend [Avesta], as an evil principle, absolutely and from eternity opposing the good God, but always as a relative or created evil principle, as an angel or spirit which had been created good by God, but which had afterwards fallen through its own criminal wickedness. As a matter of fact, this created evil principleto the actual existence of which no one testifies more frequently, strongly, and emphatically than our Lord Himself in His discourses as recorded in the Gospels (the synoptical alike with that of John)meets us already in the oldest book of the Bible, in Genesis, where the account given of the origin of sin (Job 3) so unmistakably presents the evil spirit, disguised as a serpent, as the author of sin in the development of humanity, that every attempt to explain the serpent as pure allegory, or a mere hieroglyph, runs off into absurdity. Not less do we find this same evil principle, if not by name, at least in fact, in the Azazel of Leviticus (Job 16:3 seq., 27), that personification of abstract impurity as opposed to the absolute purity of Jehovah, as Roskoff (Gesch. des Teufels, Bd. I., Leipzig, 1869) has perhaps not unsuitably defined him, as well as in the description, resembling our Prologue, given by the prophet Micah the elder in 1Ki 22:21 seq, where , the spirit simply, is used to designate the evil spirit only because hitherto humanity had to trace everywhere mainly the operation of this spirit, the liar and murderer from the beginning, whereas of the Spirit in the highest and truest sense of the word, the Holy Spirit of God (Joe 3:1 [E. V., Job 2:28], Joh 3:34, etc.), it had learned as yet little or nothing. But also by name the Old Testament more than once already testifies to the existence of Satan, certain as it is that not only this Prologue, but also 1Ch 21:1 and Zec 3:1, apply this designation to the same being; in the passage in 1 Chron. as a peculiar proper name without the article, in Zechariah, as in our passage, as an appellative, and consequently with the article. The signification attaching to the word in each case, whether with or without the article, is simply the Adversary ( from =, to he hostile to, adversari; Job 16:9; Job 30:21), or also the Accuser (Psa 109:6). Comp. the New Testament equivalents and , Rev 12:10; likewise the cases where denotes a human adversary or enemy, such as 1Sa 29:4; 2Sa 19:23 [22]; 1Ki 5:18 [4]; Job 11:14-20; also Num 22:22; Num 22:32, where a good angel of Jehovah, in so far as he obstructs Balaam on his way, is spoken of as his Satan. This same signification, however, has in it nothing which in the slightest degree indicates an absolutely dualistic antagonism of Satan to God, and hence a character above that of a creature, or, in any sense, divine and eternal. And especially in this Prologue, which in any case, even if written after the time of Solomon, contains the earliest Biblical testimony to Satans invisible agency in tempting men, does he appear as distinctly as possible as belonging to the class of created spirits, an angel like the angels or sons of God ( , Job 1:6 seq.; Job 38:4 seq.; Gen 6:2; comp. Psa 29:1; Psa 89:7 [6], although indeed an angel possessed of an evil disposition, and guilty of evil actions, who in any case belongs to the same side with the angels who bring calamity and death (Job 33:22; Psa 78:49), and who, as an accuser of men, is engaged in doing just the opposite of that which is attributed to those who are spoken of in our book as interceding or mediating angels (Job 5:1; Job 33:23 seq.). Nothing therefore can be more perverse or unhistorical than the attempt to represent the Satan of the Old Testament in general, and of our book in particular, as a Hebrew imitation, either of the AngramainyasAhriman of the Persians (so many of the earlier exegetes, also Umbreit, Renan, Hilgenfeld, Roskoff in the work cited above, Alex. Kohnt: Ueber die jdische Angeologie und Dmonologie in ihrer Abhngigkeit vom Parsismus, Leipzig, 1866), or of the Set-Typhon of the Egyptians (so Diestel in his Treatise concerning Set Typhon, Azazel, and Satan, Stud. u. Krit., 1860, II.), and so to maintain the original uncreatedness of the evil spirit, his dualistic coexistence with God from eternity.3 It is certainly impossible to see how the theory of a tempter of men, a created being, coming forth out of the realm of evil spirits, the theory, i.e., of a fallen angel as a personal principle of evil, and author of sin in humanity, does any violence to the purity of the religious consciousness, or the moral earnestness of men; or why it should be necessary to deny that Satan is of purely Israelitish origin and a natural product of primitive Hebraism, and with Diestel (in the article referred to above), to maintain that it would be no particular honor even for Israel to be able to claim him as its own, that he never had a proper footing in the Hebrew consciousness. Comp. Delitzsch, I. Job 57: But how should it be no honor for Israel, the people to whom the revelation of redemption was made, and in whose history the plan of redemption was developed, to have traced the poisonous stream of evil up to the fountain of its first free beginning in the spiritual world, and to have more than superficially understood the history of the fall of mankind by sin, which points to a disguised superhuman power, opposed to the Divine will? This perception undoubtedly only begins gradually to dawn in the Old Testament; but in the New Testament the abyss of evil is fully disclosed, and Satan has so far a hold on the consciousness of Jesus, that He regards His lifes vocation as a conflict with Satan. And the Protevangelium is deciphered in facts, when the promised seed of the woman crushed the serpents head, but at the same time suffered the bruising of its own heel.

2. Again, the physico-theological ground, that such natural phenomena of a destructive character, as the ravages of lightning, storms, dire diseases, etc., are to be referred directly to the agency of God as Ruler of the universe, and that we ascribe to the evil spirit far too wide a sphere for the exertion of his power, when we attribute such results to himthis position does not sustain the test of more searching inquiry in the light of Gods Word. Not only does our book in that striking description which it gives of Jobs calamities in Job 1:13-18, and Job 2:7, introduce a whole series of such destructive natural agencies (two of which indeed are works of destruction accomplished by wild, godless men), referring the same to Satan as the intermediate instrument of a Divine decree, but the entire Scripture of the Old and New Testaments views all possible events of nature which are connected with the destinies of mankind, and all historical catastrophes, as brought about by the invisible agency of angelic powers, now of such as are good, and now of such as are evil. Whether man is preserved or injured, it represents either result in so far as man with his body belongs to the corporeal world, as accomplished by the agency of spirits (comp. v. Hofmann, Schriftbew., I. 285 seq.). And in particular does it introduce angels as causing desolating wars and defeats (comp. Dan 10:1 seq.; Rev 9:14 seq.; Job 20:8), also as letting loose the elements of destruction, such as fire, water, tempest, etc., in general, therefore as active powers engaged in furthering the manifestations of Divine wrath, now expressly representing them as belonging to the kingdom of Satan, now leaving their moral character undetermined. This it does quite often; our passage is by no means the only one; comp. 1Ch 21:1 sq.; Rev 14:15; Rev 16:5, and often. So that Luther accordingly expresses no absurdly superstitious notion, but what is essentially only the purely theistic representation of the Holy Scriptures as apprehended by faith, when in the exposition of the fourth petition of the Lords Prayer in his Greater Catechism, he writes: The devil causes brawls, murders, sedition and war, also thunderstorms, hail, to destroy grain and cattle, to poison the air, etc. The extent of the sphere which Luther here, and in many other passages, especially in his Table-talk about the devil (Werke, Bd., 60), assigns to the agency of Satan in injuring and destroying life, may be altogether too wide; even as in like manner the Satanological and demonological representations of the earlier ages of the Church may need in many ways to be limited and corrected in accordance with the assured results of the modern natural sciences and philosophical investigation. But on the whole it still remains indisputable that he who denies to Satan any agency whatever in the sphere of nature, and allows him exclusively a moral influence upon the will, has removed himself far from the foundation of revealed truth, and for the Satan of the Bible, the Prince of this world, who has the power of death (Heb 2:14), substitutes what is only a semi-personal Phantom-Satan, an abstraction of modern thought, the existence of which is problematical. Comp. Delitzsch (I. 63): As among men, so in nature, since the fall two different powers of Divine anger and Divine love are in operation; the mingling of these is the essence of the present Kosmos. Everything destructive to nature, and everything arising therefrom which is dangerous and fatal to the life of man, is the outward manifestation of the power of anger. In this power Satan has fortified himself; and this, which underlies the whole course of nature, he is able to make use of, so far as God may permit it, as being subservient to His chief design (comp. Rev 13:13 with 2Th 2:9). He has no creative power. Fire and storm, by means of which he works, are of God; but he is allowed to excite these forces to hostility against man, just as he himself is become an instrument of evil. It is similar with human demonocracy, whose very being consists in placing itself en rapport with the hidden powers of nature. Satan is the great magician, and has already manifested himself as such even in paradise, and in the temptation of Jesus Christ. There is in nature, as among men, an entanglement of contrary forces, which he knows how to unloose, because it is the sphere of his special dominion; for the whole course of nature in the change of its phenomena, is subject not only to abstract laws, but also to concrete supernatural powers, both bad and good.

3. Neither is the Satan of our book to be assailed on sthetic grounds; for his appearance before God in the midst of the other angels has nothing at variance with the position which all the rest of the Scriptures assigns to the Evil Spirit in the administration of the world, or the economy of the Divine kingdom, nothing which favors the suspicion that we have to do here with the arbitrary product of an inventive fancy, without objective reality. Herder, Eichhorn, Ilgen, and others in a former age [and so Wemyss] denied that the Satan of these two chapters has a nature decidedly evil, and regarded him as being, in respect to his moral character, an impartial, judicial agent of God, a divinely authorized censor morum, who exhibits scarcely any the slightest traces, or traits of a personal evil principle. This theory, however, must be rejected, not only on account of the unmistakably evil disposition and conduct which our poet attributes to him, but also on account of the analogy of Zec 3:1 seq., a passage which not less decidedly than this in Job brings into connection these two facts: on the one hand that Satans character is thoroughly bad and opposed to God, on the other that he has the right to appear before God among the angels. The same may be said of Umbreits view: that the Satan of our poem is a creation of the poets imagination, suggested by Psa 109:6 (Die Snde im Alten Testament, 1853), as well as of those modern views generally, which find in the appearance of Satan among the holy sons of God in heaven anything singular, anything which contradicts what the Scripture teaches elsewhere concerning Satan (so e.g., Ewald, and Lutz in his Bibl. Dogmatik, 1847). It is enough to oppose to these mythologizing attempts of a biased criticism such New Testament passages as Luk 10:18; Joh 12:31 seq.; Rev 12:9, which represent Satans right to appear before God in the ranks of celestial beings as continuing until the time of Christ and His redemptive work, and thus show the identity of the character of Satan in our book with that of the New Testament revelation, and in general the essential unity and consistency of the entire Satanology of the Holy Scriptures. Comp. what Schlottmann observes (p. 9 of his Commen., more particularly against Ewald) in favor of this identity of the Satan of the Prologue to our book with the same as presented in the remaining books of the Bible: Even the later Hebrew representation of the world of evil spirits is much further removed from all dualism than Ewalds description of it would imply. In all the Hebrew conceptions of the subject the evil spirits never appear otherwise than as originally pure, but fallen through their own sin. They never have the power to accomplish more than the universal plan of the Almighty God permits to them. But this same thought the Prologue expresses in bold, poetic fashion when it relates that Satan, in order to tempt Job, must first obtain permission thereto from God Himself. In this the poet certainly does not intend in the least to lessen the gulf fixed between good and evil; rather is that striking contrast which is presented in the appearance of the unholy one as an inferior in the assembly of the holy altogether intentional, precisely as in the masterly conception of Giottos celebrated picture. Moreover, that Satan here appears not at the head of his hosts, but alone, is a peculiarity that is required by the simplicity of plan in the poem; any other representation would be a superfluous detail of ornamentation. And how would the symbolic significance of that scene, great in its simplicity as it stands, be completely distorted and obscured, if Satan should, according to Ewalds supposition, enter the assembly of the holy ones with all his adherents, etc. Even Goethe, who, according to his own published confession, used the Satan of our book as the original of one of his most powerful spirit-creations, of Mephistopheles in Faust (see his remarks on the subject in Burkhardts Conversations of Goethe with the Chancellor v. Mller, Stuttgart, 1871, p. Job 96: A great work is produced only by the appropriation of foreign treasures. Have I not in Mephistopheles appropriated Job and a song of Shakespeare?)even Goethe was evidently far removed from the disposition to pervert or to obscure the truly and decidedly diabolical character of this spirit which always denies, great as is the difference between the modern creation of his muse, and the tempter of this venerable poem in the volume of revelation.

4. Finally, as regards the arguments derived from the history of religion or revelation, by which it is sought to prove that the Satan of our book is a Scriptural and theological anachronism, they resolve themselves as to their substance into arbitrary assumptions. The Satanology of Job exhibits precisely that conception of the character which we are justified in expecting in view of the probability that it was composed between the patriarchal age and that of the exile. The fact that the name Satan, i.e., the Adversary, the Accuser, already attaches to the Evil One as a proper name (or at all events as an appellative used absolutely, comp. above, No. 1), exhibits, it is true, a certain progress, as compared with the documents of the Mosaic age, seeing that in them his dark personality is either symbolically veiled, as by the serpent in Genesis 3, or mysteriously kept out of sight, as by the mystical name Azazel, Leviticus 16. But this progress is by no means of such a sort as to require for its explanation the assumption of transforming influences of a religious-historical character from without, proceeding from the East, from Babylonia, or Persia; the name being most assuredly all the time a genuine Hebrew name, mocking at every attempt to derive it from non-Israelitish heathen names of divinities! For, as has been already remarked above, nothing that is essential to the complete Satanic nature is wanting in that evil spirit-nature which lies concealed in the serpent of Paradise; as a crawling, crafty, smooth-tongued tempter of men, he is already preparing the way to become their accuser. And if it be said that the documents which stand nearest to the patriarchal and Mosaic ages make comparatively little mention of him, if on any given occasion they introduce him neither as tempter nor as accuser, if e.g. in the fearful temptation which assailed Abraham when he was commanded to offer his son Isaac (Genesis 22), they leave his agency entirely out of the account, the simple explanation of all this is that the recognition of the mysterious co-operation of this evil spiritual agency with Gods activity as ruler of the world was effected only very gradually among the people of God. It was a part of the redemptive plan of God so to lead and to educate them that at first everything, even temptations and severe moral trials, was to be referred to His own action and disposition, and only afterwards were they accustomed to discriminate between the agency of angels and demons in such cases and that of God. Comp. Delitzsch and Schlottmann in l. c.; also L. Schulze in the Allg. liter. Anz., 1870, Oct., p. 270, who reduces to its exact value Dillmanns assertion that the conception of Satan in our book is one that is only in process of development, and assigns to it the proper limitations.

On the question, why no further mention is made of Satan in the remainder of the poem, and especially in the Epilogue, Schlottmann expresses himself in the following striking language in l. c.: How the power granted to the Evil One is everywhere made subservient to the Divine plan that is set forth in the clearest light by the issue of the poem; not only does Satan fail of his own end, but the temptations which he brings on the pious hero are made instrumental in raising him to a higher stage of knowledge and union with God. But that no mention at all is made in the Epilogue of the confusion brought on Satan is occasioned by the high simplicity of the poem, which everywhere confines itself to that which is most essential, and would fain leave the reader to divine everything which can be divined. Any scene at the end of the book, in which Satan should again make his appearance, no matter how the same might be described, would be insipid, unworthy, and fatal to the quiet grandeur of the conclusion.

HOMILETICAL AND PRACTICAL

The element of Satanology in the above section, which doctrinally considered is the most attractive, cannot of course have too much prominence given to it by the practical expositor. For him the principal figure in the Introduction of the poem is Job himself, the pious man who was at first abundantly endowed with earthly comforts, but who was afterwards plunged at once by a mysterious Divine decree ordaining his trial into a real abyss of temporal misery; who, however, bore this trial with unshaken patience and constancy, without allowing himself, for a time at least, to indulge in the slightest outbreak of complaining despondency, or passionate murmuring. This accordingly must be the theme of the practical and homiletic annotator on these introductory chapters of the book: Job, the Old Testament saint, an example of that perfect patience in suffering, which is and remains also for the child of God under the New Dispensation one of the highest and most needful virtues (comp. Jam 5:11); or in other words: Job, the Old Testament Ideal of a suffering righteous man, as a type of Christ, the Righteous Man in the highest and purest sense of the word, who by His innocent suffering is become the founder of the New Covenant. In so far as any intimation is conveyed of a want of similarity between the conduct in suffering of the Old Testament type on the one side, and that of Christ and of true Christians (comp. 1Pe 4:12 seq.) on the other, the closing verses of the Prologue (Job 2:11-13) may be included in the text, where the impending outbreak of the unregenerate and imperfect element in the nature of the Old Testament saints, is suggested and anticipated. We may thus point out how the sufferer, after victoriously overcoming so many preceding temptations, nevertheless succumbed to that last trial which visited him in the mute yet eloquent conduct of his friends, now become the accusers and suspecters of his innocence, when they sat down beside him. Or, in other words, it may be shown how the suffering saint, before the coming of Christ, could resist indeed all other temptations, but was stranded at last on the rock of self-righteousness and of the diseased pride of virtuein contrast with which the conduct beseeming the Christian sufferer (the true , 1Pe 4:16) is at once suggested. If however we decide to dwell more thoroughly and exclusively on the conduct of the type, we shall then omit from our text these closing verses, which are besides in close connection with Job 3, and which form as it were the immediate basis of the gloomy picture there presented, and we shall treat simply of Jobs steadfast endurance in the fire of sore tribulations which came upon him. In the latter case again we can either combine into one whole the two stages of the trial, the firstthe lighter, consisting of the loss of his property and family, and the otherthe more severe, consisting of the infliction on him of the most frightful of all bodily plagues; or we can consider the subject under two divisions, the point of separation being Job 1:22. The attempt of Delitzsch to establish seven temptations as befalling Job in succession (the first four in Job 1:13-18; the fifth in Job 2:7-8; the sixth in Job 2:9-10; and the seventh in Job 2:11-13), could be applied of course only in case we include those closing verses, narrating the mute visit of the friends. Much, however, may be urged against this division; as, e.g., that no regular gradation can be observed in the seven trials thus distinguished; that the first four (Job 1:13-18) constitute one connected trial, rather than four distinct trials, etc. On this account we must perhaps waive any homiletic use of this division, especially seeing that it might easily suggest a sensible contradiction to Job 5:1-9 : in the seventh [trouble] no evil shall befall thee.

Particular Passages.Job 1:1-5. Cocceius (Job 1:5): Scripture selects this example of pious solicitude, in order to show that this holy man exercised the greatest solicitude at a time when we are wont to exercise it the least. For during our festivities what is it about which we mostly occupy our mind and conversation, but vanities? It is showing too much sourness, we think, to speak at our cups about the Kingdom of God, or His fear, or the hope of eternal life. Finally, the constancy of this custom of Jobs is to be noted. He was never free from care. However well instructed and obedient his children might be, he by no means laid aside his solicitude in their behalf. It is easy, when we think that we stand, to stumble and fall. There always remains in men a proneness to sin, however much they cultivate piety.Starke: Job gives to all parents an example: (1) That they should keep a watchful eye on their childrens conduct and life. (2) That they should pray God to give their children salvation and blessing, without allowing themselves, however, to be prompted by their errors and transgressions to curse them, or to wish them evil. (3) That they must also pray in behalf of their children that God would be gracious to them and forgive their sins.

Job 1:6-12. Brentius: Every temptation proceeds both from the Lord and from Satan. The latter seeks to destroy and to betray, the former to try man, and to teach His will. Hence faith, as it receives the good from the Lords hand, so also it receives suffering. For he who receives the cross out of Satans hand, receives it for his destruction (comp. 2Co 7:10); but he who receives it from the Lords hand, receives it for his trial (comp. Hebrews 12.)Starke: God, in accordance with His hidden counsel, permissively decrees at times much misery even to the most pious. This truth has always been a great stumbling-block to the reason. It is to be observed, however: (a) That these sore trials were not occasioned in the first instance by Satans calumnies against Job, but that even before the foundation of the world God had decreed and purposed to put all His saints to the test, each one in his measure. (b) That God inwardly sustained and strengthened Job so much with His consolation that his afflictions were as easily supported by him as the slight suffering of another. (c) That it was Gods will that Jobs patience should be made known to others for their blessed edification and imitation. (d) That God caused the friends lack of knowledge to be instrumental in putting them to shame, and in leading them to be better instructed in the mystery of the cross. (e) That to Job himself also the exercise and trial of his faith was in the highest degree advantageous and necessary. (f) That the final issue decreed for these sufferings was not only one that could be borne, but also one to be desired, and in the highest degree delightful and honorable for Job.Seb. Schmidt (on Job 1:12); From this verse we learn clearly that the power of the Devil is indeed great, so that, when the Divine protection is withdrawn, men are in his hand; that it is nevertheless finite, and in ways without number weaker than the Divine; and hence that he can do nothing whatsoever unless the Lord should permit it to him, just as here he could not destroy even a single sheep of Jobs before he had received permission.Vict. Andrea: This much is certain, that this scene in heaven may teach us that the destinies of men on earth have their ulterior roots and determining causes in the heavenly world; and that Satan, who is here represented as taking an active part in human affairs, notwithstanding all his hostility, can touch us only just so far as the Almighty God in His wisdom and love permits him.

Job 1:13-18. Zeyss (in Starke): Afflictions seldom come singly, but each joins hand with the other, and before one has passed away, another is already at the door, Psa 62:8. Thus the Christian state is altogether a state of affliction, for which the best of all provisions is an iron front and a strong paternoster, i.e., an intrepid faith and earnest prayer.

Job 1:19-22. Brentius: Thou wilt endure without great sorrow the loss of all thy possessions, if only the Lord, the treasury of all good things, remains. Set aside the Lord, there being only the cross placed before thee, and thou shalt see what blasphemies will arise in a mans heart.Osiander: In adversity we should look not at the means and instruments by which God sends calamity upon us, but to God only, from whom comes both good and evil, prosperity and adversity (Rth 1:13; Sir 2:14).

Job 2:1-8. Zeyss: God sometimes permits Satan to have power over the pious, to torment them, either in the body, by this or that painful casualty, or in the soul, by tempting them, in order that their faith, their patience, humility, devotion, prayerfulness, etc., may be tested, and the good which God has imparted to them, may be made manifest (Tob 12:13).Joach. Lange: If any man is a brother of Job, although it be only in the sense that he endures a severe and long-continued sickness, produced, not by any special agency of Satan, but by natural causeslet him nevertheless be comforted, seeing that he may be assured that such a decree of God is by no means a token of Divine displeasureprovided only that the sufferer maintains his integrity, that after the example of Job his mind is upright with God, and he adheres loyally to Him.J. H. Jacobi: Job, vindicating his virtue, justifying his Makers eulogy of him, sits down on his heap of ashes as the glory and boast of God. God and His whole heavenly host look to see how he will bear his calamity. He triumphs, and his triumph reaches higher than the stars.

Job 2:9-13. Brentius (on Job 2:9-10): You see here how great an evil is a wicked wife! For a wife is given by the Lord to share in bearing lifes labors, and, as Scripture says, for a help-meet. But lo! Jobs wife becomes a stumbling-block, and a blaspheming instrument of Satan; and thus she is a preacher of the irreligious flesh, teaching him in his afflictions to esteem God as dead, or as negligent of human affairs, and distrusting Divine succor, to rely on his own powers, and industry, and endeavors.Wohlfarth: A true friend in need (Sir 40:23; Rom 12:15), what a priceless treasure! As when all turned away from Job, and even his wife forsook him, three noble friends drew nigh to comfort him; thus it is that true friendship at all times asserts itself.Starke: Even in ministering comfort we must use discretion, in order that the wound which has been inflicted may not be torn open again Job, who was so poorly comforted by his friends, is a type of Christ, who in His sufferings was also deprived of all consolation.

Footnotes:

[1]Delitzsch perhaps states it too strongly when he says: he avoids even the slightest reference to anything Israelitish.

[2]According to the author of the art. Medicine in Smiths Bible Dict. there is still another disease called Elephantiasis Arabum, quite distinct from the disease which afflicted Job, which is known as the Elephantiasis Grcorum.

[3]Comp. that which has been advanced against this theory even by such liberally disposed investigators as Dillmann p. 8) and Davidson (Introd. II, p. 199, 230 seq.); in like manner Max Mllers objections to the prevalent assumption of the identity of most of the religious traditions in the book of Genesis with those of the Zend Avesta (in his Essays, vol. I., p. 129 seq.).

Fuente: A Commentary on the Holy Scriptures, Critical, Doctrinal, and Homiletical by Lange

CONTENTS

In the former Chapter we find Satan tempting Job, in some very heavy and trying afflictions of Job’s family and circumstances; and Job triumphant. In this Chapter we have the adversary making a further attack, in his violent assault upon Job’s person. To add to the poor man’s affliction, his wife joins in persuading him to sin. He reproves his wife and is visited by his friends.

Job 2:1

(1) Again there was a day when the sons of God came to present themselves before the LORD, and Satan came also among them to present himself before the LORD.

In the opening of this Chapter I cannot forbear calling upon the Reader to remark with me some sweet and precious instructions, which the Holy Ghost hath thought proper to give the church, concerning Satan and his devices, for which we never can be sufficiently thankful to that blessed Spirit. Paul tells the church that we are not ignorant of his devices. 2Co 2 And blessed be God the Holy Ghost who hath taught us by his servant the prophet Zechariah, we have a plain representation made of the arch fiend, standing before our God to resist God’s people. But to comfort the minds of God’s accused ones, the same prophet was made to behold also the Lord Jesus Christ, no less present to confront the accuser, as our glorious all-prevailing advocate. I would have the Reader, before he enters further in this Chapter, turn again to the passage referred to in the former Chapter. Zec 3:1-5 . It forms the highest relief to the mind, the recollection of this precious office of our adorable Lord, amidst the unknown accusations of our spiritual foe, which may daily be going on against the redeemed of the Lord! Joh 2:1 .

Fuente: Hawker’s Poor Man’s Commentary (Old and New Testaments)

Job 2:3

Compare Lord Cockburn’s description of Robert Blair in his Memorials (p. 132): ‘He was all honesty. The sudden opening of the whole secrets of his heart would not have disclosed a single speck of dishonour.’

Reference. II. 3. F. W. Farrar, Everyday Christian Life, p. 110.

Job 2:4

With man also as well as with the animals, says Martineau, ‘Death is the evil from which he most shrinks himself, and which he most deplores for those he loves; it is the utmost that he can inflict upon his enemy, and the maximum which the penal justice of society can award to its criminals. The fear of it it is which gives their vivid interest to all hairbreadth escapes, in the shipwreck, or amid the glaciers, or in the fight; and secretly supplies the chief tragic element his art.’

Let us remember what is involved in the enjoyment and in the loss of life that perilous and inestimable something, which we all know how much we ourselves prize, and for which, as we have the word long ago of a personage more distinguished for his talent than his virtue, uttered in a Presence when even he dared not lie direct, that ‘all that a man hath he will give,’ so let it be our endeavour, or its conservators, to give all that we have, our knowledge, our affections, our energies, our virtue ( , vir-tus, the very essence and pith of a man), in doing our best to make our patients healthy, long-lived, and happy.

Dr. John Brown.

The need for sacrifice is not taken away, only its nature is changed, exalted, deepened; and mild as is the genius of the New Dispensation, its knife goes closer to the heart than that of the elder one, which we are accustomed to think of as so stern and exacting. Behold the goodness and the severity of Christ! ‘Skin for skin,’ saith Job of old, ‘all that a man hath will he give for his life.’ And it is this very life which Christ asks us to lay down for Him; this life of which He tells us that he who loveth it shall lose it, and he who loseth it for His sake shall keep it unto life eternal.

Dora Greenwell.

References. II. 4. H. Melvill, Penny Pulpit, No. 1526. II. 6. J. Clifford, Daily Strength for Daily Living, p. 52.

Job 2:7

The fiercest passions are not so dangerous foes to the soul as the cold scepticism of the understanding. The Jewish demon assailed the man of Uz with physical ills; the Lucifer of the Middle Ages tempted his passions; but the Mephistopheles of the eighteenth century bade the finite strive to compass the infinite, and the intellect attempt to solve all the problems of the soul.

Margaret Fuller.

Life has its wounds as well as its weapons. Your moral hero occasionally sees not only the discomfiture of Satan, but also the warm blood of his own mortal veins oozing forth as well.

Royce, The Spirit of Modern Philosophy, p. 49.

Job 2:8

One of the wildest grandeurs of this poem is that in it the sun is baleful. The sun is in Job as in Homer; but it is no longer the dawn, it is high noon. The sombre oppressiveness of the brazen ray, falling straight down on the desert, pervades the poem, which is heated to a white heat. Job sweats on his dunghill. The shadow of Job is small and black, and it is hidden under him as the snake beneath the rock. Tropical flies buzz on his sores. Job has over his head the fearful Arabian sun which intensifies plagues, and changes the miasma into the pestilence.

Victor Hugo.

It is our patience that is the touchstone of our virtue. To bear with life even when illusion and hope are gone; to accept this position of perpetual war, while at the same time loving only peace; to stay patiently in the world, even when it repels us as a place of bad company, and seems to us a mere arena of bad passions; to remain faithful to one’s own faith without breaking with the followers of the false gods; to make no attempt to escape from the human hospital, longsuffering and patient as Job upon his dunghill; this is duty. When life ceases to be a promise, it does not cease to be a Task; its true name even is Trial.

Amiel.

It was the fire that did honour to Mutilius Scaevola; poverty made Fabricius famous; Rutilius was made excellent by banishment; Regulus by torments; Socrates by prison; Cato by his death; and God hath crowned the memory of Job with a wreath of glory, because he sat upon his dunghill wisely and temperately; and his potsherds and his groans, mingled with praises and justification of God, pleased him like an anthem sung by angels in the morning of the resurrection.

Jeremy Taylor.

Job 2:9

Southey remarks, of John Wesley’s wife, that ‘of all women she is said to have been the most unsuited to him. Fain would she have made him, like Marc Antony, give up all for love; and being disappointed in that hope, she tormented him in such a manner, by her outrageous jealousy, and abominable temper, that she deserves to be classed in a triad with Xantippe and the wife of Job, as one of the three bad wives.’

Many a time since have I noticed, in persons of Ginevra Fanshawe’s light, careless temperament, and fair, fragile style of beauty, an entire uncapacity to endure: they seem to sour in adversity, like small beer in thunder. The man who takes such a woman for his wife, ought to be prepared to guarantee her an existence all sunshine.

Charlotte Bronte in Villette.

Curse God and Die

In the introduction to Guy Mannering, Scott describes the youth of John McKinlay’s legend as exposed to despairing fears, which he combated with courage. ‘It seemed as if the gloomiest and most hideous of mental maladies was taking the form of religious despair. Still the youth was gentle, courteous, affectionate, and submissive to his father’s will, and resisted with all his power the dark suggestions which were breathed into his mind, as it seemed, by some emanation of the Evil Principle, exhorting him, like the wicked wife of Job, to curse God and die.’

It is a brave act of valour to contemn death; but, where life is more terrible than death, it is then the truest valour to dare to live; and herein hath religion taught us a noble example; for all the valiant acts of Curtius, Scaevola, or Codrus, do not parallel or match that one of Job; and sure there is no torture to the rack of a disease, nor any poniards in death itself, like those in the way or prologue unto it.

Sir Thomas Browne.

Job 2:10

Compare Browning’s setting of this text in Ferishtah’s Fancies (‘The Melon-Seller’).

My God! what poor creatures we are! After all my fair proposals yesterday, I was seized with a most violent pain in the right kidney and the parts adjacent, which, joined to deadly sickness which it brought on, forced me instantly to go to bed and send for Clarkson…. I cannot expect that this first will be the last visit of this cruel complaint; but shall we receive good at the hand of God and not receive evil?

Sir Walter Scott’s Journal for December, 1825.

Mr. James Skene, in his Reminiscences, describes the brave, cheery spirit of his friend, Sir Walter Scott, after the crisis in his fortunes. ‘The sentiments of resignation and of cheerful acquiescence in the dispensation of the Almighty which he expressed were those of a Christian thankful for the blessings left, and willing, without ostentation, to do his best. It was really beautiful to see the workings of a strong and upright mind under the first lash of adversity, calmly reposing upon the consolation afforded by his own integrity and manful purposes.’

Be it so thou hast lost all, poor thou art, dejected, in pain of body, grief of mind, thine enemies insult over thee, thou art as bad as Job; yet tell me (saith Chrysostom) was Job or the devil the greater conqueror? Surely Job; the devil had his goods, he sat on the muck-hill and kept his good name; he lost his children, health, friends, but he kept his innocency; he lost his money, but he kept his confidence in God, which was better than any treasure. Do thou then as Job did, triumph as Job did, and be not molested as every fool is.

Burton’s Anatomy of Melancholy.

The Will of God

Job 2:10

I. We have here put before us the very highest and most perfect type of patience in the sense of simple resignation. It is the greatest picture ever drawn of that calm, unhesitating, and profound acquiescence in the will of God, which was one of the ‘qualities which marked Eastern religions, when to the West they were almost unknown, and which even now is more remarkably exhibited in Eastern nations than among ourselves’.

II. ‘Thy will be done’ is ‘a prayer which lies at the very root of all religion’. It stands among the foremost petitions of the Lord’s Prayer. It is deeply engraven in the whole religious spirit of the Sons of Abraham, even of the race of Ishmael. In the words, ‘God is great,’ it expresses the best side of Mahommedanism, the profound submission to the will of a Heavenly Master. It is embodied in the very words, Moslem and Islam. And we, servants of the Crucified One, must feel that to be ready to leave all in God’s hands, not merely because He is great, but because we know Him to be wise, and feel Him to be good, is of the very essence of religion in its very highest aspect.

III. The very highest type of such submission we have set before us in Job. Poor as he now is, he is rich in trust and nearness to his God; and Christian souls, trained in the teaching of Christian centuries, will feel that if there is a God and Father above us, it is better to have felt towards Him as he felt, than to have been the lord of many slaves and flocks and herds, and the possessor of unclouded happiness on a happy earth.

G. G. Bradley, Lectures on the Book of Job, p. 40.

Job 2:11

‘Even the patriarch Job,’ says George Eliot in Felix Holt, ‘if he had been a gentleman of the modern West, would have avoided picturesque disorder and poetical laments; and the friends who called on him, though not less disposed than Bildad the Shuhite to hint that their unfortunate friend was in the wrong, would have sat on chairs and held their hats in their hands. The harder problems of our life have changed less than our manners; we wrestle with the old sorrows, but more decorously.’

The consolation offered by these three men to Job has passed into a proverb; but who that knows what most modern consolation is can prevent a prayer that Job’s comforters may be his? They do not call upon him for an hour, and invent excuses for the departure which they so anxiously await; they do not write notes to him and go about their business as if nothing had happened; they do not inflict on him meaningless commonplaces. They honour him by remaining with him, and by their mute homage, and when they speak to him, though they are mistaken, they offer him the best that they have been able to think. Eliphaz the Temanite, Bildad the Shuhite, and Zophar the Naamathite, sitting in the dust with Job, not daring to intrude upon him, are for ever an example of what man once was and ought to be to man.

W. Hale White, The Deliverance, pp. 132-133.

Job 2:13

What majestic tenderness!

Froude.

‘We are over-hasty to speak,’ says Dinah Morris in Adam Bede, ‘as if God did not manifest Himself by our silent feeling, and make His love felt through ours.’ Some special gift or beneficent force flows from one when one is in the sympathetic state.

Amiel.

There are silences of all sorts, as there is speech of all sorts. There are silences that set one’s teeth on edge it is always a relief to break them; and there are silences that are gentler, kinder, sweeter, more loving, more eloquent than any words, and which it is always a wrench to interrupt.

F. Marion Crawford.

It is always easy to say of another’s misfortune, ‘What does it matter to me?’ or, ‘There must be these sentimental these emotional crises. They form the character. It is all for the best. God is good!’ All these things are true in substance; all these things occur invariably to the wise spectator of human fates. But more than wisdom more than the formal utterances of piety is sometimes required of us, and while a sleepless night for your neighbour’s woe may not assist him materially in his trouble, we know that the Divine Economy permits nothing to be wasted. Every unselfish thought sends a lasting fragrance into the whole moral atmosphere of the world.

John Oliver Hobbes, The School for Saints, chap. XXVIII.

Grief and Silence

Job 2:13

They entered into the genius of the occasion what so few people can do. They want to make the occasion, rather than accept it. Hence the vexation and the heartbreak and the misery of what is called sympathy. Sometimes we do everything by doing nothing. If men could learn this the kingdom of heaven would surely have come amongst us. ‘Jesus wept… Jesus cried with a loud voice;’ would the voice have been so loud and prevalent but for the preceding tears? did not the tears make a way for the voice? Sometimes weakness is power. God is great, in mercy, in pity, in condescension greater than when He makes stars and heavens and all symbols and parables of majesty. Grief must have its time. Time is not a succession of moments; it is that, and more: we make the moments, we thus cruelly hurt ourselves by ticking off time into pulses. Time, rightly understood, is a great silent, flowing, gracious, healing river; wheresoever the river cometh there is life.

I. Job had to learn to do without things. Is not that life’s penultimate lesson? is it not the last lesson but one? We have to do without things that are apparently essential? In our boundless ignorance we say, Without this we could not live; without that life would be intolerable; in the absence of such a presence and such a ministry and such a luxury, life would be one howling wilderness. God has a way of weaning His little ones without hurting them fatally. The way of love herein is most cunning; love is working whilst we are sleeping; love says, He will not miss this so much after I have steeped him in the river of obliviousness. The eagle has to do without its nest; the eagle must be disappointed when it returns to its eyrie heights and finds that the lightning has torn the nest to pieces and the wind has scattered it in contempt.

II. Job had to recognize the inevitable. What is the inevitable? It is that which cannot be turned back, that which must come, that which is ordained and resistless; it cannot be threatened, it cannot be stricken, it cannot be tempted, it cannot be charmed; it must, must come. Better call it the decree of God than the blind will of a blind fate. If I have a choice of words I will choose the better word. If you tell me I have an alternative, God or Fate, I will say, Does God mean life, personality, sovereignty, love, though often not interpreted, and sometimes misinterpreted? If you say yes, I will choose God, rather than Fate, because Fate is impersonal, dumb, far off, mute, careless, callous, incapable of feeling. Do you give me a choice? I accept the choice and elect to be found on the side of God. In the meantime that choice helps me, and if at last I find out that it is only fate, I have in the meantime had a consolation which not only soothes me, but inspires and nerves and qualifies me for service. I have therefore an infinite advantage over a miserable belief in a miserable, impersonal fate.

III. There is a wonderful ministry in life called the ministry of silence. ‘And none spake a word unto him: for they saw that his grief was very great.’ Grief silences words. Words are modern inventions; words are petty and often mocking contrivances; there is no reality in them that does not exist without them: we would therefore get back to the primal and rest in the sanctuary whose roof is heaven, whose foundations are the heart of God. Silence is older than speech.

IV. Faith is tried by fire. Until you have lost all you have gained nothing. What you call your gains are but so much stored up to be lost, but after you have lost all God may permit you to begin again and build up little by little a richer treasure and a surer dwelling-place. But is not the loss all the same whether we believe or do not believe? No; in the case of belief there come into the life spiritual ministries, inexplicable agencies of all kinds, suggestions, inspirations, comforts, new ideas, new dreams, new hopes, new possibilities, and along with them a voice which says in whispered thunder, ‘Behold, I make all things new’.

Joseph Parker, City Temple Pulpit, vol. I. p. 55.

Fuente: Expositor’s Dictionary of Text by Robertson

The Assaults of Satan

Job 2

Remember that the man spoken about is “a perfect man and an upright, one that feared God and eschewed evil.” The speaker is Satan, who came with the sons of God on the first occasion, and said, “Touch all that Job hath, and he will curse thee to thy face.” He was allowed to touch Job’s property, and he failed in his purpose. On another occasion the same devil came back with the sons of God, and enlarged his proposition. He said, “Touch his bone and his flesh, and he will curse thee to thy face.”

We are fully agreed that there is no devil. That may be taken for granted. It is impossible for us to believe that there is a devil, and for this reason. Simply because there is nothing devilish, therefore how can we believe that there is a devil? Everybody is so good, everybody is so honest; all our habits, and practices, and customs are so transparently and beautifully moral, that it is utterly impossible for us to believe that there is a devil. Why do we speak of the existence of the devil? Because there is so much devilishness. The best way to prove that there is no devil is to get rid of the devilishness. When we have cleansed that out of the way we shall make it exceedingly difficult to believe either in a personal or an impersonal devil. But when persons are so dishonest, so quick in sharp practice, so malign, so cruel, so ready to take advantage, so prepared to oppress the weak and to mislead the ignorant, it becomes quite easy for us to believe that perhaps there is a devil!

In this incident it will be our privilege to see the devil twice wrong. Here is a man called Job who is chosen as the battlefield. In all lines and spheres of life some particular persons are called upon to illustrate universal truths and confer universal blessings. It is necessarily and unchangeably true that one man must die for the people. The great contest before us is God against the devil, and up to this time we have never seen that battle so sharply defined. We have always felt that there was a contest going on, but we never saw them face to face, hand against hand, mouth against mouth, before. It will be interesting to watch the encounter. We do not know that the devil has ever made this high challenge before. He has always been walking and working in the dark: he has been moving about stealthily and taking advantage where he could but we are not aware that he has ever with undisguised audacity actually challenged the Almighty to fight it out in one particular case. At last the challenge has been given; it has been accepted, Job is the battlefield, and on the result will depend the veracity either of God or of the devil. But what of Job in that case? had he no compensations? was it all battle, and suffering, and pain, and humiliation on his part? Was there nothing on the other side? Does God simply afflict some men and leave them with their afflictions does he simply gather his clouds over some heads and cause them to discharge their pitiless storms without setting the rainbow on the cloud-laden sky? It is easy for us who have endured but the secondary pains and ills of life to suggest compensations to those who are our leaders in suffering and our veterans in bearing the chastisements, the penalties, and visitations of God. Still, it is surely something to be God’s proof-man, to be called out as the particular man on whose character, intelligence, grace, patience, fortitude great results are staked. Surely God will not call a man to endure all the devil can inflict upon him without secretly giving that man sustenance, and at the end throwing upon his devastated life a fuller and gentler light than ever has illumined its yesterdays.

That is the view which we should take of our afflictions; that is to say, we should feel that perhaps we are made the medium through which God is answering the devil’s challenge. The devil may have been saying to the Almighty concerning this man or that: “Take his health away, take his trade away, touch his bone and his flesh, subtract considerably from the sum total of his indulgences, and his enjoyments, and then he will curse thee to thy face.” That is the view every man and woman should take of personal sorrow and individual trial. The devil may have said, “Take his only son away, and thou wilt take his religion away,” and God has allowed that dear boy to be removed how dost thou bear? There are great stakes pending: God said, “He will bear it well, with the grace of a sanctified hero.” The devil said, “He will burn his Bible and cast down his family altar.” Who is right? If thou art bearing that heavy loss well, bowing thy poor old knees at the same altar, and saying, with a choking in thy throat, “The Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord,” thou hast enabled God to strike the devil on the face. The Lord help thee: it is bitter suffering; there is a hard stress upon thy poor life; thou needest all the grace treasured in the immeasurable heart of Christ; but his grace is sufficient for thee draw heavily upon it, and the more thou dost yearn for that healing grace, the more shall it be given thee to overflow; it cannot be given to satisfy.

Could Job now look over the ages that have been healed and comforted by his example, stimulated to bear the ills of life by the grateful memory of his invincible patience, surely even now in heaven he would be taking in the reward of his long-continued and noble endurance of the divine visitation. It may be so with thee, poor man, poor woman: thou dost not get all the sweet now: this shall be a memory to thee in heaven, long ages hence: the wrestling thou hast now may minister to thee high delight, keen enjoyment, rapture pure and abiding. Who can tell when God’s rewards end who will venture to say, “This is the measure of his benediction?” He is able to give and to do exceeding abundantly above all that we ask or think. When, therefore, persons inquire of thee, What compensation hast thou? say, “It is given by instalments, today, tomorrow, in death, in the resurrection, all through the ages of eternity. Ask me thousands of ages hence, and I will reply to thy question concerning compensation.” Life is not limited by the cradle and the tomb, and it is not between these two mean and near points that great questions are to be discussed or determined.

Job has been read by countless readers. His, of course, was a public trial, a tragedy that was wrought out for the benefit of multitudes in all generations. Nevertheless it is literally and pathetically true that every man, the very obscurest, has his readers, fewer in number it may be, but equally earnest in attention. Think you that your children are not taking notice of you, seeing how you bear your temptations, and difficulties, and anxieties? Think you not that your eldest boy is kept away from the table of the Lord because you are as atheistic in sorrow as ever Voltaire was? Do you know that your daughter hates church because her pious father Is only pious in the three summer months of the year? He curls under the cold and biting wind as much as any mean atheist ever did: therefore the girl saith, “He is a sham and a hypocrite my father in the flesh no relative of mine in the spirit.” You have your readers: the little Bible of your life is read in your kitchen, in your parlour, in your shop, and in your warehouse; and if you do not bear your trials, anxieties, and difficulties with a Christian chivalry and heroism, what is there but mockery on earth and laughter in hell? God give us grace to bear the chastisement nobly, serenely; bless us with the peace which passeth understanding, with the quietness kindred to the calm of God; and help us when death is in the house, and poverty on the hearthstone, and when there is a storm blinding the one poor small window we have, to say, “Though he slay me, yet will I trust in him. If I perish I will pray, and perish only here.” That is Christianity not some clever chatter and able controversy about metaphysical points, but noble temper, high behaviour, faultless constancy, invincible fortitude in the hour of trial and in the agony of pain.

Let us give the devil his due. We admit that the devil had but too much reason to believe that his propositions concerning Job were right. He did not speak without book. He had at his girdle many proofs that strong men had fallen under his stroke. The devil, therefore, may have reasoned that if so many had yielded to his ministry, Job, the mightiest and brightest of all, might yield as well. Why might he not? Name his victories Adam, Cain, Saul, and a hundred others was he not, therefore, entitled to reason inductively from a very considerable basis and area of fact that Job would fall too? Where was he wrong? He was wrong in supposing that Adam, Cain, or Saul were godly men, that they had in them the divine and imperishable seed of truth. We altogether exaggerate Adam. What was he? He never was a boy he never had anybody to speak to up to a considerable period of his life he had no intellectual friction, no ambition, no opportunity of developing and growing strong by contest and antagonism. He was innocent in a negative way: he had done nothing, and so far he was good enough but he had to be tried as every man has to be tried, and he fell. And Saul, mighty king but weak in heart, he was not a godly man. The true belief of the sons of God was not in that man, and therefore he fell He was nominally right officially right called outwardly to a certain position, but the seed of God was not in him, and where the seed of God is not found in the heart, no matter what the intelligence may be, or the official influence, the man must fall.

Now the devil came upon a distinctively different man: he assailed Job, who was a perfect man and upright, one that feared God and eschewed evil that is the man to fight, then. If the devil conquers there, he will tear the heavens to pieces, he will break up the throne of God, he will disband the angels, he will scatter the baleful fires of perdition upon the walls and floors of heaven’s city. It is, therefore, a great fight it is a critical battle; everything depends upon the issue, for God has given permission to assail this perfect man, and therefore he has put perfectness of character to the test. No godly man has ultimately fallen. No man in whom is the seed of the divine life can fall finally, for he hath the seed, the life, the Spirit of God abiding in him. Slips enough alas! too many. Crimes too: see David, see Peter, for appalling proof. Falls daily though he fall he shall not be utterly cast down. This is what we mean by the final perseverance of the saints: this is what we mean by the triumph of the grace of God in a poor human life. No man knows better than the true child of the Almighty how possible it is to sin in thought, in word, in deed, and to sin daily, yet under all the sin to have an inextinguishable love. Whoever has the true root in him shall be found at last to the praise and glory of God. Is this a dangerous doctrine to preach? Only because all doctrine is dangerous in some cases and in some circumstances; but this is our joy, our strength, our hope: if we have to be saved because we are always doing the right thing in the right way, accomplishing all our purposes, fulfilling all our duties we never shall be saved. We are today no further than the publican was when he said, “God be merciful to me a sinner.” But we know that, bad as we are, foul with many crimes, deep in the heart is love to Christ, and that inexplicable presence in the soul of divine elements and divine faculties comes up through all the superincumbent guilt, and shines at the top of it an inextinguishable light.

Even in Job himself we have complaint enough, murmuring enough, but in Job we have the true life, and therefore at the last he is more than conqueror. In this case we see really all that the devil can do. What is it in his power, as given by God, to inflict? Bereavement, poverty, pain, humiliation. God has given him these four great dogs to set upon our life: they will bite and gnaw us, but they cannot kill the true child of God. The devil has only one soliloquy: his is really the poorest intellect in the universe. He says, “I have got Job on my hands, what shall I do? Let me see: I will kill his sons and his daughters, and will take away his flocks and his herds, and I will give him boils; I will cover him with loathsome disease, and I will make his life disagreeable, and in every way I will plague him and torment him, and I will do it now.” That is the devil’s brief programme: he cannot add a line to it if he could fill his hell by the doing of it. Beyond his chain he cannot go. Thou knowest, poor soul, what he can do bereavement, poverty, pain, humiliation; sit down, count the cost, add it up line by line, item by item, and when thou hast done so, know the sum total, and ask whether the grace of God is sufficient to meet an exigency such as that result brings before thy view.

How afflictions may be made to show God’s grace! Let us try to take that view of our difficulties, cares, and sorrows. Great battles may be fought in our little lives: let us therefore every day think that God is fighting out some case along the line of our experience, and that our behaviour may have something to do with God’s own satisfaction. We have been managing our own affairs for many years and have failed: let us resign the administration of our lives and ask the Almighty to work his will in and through us without any suggestion, much less any interposition, from our side. The sorrow, it is bitter: it must have been soaked soaked in the bitterest aloes that the devil could pluck from the foulest trees; but God’s grace is sufficient for us.

What is our special difficulty? Is it a home difficulty? Angels are waiting there, saying, “We have a great fight going on in this house: here is a poor life worried worried and we are waiting to see whether the devil’s poison or God’s grace shall get the better.” Is it a business difficulty? Things have got twisted, honest, honourable man though you be, and you cannot disentangle them. God is saying, “I tied the knot I allowed the devil to tie it and we are both waiting to see the result of thy fingering.” Try, wait, try again: pray, hope ah, there! a touch did it at last: and the unravelled string lies out before thee, a straight line. Whatever our difficulties or sorrows, a great battle is being fought out in our lives; let us fight it sedulously, daily, constantly, lovingly. We have heard of the patience of Job: may the memory of that patience encourage us to toil on, suffer on; under the consciousness that on the third day, in our degree, we shall be perfected.

Fuente: The People’s Bible by Joseph Parker

(See the Job Book Comments for Introductory content and general conclusions and observations).

III

THE PROLOGUE OF JOB

Job 1-2.

The book of Job divides itself into three parts: The Prologue, the Poetical Drama, and the Epilogue. The Prologue is a prose narrative but intensely dramatic in form and recites the occasion of the poetical drama which constitutes the body of the book. The Epilogue, also dramatic in prose, recites the historical outcome of the story.

The analysis of the Prologue consists of chapters Job 1-2 with forward references elsewhere in the book.

I. Two scenes and a problem. 1. An earth view of a pious, prosperous, and happy man (Job 1:1-5 ; with Job 29:1-25 ; Job 31:1-34 )

2. An earth view in which his piety is considered in the crosslights of divine and of satanic judgment (Job 1:6-12 )

3. A problem: Can there be disinterested piety?

II. First trial of Job’s piety Satan permitted to conduct the trial under limitations (Job 1:13-22 ) 1. Satan’s stroke on Job the farmer (Job 1:14-15 )

2. Satan’s stroke on Job the stockman (Job 1:16 )

3. Satan’s stroke on Job the merchant (Job 1:17 )

4. Satan’s stroke on Job the father (Job 1:18-19 )

5. Result of first trial (Job 1:20-22 )

III. Second trial of Job’s piety (Job 2:1-10 )

1. Another heaven view in which Job is vindicated and the malice of Satan condemned, but further trial permitted under limitation (Job 2:1-6 )

2. Satan’s fifth stroke Job’s person smitten with leprosy (Job 2:7-8 )

3. Satan’s sixth stroke on Job the husband (Job 2:9 )

4. Result (Job 2:10 )

IV. Satan’s continued trial (Job 2:11-13 ; and other references in the book )

1. Satan’s seventh stroke on Job the kinsman, neighbor, and master (Job 19:13-19 )

2. Satan’s eighth stroke on Job’s social position (Job 30:1-15 )

3. After long interval Satan’s ninth stroke on Job the friend (Job 2:11-13 )

4. Satan’s tenth and master stroke in leading Job to attribute the malice of these persecutions to God and to count him an adversary without mercy or justice. (See Job 9:24 , “If it be not he, who then is it?”; Job 19:11 .)

The Prologue opens with two remarkable scenes, an earth view, a heaven view, and a problem. (See the analysis of the Prologue.)

The earth view (Job 1:1-5 ) presents a pious, prosperous, and happy man. The length, extent, and unbroken character of this prosperity, Job’s ascription of it to God, the healthful effect on his piety and character, are all marvelous. It had lasted all his life without a break. It gave him great wealth, a numerous and happy family, health for every member, great wisdom, extensive knowledge and power, high honor among men, and yet did not spoil him. He was a model husband and father, successful merchant, farmer, and shepherd, benevolent and just toward men, pure in life, and devout toward God. (See Job 29-31.)

The heaven view (Job 1:6-12 ) in which Job’s piety is considered in the contrasted light of divine and of satanic judgment, is every way marvelous and instructive. It reveals the fact that on stated occasions, angels, both good and bad, must report their work to the sovereign God; that Satan’s field of movement is restricted to this earth. He has no work in heaven but to report when God requires it, and then under inquisition he must tell where he has been, what he has seen, what he has even thought, and what he has done. It must not be supposed that he attends this angelic assembly from curiosity or from audacity, but is there under compulsion. Though fallen and outcast he is yet responsible to God, and must account to his Sovereign.

The bearing of this Prologue on the chief object of the book, namely, to suggest the necessity of and to prepare the way for a wider revelation, is as follows:

1. None of the actors or sufferers on earth know anything of this extraneous origin, purpose, and limitation of his fiery ordeal through which Job and his family must pass. Hence the need of a revelation that man may understand how the spiritual forces of heaven and hell touch his earthly life.

2. How far short all the several philosophies of Job and his friends in accounting for the cause, purpose, or extent of the great suffering which befell Job. Hence the conclusion that unaided human philosophy cannot solve the problem of human life, and therefore a revelation is needed.

Satan’s power is manifested in four simultaneous scenes of disaster:

(1) The stroke on Job, the farmer (Job 1:14-15 );

(2) The stroke on Job, the shepherd, or stockman (Job 1:16 );

(3) The stroke on Job, the merchant (Job 1:17 );

(4) The stroke on Job, the father (Job 1:18-19 ).

The cunning, malice and cumulative power of Satan’s strokes are seen, as follows:

(1) The mockery of the date of all these disasters, the elder son’s birthday, the gathering of all the children in one house, and the joyous feasting.

(2) The timing of Job’s reception of the news of the several disasters shows that it was stroke upon stroke without intermission.

(3) The sparing of one survivor alone from each disaster, and him only that he might be a messenger of woe.

(4) The variety, adaptation, and thorough naturalness of these means, none of them so out of character as to suggest the supernatural: the Sabeans, the fire of God (a Hebraism), the Chaldeans, the desert tornado. Why suspect supernatural agents when the natural causes are all possible, evident, and credible?

(5) The refinement of cruelty in sparing Job’s wife that she might add to his wretchedness by her evil counsel.

(6) The making of his kindred, neighbors, friends, servants, and the rabble instruments of torture by their desertion, reproach, and mistreatment.

(7) Knowing that Job’s intelligence must perceive that such a remarkable series, even of natural events, could not result from chance, but must have been timed and directed by one endowed with supernatural power, and full of malice, he reveals the very depths of his wickedness and cunning in leading Job to attribute this to God.

The scene of Job’s reception of the direful news (Job 1:14-20 ) is very remarkable. See the cumulative power of blow on blow without intermission for breathing. Job’s grief is great, but his resignation is instant. He ascribes all the disasters to the divine Sovereign, without a thought of Satan, and without any knowledge of the divine purpose. Here ends Job’s first trial in complete victory for him.

The second scene, in heaven, shows angels, good and bad, reporting divine and satanic judgment on Job’s piety and Satan rebuked for malice against Job but permitted a further test (Job 2:1-6 ), in which he was given power over Job’s person with one limitation. Satan’s power over Job’s person, and yet hidden from Job, may be seen by comparison of Job 2:7 with other references in the book. The nature of this affliction is found to be elephantiasis, a form of leprosy, usually attributed to the direct agency of God. Yet, it was a well-known disease in that country, and might be explained by natural causes. So Satan’s agency is again hidden and Job has no thought of him.

The awful pain and loathsomeness of this disease, then and now, isolated the patient from human association and sympathy, and human judgment said it was incurable. The law of Moses on the isolation and treatment of lepers is found in Lev 13:45 f.; Num 5:1-4 ; Num 12:14 . Their degredation and isolation in New Testament times, Christ’s sympathy for them, and his healing of them may be seen in Luk 17:11-19 and other references. Lew Wallace, in Ben Hur, Book VI, Job 2 , “Memorial Edition,” gives a vivid description of leprosy in the case of Ben Hur’s mother and sister:

Slowly, steadily, with horrible certainty, the disease spread, after a while bleaching their heads white, eating holes in their lips and eyelids, and covering their bodies with scales; then it fell to their throats, shrilling their voices, and to their joints, hardening the tissues and cartilages, slowly, and, as the mother well knew, past remedy, it was affecting their lungs and arteries and bones, at each advance making the sufferers more and more loatheeorne; and so it would continue till death, which might be years before them.

He sets forth the awful state of the leper thus:

These four are accounted as dead, the blind, the leper, the poor, and the childless. Thus the Talmud.

That is, to be a leper was to be treated as dead to be excluded from the city as a corpse;. to be spoken to by the best beloved and most loving only at a distance; to dwell with none but lepers; to be utterly unprivileged; to be denied the rites of the Temple and the synagogue; to go about in rent garments and with covered mouth, except when crying, “Unclean! Unclean!” to find home in the wilderness or in abandoned tombs; to become a materialized specter of Hinnom and Gehenna; to be at all times less a living offense to others than a breathing torment to self; afraid to die, yet without hope except in death.

N. P. Willis in his poem on the leper (The Poetical Works of N. P. Willis , pp. 5-9) gives a fine poetic description of the leper, the progress of the disease and a typical leper healed by Jesus. The substance of this poem is as follows:

In the first section is a description of the approach of the leper, at which the cry is heard,

Room for the leper I Room I And as he came

The cry pass’d on Room for the leper! Room! Then the response by the leper, “Unclean! Unclean!” In the second section is a description of a young man before the attack of the disease and then a leper after the disease had laid hold upon him. The blighting effect, of the disease is here depicted very forcefully. In the next section we find the most horrifying denunciations of the leper. He makes his way to the temple and, standing before the altar, he hears his doom: Depart! depart, O child Of Israel, from the temple of thy God I For He has smote thee with His chastening rod: And to the desert-wild, From all thou lov’st away, thy feet must flee, That from thy plague His people may be free. Depart I and come not near The busy mart, the crowded city, more; Nor set thy foot a human threshold o’er; And stay thou not to hear Voices that call thee in the way; and fly From all who in the wilderness pass by. Wet not thy burning lip In streams that to a human dwelling glide; Nor rest thee where the covert fountains hide; Nor kneel thee down to dip The water where the pilgrim bends to drink. By desert well or river’s grassy brink; And pass thou not between The weary traveller and the cooling breeze; And lie not down to sleep beneath the trees Where human tracks are seen; Nor milk the goat that browseth on the plain, Nor pluck the standing corn, or yellow grain. And now, depart! and when Thy heart is heavy, and thine eyes are dim, Lift up thy prayer beseechingly to Him Who, from the tribes of men, Selected thee to feel His chastening rod. Depart! O Leper I and forget not God!

Then follows a description of the leper departing and going into the wilderness where Jesus found him and healed him. The closing lines of the poem are as follows:

His leprosy was cleansed, and he fell down

Prostrate at Jesus’ feet and worshipp’d Him.

The counsel of Job’s wife and Job’s reply to it are found in Job 2:9-10 . Here ends Job’s second trial in victory as complete as in the first trial. Satan drops out of the story after the second trial. Now, the question is, How do we know he is yet taking part? The answer is, we see his tracks. Job’s wife in Job 2:9 quotes the very words of Satan in Job 2:5 . Satan, though hidden, uses Job’s wife against him as Eve was used against Adam (Cf. Job 2:5 ; Job 2:9 ). Washington Irving, on a wife’s influence in helping her husband to recover from a great misfortune, says, I have often had occasion to remark the fortitude with which women sustain the most overwhelming reverses of fortune. Those disasters which break down the spirit of man, and prostrate him in the dust, seem to call forth all the energies of the softer sex, and give such intrepidity and elevation to their character, that at times it approaches to sublimity. Nothing can be more touching than to behold a soft and tender female, who had been all weakness and dependence, and alive to every trivial roughness, while treading the prosperous paths of life, suddenly rising in mental force to be the comforter and support of her husband under misfortune, and abiding with unshrinking firmness the bitterest blasts of adversity. Sketch Book.

In this sifting of Satan, Job’s piety surpasses that of Adam’s in that Adam with eyes open, through love of his wife, heeded her advice and fell, but Job, blind to many things that Adam was not, withstood the temptation of his wife, and held fast his integrity. In another part of this book Job himself claims to be superior to Adam (See Job 31:33 ), in that he did not attempt to hide his sin as did Adam.

Satan further appears to be taking part, though he now ostensibly disappears from the story. He is really present, using Job’s friends and tempting Job himself.

Now, Job’s words in Job 1:21 , and his reply to his wife in Job 2:10 solve the first problem suggested by Satan, “Can there be sincere and disinterested piety?” Hypocrites may serve for the loaves and the fishes, but the true children of God serve him even in the loss of all things and in excruciating sufferings. See case of Paul in the New Testament.

The results of Satan’s three trials are as follows: Job’s complete triumphs in the first and second; the third was a downfall. Satan failed in the main point, but he got Job into a heap of trouble.

There are proofs from the book that a considerable time elapsed between the smiting with leprosy and the visit of the three friends, so that the time of the intervening events prepares the mind to understand the subsequent debates, and enables it to appreciate this man’s heroic fortitude and patience before he uttered a word of complaint. Their coming by appointment or previous arrangement has a bearing on the lapse of time since he was smitten with leprosy. The time necessary for each friend to hear of Job’s calamity, and then to arrange by communication with each other for a joint visit, and then for the journey, show that considerable time elapsed in this interval.

On the same point the time necessary for the intervening events set forth in Job 19:13-19 ; Job 30:1-15 , namely, desertion by wife, brothers, sisters, and friends, and the horrible treatment he received from young people, from criminals whom he had punished, and from the cruel rabble, all of which preceded the visit of his three friends must be considered here in order to maintain the thread of the story.

What he himself says on the length of time since his last affliction may be noted (Job 7:3 ): “So am I made to possess months [literally moons] of misery”; and (Job 29:2 ): “Oh that I were as in the months of old.” The time intervening between the last scene with his wife and the visit of his friends could not have been less than two months and was doubtless three or four; so we correlate his sufferings and losses in their order thus: loss of all his property, loss of all his children, loss of his health, alienation of wife and kindred, loss of honor among men and every exalted position, followed by contempt and disgust of the rabble. As he himself puts it (Job 12:5 ): “In the thought of him that is at ease there is contempt for misfortune.”

Now the reader must connect all these things and vividly see them following in order for so long a time, a time of unremitting pain, horrible by night and by day, in order to grasp the idea of this man’s heroic patience before he uttered a word of complaint.

The last straw that broke down the fortitude of Job, that broke his spirit, was the seven days’ silence of his friends, staring upon his wretchedness without a word of comfort. Comparing the Satan of Job with the serpent (Gen 3 ) ; the Satan of David (2Sa 24:1 ; 1Ch 21:1 ); the Satan of Joshua, the high priest (Zec 2:1-5 ); the Satan of Jesus (Mat 4:1-11 ); the Satan of Peter (Luk 22:31 with 1Pe 5:8-9 ) ; the Satan of Paul (1Co 5:5 ; 2Co 12:7 ; Eph 6:11 ; Eph 6:16 ); the Satan of John (Rev 12:7-13 ), and the scene in 1Ki 22:19-23 , we find:

1. That the case of the Satan of Job is in harmony with the other cases of the Bible.

2. That when Satan is permitted to try men he is an agent of God.

3. That there are several scriptural names of him and that each one has its own meaning, thus:

(1) “Satan” which means adversary, suggesting that he is the adversary of God and his people.

(2) “Devil,” which means an accuser and slanderer; he is the cunning and malignant suspecter and accuser of the righteous; he accuses men to God and slanders God to men.

(3) “Apollyon,” which means “destroyer” and indicates the nature of his work.

(4) “Beelzebub” which means prince, or chieftain. He is the prince, or chief, of demons.

(5) “Dragon” which means serpent, and refers to his slimy work in the garden of Eden where he took the form of a serpent.

4. That his field of operation is restricted to the earth.

5. That he is limited in power.

6. That he must make stated reports to God.

7. That he can touch the righteous only by permission.

8. That he can touch them only in matters that try their faith.

9. That he cannot take them beyond the intercession of the High Priest.

10. That he cannot touch their lives.

11. That he cannot touch them except for their good, and therefore his trials of the righteous are included in the “all things” of Rom 8:28 .

12. That no philosophy which knows only the time life of men and natural causes can solve the problem of life.

QUESTIONS

1. What the natural divisions of the book, and what the relation of these parts to each other?

2. Give an analysis of the Prologue.

3. What the two scenes and the problem of the Prologue?

4. Describe the earth view,

5. What of the heaven view and its revelations?

6. What bearing has this Prologue on the chief object of the book, namely, to suggest the necessity of and to prepare the way for a wider revelation?

7. How is Satan’s power manifested here?

8. Show the cunning, malice, and cumulative power of Satan’s strokes.

9. Describe the scene of Job’s reception of this news.

10. Describe the second scene, in heaven.

11. What the further test of Job permitted to Satan?

12. How was Satan’s power on Job’s person manifested and yet hidden from Job?

13. Describe this disease and its effect on Job’s social relations.

14. Compare the law of Moses on the isolation and treatment of lepers.

15. Show their degradation and isolation in New Testament times, Christ’s sympathy for them, and his healing of them.

16. Give Ben Hur’s vivid description of leprosy in the case of his mother and sister and the substance of N. P. Willis’ poem on the leper.

17. What the counsel of Job’s wife and what Job’s reply?

18. Since Satan drops out of the story after the second trial, how do we know he is yet taking part?

19. What has Washington Irving (Sketch Book) to say on a wife’s influence in helping her husband to recover from a great misfortune?

20. In this sifting of Satan where does Job’s piety surpass that of Adam?

21. Where else, in the book of Job, does Job himself claim to be superior to Adam?

22. How does Satan further appear to be taking part?

23. How is the first problem, as suggested by Satan, solved?

24. What was the result of Satan’s three trials?

25. Give proofs from the book that a considerable time elapsed between the smiting with leprosy and the visit of the three friends, so stating in order the intervening events as to prepare the mind to understand the subsequent debates, and enable it to appreciate this man’s heroic fortitude and patience before he uttered a word of complaint.

26. What the last straw that broke down the fortitude of Job?

27. Give a summary of the Bible teaching relative to Satan.

Fuente: B.H. Carroll’s An Interpretation of the English Bible

Job 2:1 Again there was a day when the sons of God came to present themselves before the LORD, and Satan came also among them to present himself before the LORD.

Ver. 1. Again there was a day ] Whether the next day, or the next sabbath day, or the next first, day of the year (which is God’s day of general audit, as the Rabbis will have it), we have not to say. God, as he hath in his eternal counsel fore appointed everything that is done; so he hath set the times wherein, Ecc 3:1 , such as the creature can neither alter nor order. This is a comfortable consideration.

When the sons of God, &c. ] See Job 1:6 .

And Satan came also among them ] Whether summoned to give an account, or of his own accord to sue out a new commission against Job, it skilleth not. Restless he is; and it behoveth us to be vigilant; not ignorant of his wiles, nor unmindful of his inveterate envy and enmity.

Fuente: John Trapp’s Complete Commentary (Old and New Testaments)

Job Chapter 2

The next chapter (Job 2 ) brings the further trial. Satan came again; he had failed the first time; now he says ‘Ah! it is himself. He does not mind his family; he does mind himself a great deal. Himself is a nearer thing than all his property and all his children.’ There you have this untiring wicked one turning everything to malice and falsehood. I need not go into the details, but we have there the terrible effect. Now said he, ‘A man will do anything for self. Skin for skin. He may not mind this or that, however close it may be to him.’ The skin is, you know, just outside. ‘But only just touch his flesh and his bones; touch him thoroughly, to the quick, inside, and then see what all his piety will come to!’ And the Lord allowed it. Only, He said, ‘You must not kill him.’ If God had allowed Satan to kill him it would have put an end to all the trial. It was not at all that God forbade the killing to spare Job; it is exactly what Job would have liked; for he expresses his deep grief that he was not allowed to die. It was, he said, a terrible thing that he was allowed to be born, to come into all this. It he were born, why would not God allow him to die? That would be the greatest relief. He had fully the thought of going to be with God – no other. But it was God allowing all this tremendous trial, which was a picture of the most complete suffering and bitter agony and pain, night and day. And there he was, as people have presented him, on his ash heap; for he was scraping himself in this awful agony from head to foot.

Many of you know what it is to have a raging toothache; that is a very small thing comparatively – the tooth only. And yet many a one has found it very hard to bear, and has made tolerable outcry, and all the house, perhaps, has been troubled about that toothache. Well, think of this. It is not as if all the teeth were raging; that would be nothing, comparatively; it is not as if all the toes were troubled with gout, although that also is a thing very trying to bear; but the whole body from head to foot in every part of it; not an exception; the most tremendous disease known, among the diseases of a terrible character in the Eastern world. This most pious of men was allowed of God to come into it for the purpose of doing him far greater good than if he had never had any of these trials. That is what comes out in the Book. And, accordingly, even then Job did not sin. He had been even now not only marked by the greatest grace in his prosperity, but by the most exemplary patience in his adversity. If God had stopped there, there would have been no lesson at all, comparatively. It would only have turned to Job’s glory.

But there was something with God (now that all this had taken place) which Satan knew nothing about, which Satan had no idea of whatever; but God knew it. There was something in the heart of Job that needed to come out, and the object of that appears. We see God orders that three devoted friends of Job should come. They heard of it. In the Eastern world news spreads very fast, especially bad news. They all knew that something terrible had happened to their dear and respected friend Job, and from different parts of the country they appoint, and they come together simultaneously. And the awful plight of Job so struck them that they could do nothing but weep and rend their clothes, and sit upon the ground, as we are told, for seven days, with not a word to Job. They came there to console him; but they were so shocked that they began to allow in their hearts that Job must be guilty of something terrible. How was it possible that God would allow this if there were not some shocking sin that they knew nothing about!

There they were all wrong. But this very thing brought a great shame to Job. The lack of one word of pity; the lack of anything of consolation from his friends, brought out what very often happens. A man will bear grief and bow under it when he is alone, but when other persons come from whom he expects sympathy, who on the contrary show distrust – well, Job was quick enough to show that he could not stand that. Job then did not curse God. Oh, no, he did not then fall into what the devil thought he would do, but he cursed his own day, cursed his own lot. I do not say that that was proper; I do not say so, far from it. But still, that was the issue of this, that Job then opened his mouth After seven days of silence, seven days of utter stupefaction at the enormity of his sufferings on the part of his dearest friends! Well, we must not be surprised that he broke out.

Fuente: William Kelly Major Works (New Testament)

was = came to be.

a day = the fit, or usual.

the sons of God. See note on Job 1:6.

God. Hebrew. Elohim. App-4.

the LORD. Hebrew. Jehovah. App-4and App-23.

Satan = the Adversary.

Fuente: Companion Bible Notes, Appendices and Graphics

Chapter 2

So back again to the heavenly scene.

Another day and again the sons of God are presenting themselves before Jehovah, and Satan is coming with them to present himself before the LORD ( Job 2:1 ).

I have to say concerning Satan, I do… well, what do you say, admire? This guy has a lot of chutzpah. I mean, to go in and stand before God, to present himself before God takes quite a bit.

And God again said, [Hey,] where have you been? ( Job 2:2 )

As though God doesn’t know.

He said, [Oh, I’ve been messing around down] in the earth going to and fro, walking up and down in it. God said, [Hey,] have you considered my servant Job? Good man. He’s upright. He loves good; he hates evil ( Job 2:2-3 ).

Satan, having failed the first philosophy of Job proving to be false, had his second philosophy. Now in the second philosophy, Satan shows his cunning understanding of human nature, because the psychologists tell us that one of man’s strongest, most basic instincts is that of self-preservation. It’s probably the strongest instinct that you have – self-preservation. And so Satan recognizing this to be true said,

Skin for skin, all that a man has will he give for his life ( Job 2:4 ).

“You put limitations on what I could do to him. You didn’t let me touch him. Now you let me get at him and he’ll curse You to Your face.” So God said, “All right, you may touch him, but spare his life.” Again, God placing the restrictions and limitations upon that which Satan can do.

Now I believe that God does place upon Satan the limitations. The Bible says that God will not allow you to be tempted beyond what you are able to bear. You see, God has put the limitations. Satan didn’t go so far but God says, “All right, that’s as far as you go.” Now as far as I’m concerned, God lets him go too far. I would just as soon God bottled the guy up and ship him off into outer space somewhere. But yet, he is acting really under the government of God, because God places the restrictions and the limitations upon what he can do.

Brings up a problem. If God does control Satan, then why doesn’t God bottle him up and ship him out of the universe? If God one day is going to cast him and his followers into this place scripturally that is known as Gehenna, into outer darkness, then why doesn’t God do it now and save us all the miseries? Why does Satan have the liberties that God has granted to him? The power that God has granted to him. Why did God allow him to come into the Garden of Eden? Why does God allow him the freedom to war against us? It’s all involved in why did God create you?

God created you in order that He might have an object to love and from which He might receive love. Now, in order to receive meaningful love it has to be a free will involved. You cannot be a robot. You’ve got to have a free will, the capacity and power of choice in order that your love for God might truly be a meaningful love. And thus, God gave us the capacity of choice, the free will. But what value is that unless there’s something to choose? To have the power of choice and yet nothing to choose would be totally meaningless. So God not only had to create us with the capacity of choice, but He had to allow the opportunity of an alternate choice. And thus, Satan was allowed to rebel against God. And he was allowed to come to man and to offer man an alternate choice in order that if man chose at that point to love God, God would know that the choice was from the heart and it was meaningful and God could then receive praise and glory from the meaningful love that was expressed to Him. Taking a chance man might make the wrong choice. You might be disappointed; you’re heartbroken. Such was the case.

But God did know that down through the years there would be those who would make the right choice. And for the treasure of having the love of those who would choose to love Him and serve Him, He allowed the choice knowing that many would make the wrong choice but yet also knowing that there would be those who would choose to love Him and would express their love for Him, and He could come into a meaningful relationship of love and fellowship with those who chose to know Him and to follow Him and to love Him.

So the choice is still there and Satan is still operating in order to encourage you to take the alternate choice. But the fact that you resist the devil and the temptations and the seductions and the allurements and the enticements and those things that he seeks to place in your path to cause you to turn away from God and the Word of God and the law of God, and to follow after your own lust and desires. The fact that you resist those temptations and you still love God, and you gather and you worship God and you sing together of your love and your praise, and you spend your time in meditation in His Word and just in fellowship with Him, that fellowship is extremely meaningful, because God knows you don’t have to. But it’s coming from your heart. And for that reason, God created man and God has allowed the whole mess to exist in order that there might be at least within it those who would love Him with a sincere love. You don’t have to love God. You don’t have to serve God. There are very attractive alternate decisions, but man must make his choice and God is honored when man makes the right choice.

Now, Satan then is a tool that God uses. God has placed him under certain restrictions and still there are restrictions. However, Job is now afflicted with boils all over his body, running sores. He takes a piece of broken pottery and scrapes his body. Extremely painful, stinky, loathsome. Covered. He sits in a bed of ashes, because it’s impossible to sit down or lie down anywhere without the extreme pain of this staff-type infection that covered his entire body. And his wife coming near to him, smelling the foul odors, seeing the pain and the suffering and the misery of a man who has been reduced to this, said to her husband, “Why don’t you get it over with? Why don’t you curse God and die?” Now that came from a heart of love. It hurt her to see her husband in such total misery. “Job, I can’t stand to see you like this. Why don’t you get it over with? Why don’t you curse God and die?”

But he said unto her, You speak as one of the foolish women speaks. Shall we receive only good from the hand of God, and shall we not receive evil? In all of this did not Job sin with his lips. Now there were three friends who, when they heard of the misery of Job, decided that they would come and visit with him; Eliphaz [who was from Teman] the Temanite, Bildad the Shuhite, and Zophar the Naamathite: and they had made an appointment to gather together and to mourn with him, and to comfort him ( Job 2:10-11 ).

When they saw him, they didn’t recognize him. They were just so shocked that they just began to weep; they tore their clothes and they just sat down weeping.

And for seven days and for seven nights, they sat there, and no one said a word to him: because their grief was extremely great ( Job 2:13 ). “

Fuente: Through the Bible Commentary

Job 2:1-6

Job 2

HAVING FAILED IN HIS FIRST TRIAL OF JOB; SATAN TRIES AGAIN

GOD AGAIN GRANTED SATAN PERMISSION TO AFFLICT JOB

Job 2:1-6

“Again it came to pass on the day when the sons of God came to present themselves before Jehovah, that Satan came also among them to present himself before Jehovah. And Jehovah said unto Satan, From whence comest thou? And Satan answered Jehovah, and said, From going to and from in the earth, and from walking up and down in it. And Jehovah said unto Satan, Hast thou considered my servant Job, for there is none like him in the earth, a perfect and an upright man, one that feareth God, and turneth away from evil: and he still holdest fast his integrity, although thou movedst me against him, to destroy him without cause. And Satan answered Jehovah, and said, Skin for skin, yea, all that a man hath will he give for his life. But put forth thy hand now, and touch his bone and his flesh, and he will renounce thee to thy face. And Jehovah said unto Satan, Behold, he is in thy hand; only spare his life.”

This paragraph is virtually identical with the first paragraph of Job 1; and our exegesis of that paragraph applies equally here. The sons of God are not “the angels.” We believe that the Holy Spirit knew the word angels; and that if he had meant angels here he would thus have designated them. All that Christians do upon earth is done “before the Lord.” The usual meaning of “sons of God” is simply, “men who worship God” (Rom 8:14).

“Skin for skin” (Job 2:4). “There is a riddle here. No one knows for sure the meaning of this cryptic proverb. None of the scholarly guesses we have read is worth repeating. Whatever it means, Satan’s allegation is clear enough. He still believed that if Job’s body was tortured, he would renounce God. The bitter hatred of all men by Satan is starkly revealed.

“Put forth thy hand now, and touch his bone and his flesh” (Job 2:6). This was Satan’s request; and God had already stated that in the previous trial Satan had “Moved God against Job without cause” (Job 2:3), thus establishing the truth that whatever God allows, God does, in the Biblical sense. “And again it is Satan who is the agent; and God gave him authority to do as he pleased with Job, short of taking his life.”

“Only spare his life” (Job 2:6). “If God did not chain up the roaring lion, how soon would he devour us!”[3]

E.M. Zerr:

Job 2:1-2. This meeting and conversation were like that in Job 1:6-7. The student is requested to read the comments at that place for explanation of this.

Job 2:3. The Lord again called attention to the character of Job. We should observe carefully the description of this righteous man, for it was said of very few other men, if it was said of any other. The outstanding characteristics were that he was perfect, upright, feareth God and escheweth (avoideth) evil. Strong defines the original for integrity, as “innocence.” Without cause is an expression that comes from one Hebrew word, which is CHINNAM. Strong defines it, “gratis, i. e. devoid of cost, reason or advantage.” The word has been translated in the Authorized Yession, as nought 6 times, as nothing 1, in vain 2, without wages 1, and others. The idea is that no reason had existed for afflicting Job before, neither would God reap any personal profit from it were he to afflict him now.

Job 2:4. The answer of Satan was practically the same in thought as the first one. Skin for skin is a figure of speech, using the word “skin” in two senses. That is, it is used in the first instance to represent his skin in the natural sense, and in the second to represent his life or existence. When we would say that a man would give his very hide (skin) for a certain thing, we mean he would give the last item he possessed for that thing. And so Satan meant that a man would give up his last bit of belonging if he could only retain his life. That Job would be willing to lose all of those possessions outside of his body, if by so doing he could retain his hold on the favor of God and still live.

Job 2:5. On the basis of the above reasoning, Satan challenged God to threaten the life or health of Job, and then Job would curse God to his face.

Job 2:6. In the first instance God gave Satan full power over the interests of Job outside of his body. This time he extended his power to the region of his body, but with the restriction that he must not cause his death.

Fuente: Old and New Testaments Restoration Commentary

Again the solemn council met, and again Satan was present. The Most High uttered the same estimate of His servant as before, adding thereto a declaration of Job’s victory in the conflict which had taken place. The adversary declared that the limits which God had set had hindered him in the accomplishment of his purpose. Though Job had triumphed over his loss of possession, he was not therefore proven loyal to God. The essential greatness of the man was unimpaired in that his own life had not been touched by weakness. Let him but feel there, and renunciation of God would immediately ensue. It is the devil’s perpetual estimate of humanity that flesh is supreme. Once again he was permitted to prove his slander, but again the divine limit was set to the sphere of his operation.

The enemy went forth on his terrible work, and immediately we are presented with the awful picture of the man of God weakened in his personality by the unutterable misery of physical affliction. To this was now added the new and subtle attack of the sympathy of his wife. Her love, utterly misguided it is true, counseled that he die by renouncing God. His answer was characterized by tenderness toward her, and yet by unswerving loyalty to God.

Here the adversary passes out of sight. He has done his dire and dreadful work. His slander is manifestly a lie. The darkest days of all for Job now began. There is a stimulus in the clash of catastrophe. The very shock and surprise of the strokes create strength in which men triumph. It is in the brooding silence which enwraps the soul afterward that the fiercest fight is waged. To that the patriarch now passed. These verses tell the story of the coming of his friends. There were only three of them, joined presently, perchance, by another, when Elihu came on the scene. While it is true that Job suffered more at the hands of these friends ultimately than by the attacks of the foe, yet some recognition must be made of the goodness of the men. They were admirable, first, because they came at all. Even more were they to be admired because they sat in silence with him for seven days and nights. In overwhelming sorrows, true friendship almost invariably demonstrates itself more perfectly by silence than by speech. And even in spite of the fact that Job’s friends caused him sorrow by their words, they are more to be admired because what they thought concerning him they dared to say to him, rather than about him to others.

Fuente: An Exposition on the Whole Bible

Among the Ashes

Job 2:1-13

It gives God deep pleasure when He can point to one of His servants who has borne fiery trial with unwavering patience and faith. The adversary comes back from his restless, ceaseless rounds, 1Pe 5:8; but there is one soul at least which has resisted his worst attacks. Observing Job, the principalities and powers in the heavenly places have learned that God can make a man love Him, not for His gifts, but for Himself, Eph 3:10.

The adversary suggests a severe test, and God permits it because he knows His child. A limit, however, is put upon the ordeal, 1Co 10:13, r.v. The story is very comforting, because we see that we are not the sport of chance, but in every detail our education is being carried out by our Fathers hand. Our dearest friends may advise us to renounce God and die, but in Gethsemane our Lord taught us to take the Fathers will at all costs-though it seem to spell death-sure that he will not leave us in the grave, Psa 16:10.

Fuente: F.B. Meyer’s Through the Bible Commentary

Job 2:6

The book of Job is not a poem for the solitary Jew, but a message for man as man all the world over and through all the ages of time.

I. This is palpable and unquestionable as soon as the special motive for Job’s fierce trial is seen. The perfect man, who hates evil and loves right, is left in the hands of Satan by God; and Satan is told that he may do what he pleases with him, only he must spare his life. The permission has no other limit, and the fierce malignity of the devil may be trusted to go as close to the boundary as he can get. But wherefore this permission at all? For what reason does God part with His servant out of His power?

II. Satan challenges the ability of God to attract the confidence and inspire the reverent and hearty devotion of men. The case is crucial. The test is faultless. The experiment is carried to the maximum of severity. No element of evil is omitted. It is the pattern man of the world delivered over to the lord of misrule and wrong. Three times Job is victorious.

The pay goes, and still he serves. Life itself is one agony, but still that agony is a cry to God, “My God, my God!” He loses everything, and would like to lose life itself, but not even death and the grave prevent his exclaiming, “Yet from my flesh shall I see God, my Redeemer and Vindicator.”

III. Thus the false and diabolical conception of God is beaten off the field, and the idea remains triumphant that God is lovable in Himself and for Himself, and irrespective of the plenty of His providence and the bounty of His reign. Yea more, He is lovable notwithstanding fearful evils in our lot and in the world. Disinterested love of the Eternal is its own reward. Love of the All-pure and All-perfect is a sufficient heaven for the soul God has made for Himself and fills with Himself.

J. Clifford, Daily Strength for Daily Living, p. 285.

References: Job 2:9.-G. Sexton, “Homilist,” Excelsior Series, vol. vii., p. 145. Job 2:10.-Preacher’s Monthly, vol. iv., p. 24. Job 2:11.-G. Dawson, Sermons on Daily Life and Duty, p. 225. Job 2:13.-R. Glover, Homiletic Magazine, vol. x., p. 106.

Fuente: The Sermon Bible

CHAPTER 2:1-10

1. Jehovahs second challenge and Satans answer (Job 2:1-6)

2. Job stricken (Job 2:7-8)

3. Jobs wife, Jobs answer and victory (Job 2:9-10)

Job 2:1-6. Once more the sons of God, and Satan among them, present themselves before the Lord. It must have been immediately after Jobs afflictions had come upon him. Probably the Lord called the assembly. The victory is on the Lords side. Satan is defeated and his defeat is known to the heavenly hosts, who undoubtedly watched the tragedies which had been enacted on earth and who, with joy, had listened to Jobs marvellous words. Triumphantly the Lord said to Satan, And still he holdeth fast his integrity, although thou movedst me against him, to destroy him without cause. Then comes Satans sneer. He has not given up hope. Skin for skin, yea, all that a man hath will he give for his life. But put forth Thine hand now and touch his bone and his flesh, and he will renounce thee to thy face. This is bold and horrible language; it shows Satans knowledge of human nature. And God tells Satan, Behold, he is in thine hands. What an evidence that Satan can do nothing against the saints of God without His permission. What a comfort this is! Satan is absolutely under the control of God. And if God permits him to do his evil work, he judiciously designs, Gods own love and power are on the side of His afflicted people; His own gracious faithfulness will be demonstrated in the trial. The suffering saints still learn the lesson which Job had to learn, his own nothingness, and that God is all in all. But there is a gracious restriction. The Lord said, Only spare his life. Satan might sift Job; his life he could not touch, for the lives of Gods people are in the hand of the Lord.

Job 2:6-8. Satan does not delay long. He carries out his commission and useth his power to the utmost. He smote him with sore boils from the sole of his foot unto his crown. What was the disease? It may have been the disease known as Elephantiasis, a disease of a horrible nature. Other diseases are mentioned also which correspond with the symptoms given in the brief description. The symptoms given agree better with those of the Biskra sores, an oriental disease, endemic along the southern shores of the Mediterranean and in Mesopotamia. It begins in the form of papular spots, which ulcerate and become covered with crusts, which are itchy and burning sores (Professor Macalister). It must have been the most loathsome disease Satan could think of.

And he took him a potsherd to scrape himself; and he sat among the ashes. What a sad transformation! The great eastern emir, who erstwhile was so rich and influential, stripped of all his possessions, reduced to the most abject poverty, afflicted with a vile and extremely painful disease, takes his place upon the dunghill, amidst the ashes of the burnt refuse. He considers himself an outcast, unfit for a human dwelling.

Job 2:9-10. Then his wife makes her only appearing in this drama. She is seen but once and only once she speaks. She must have followed him with weeping and wailing outside to the ash-heap. And now she speaks, but not of herself. Satan uses her as his instrument. He speaks through her. Dost thou still retain thine integrity? Renounce God and die. That is exactly what Satan had spoken in Gods presence, that Job would do this very thing. And now he uses the woman to suggest suicide to Job.

But noble is the answer of the afflicted saint of God. He detects in her language impiety–thou speaketh as one of the impious (this is the meaning of foolish) women speaketh. Only those who do not know God can speak as you have spoken, is the meaning of his rebuke. What? shall we receive good at the hand of God, and shall we not receive evil? The power of God it was which produced such wonderful submission. His grace enabled him to pass through it all without sinning. What a record! in all this did not Job sin with his lips! Satans defeat is complete. His mouth is stopped. If he appears again before Jehovah he must stand in silence; the last word does not belong to him, but to God. And so is coming the day when Satans defeat is complete, when he will be completely bruised under the feet of Gods people.

Fuente: Gaebelein’s Annotated Bible (Commentary)

Satan

See Job 2:2; Job 2:3; Job 2:6; Job 2:7; Psa 109:6; Gen 3:1; Rev 20:10.

Fuente: Scofield Reference Bible Notes

Again: Job 1:6, Isa 6:1, Isa 6:2, Luk 1:19, Heb 1:14

Reciprocal: Deu 31:14 – presented 1Ki 22:19 – all the host 1Ki 22:21 – General 1Ch 21:1 – Satan 2Ch 18:20 – there came Job 38:7 – the sons Zec 1:10 – These Zec 3:1 – Satan Zec 6:5 – go Zec 6:7 – the bay Mat 4:10 – Satan Rev 12:9 – and Satan Rev 20:2 – the dragon

Fuente: The Treasury of Scripture Knowledge

Heaven’s Controversy Concerning Job

Job 2:1-9

INTRODUCTORY WORDS

1. God’s everlasting eye watches over His children. When Satan made his second entrance into the presence of God, he discovered that the Lord had observed the fidelity of His servant, that His eye was upon him, and that He still had nothing but endorsement for His servant.

Before we take up the results of Satan’s second challenge to God concerning Job’s fidelity, we wish to carry you into the consideration of God’s all-seeing eye, and of His watch care for His children.

Many of David’s Psalms give us some light on this matter. They suggest what Scripture teaches, that God has searched us and known us, that He even understands our thoughts afar off. He compasseth our path and our lying down, and is acquainted with all our ways. He even knows every word that is upon our tongue. He besets us behind and before.

We do not marvel that the Psalmist cried out, “Such knowledge is too wonderful for me.”

2. We need to remember, however, that God watches over us for our good. God’s eye runs to and fro throughout the whole earth to show Himself strong in behalf of those whose heart is perfect toward Him. Great has been His faithfulness for His children. It is renewed every morning, and fresh every evening. He never forgets His own. He has said, “I will never leave thee, nor forsake thee.” He takes us by His right hand, saying, “I will help thee.”

He who imagines that God delights in leading His own into trying circumstances and heart-rending conditions has no conception of the heart of God. If, as in the case of Job, God permits Satan for the while to seemingly triumph, it will not be but for a little while. The end of the Lord with Job was the same as the end of the Lord with all of His saints-it brought a realization of God’s tender mercies, and bountiful provision.

3. In the hour of travail and of trial, we must, therefore, trust in the Lord. Solomon has said, “Trust in the Lord with all thine heart; and lean not unto thine own understanding.” We need to spell the word “disappointment” as “His appointment.”

Let us remember how the saints of old passed uncomplainingly through flood and fire with unwavering trust. They quenched the violence of fire, escaped the edge of the sword, out of weakness were made strong, waxed valiant in fight, turnd to flight the army of the aliens.

Among the women there were those who received their dead raised to life again. There were others who did not accept deliverance; desiring to obtain a better resurrection. They “had trial of cruel mockings and scourgings, yea, moreover of bonds and imprisonment: they were stoned, they were sawn asunder, were tempted, were slain with the sword: they wandered about in sheepskins and goatskins; being destitute, afflicted, tormented.”

As we think of these, and their wonderful faith, and how God, through their trials, led them on to a larger and an eternal reward, we need not marvel at the afflictions of Job.

I. THE LORD’S SECOND COMMENDATION OF JOB (Job 2:1-3)

1. Satan’s second presentation. We may not grasp the full meaning of Satan’s access to the presence of the Lord. Of one thing, however, we may assure ourselves,-Satan was not chained in hell, nor cast into the pit of the abyss in Job’s day; neither is he now in confinement. He is still the same loose devil, whom Peter, in Spirit, describes as going “about, seeking whom he may devour.”

Satan may once, long before man’s day, have dwelt in the presence of God; however, he was cast out, and if he ever has audience with the Lord, it is only when the Lord, in His purposes, so permits.

2. The Lord’s second endorsement of Job. The Lord said to Satan, “Hast thou considered My servant Job, that there is none like him in the earth, a perfect and an upright man, one that feareth God, and escheweth evil?”

Let us pause a moment. Is there any greater joy that could come to the heart of a servant of the Lord, than to know that he stands approved before the Lord? Our greatest boon is to hear His, “Well done, thou good and faithful servant.” If God be for us, who can be against us? If God commends us, what care we for all of the maledictions of men or demons?

II. THE LORD’S SUMMING UP OF THE FIRST ASSAULT ON JOB (Job 2:3, l.c.)

The last clause of our key verse reads, “And still he (Job) holdeth fast his integrity, although thou movedst Me against him, to destroy him without cause.”

1. The overcoming Job. In the last verse of the first chapter is our first statement concerning Job’s victory under Satan’s first attempt.

(1) Job sinned not. This is the way the Scripture reads, “In all this Job sinned not.” It was no small testing, the loss of all of his riches, and the loss of his seven sons and three daughters. Yet, Job sinned not.

(2) Job did not charge God foolishly. We must remember that our key verse says that God moved against him without cause. Yet, Job did not charge God, nor complain against God because of his reverses.

The women came to the sepulcher while it was yet dark. Job trusted God in the darkness. Trusted where he could not understand; believed where he could not see.

2. The immovable Job. Job still held fast his integrity. Like the rock of Gibraltar he stood staunch and true in his faithfulness. He had iron in his blood. He proved himself an iron pillar, and a stone wall against all of Satan’s onslaughts.

III. SATAN’S SECOND CHALLENGE (Job 2:4-5)

Satan was forced to admit that Job had remained true with his possessions taken away, and his children slain. But now Satan says, “Skin for skin, yea, all that a man hath will he give for his life. But put forth Thine hand now, and touch his bone and his flesh, and he will curse Thee to Thy face.”

Being routed in his first challenge Satan seeks another mode of attack. He has been forced to admit that Job did not serve God because of his temporal blessings with which God had surrounded him. Therefore, He challenges God from a second angle.

Fox’s book of Martyrs gives abundant proof that God’s children are willing to suffer. Some of them may suffer with tears, but many will suffer with a song.

Paul and Silas, with beaten backs, lying prostrate upon the ground, sang praises unto God. Some of the most beautiful of saints are the most afflicted.

IV. GOD’S WILLINGNESS TO ACCEPT SATAN’S CHALLENGE (Job 2:6)

1. God permitted Satan to touch Job’s body in order to prove Job’s sincerity. The Lord knoweth what is in man. He knoweth the weaknesses of the flesh, and He also knows the strength of the Spirit. Our God does not believe that His children are a group of molly coddles, weak-kneed, and easily overcome.

From the beginning saints have proved themselves impervious to Satan’s fiercest attacks, under any and every condition. Men who have known God, and have trusted in Him, have honored God, honored His grace, honored the character, the integrity, and the strength of the new man in them, which was begotten in righteousness and true holiness. In innumerable cases God has accepted Satan’s challenge of verse five, and has proved Satan a liar.

2. God permitted Satan to touch Job’s body in order to strengthen Job’s character, and to develop his spiritual life.

While God had said there was no one like Job on the earth, yet, that meant by no means that Job, in all things, was what he might have been.

The result of this second test, like the first, proved a benefaction to Job. He came out of the fire purified and made white.

Where is he who doubts that David’s experience under Saul’s cruel dealings, did not make him the stronger, better man?

Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, in the burning fiery furnace; Daniel, in the lion’s den; Jonah swallowed of the whale; each received a blessing through their trials.

3. God permitted Satan to touch Job’s body in order to give to succeeding generations the inspiration of Job’s all-glorious faith. Chapter eleven of Hebrews recounts the victories of faith wrought out through almost inconceivable difficulties and trials.

Chapter twelve of Hebrews tells us that we, seeing we are compassed about with so great a cloud of witnesses, should run the race which is set before us.

Among the valiant men who look down upon us, as we meet the tribulations of these last days, is Job.

Let us, therefore, run the race that is set before us with renewed courage, looking unto Jesus the Author and Finisher of our faith, and the file Leader of all those who endure.

V. THE LORD’S LIMITATIONS ON SATAN (Job 2:6)

The Lord said unto Satan, “Behold, he is in thine hand; but save his life.”

1. Satan’s operations against the saints are always circumscribed. God seems to say, “So far shalt thou go, but no farther.” If Satan had full sway against the saints, he could annihilate them from the face of the earth.

Our security against Satan’s strategies lies not in our own strength, but in Christ’s. We are made more than conquerors through Him.

A little child, hearing the soldiers fighting in the street, cried out in fear, until her big brother put his back against the door and said, “Now, they cannot get you, because I am here.”

2. Satan’s operations against the saints are without mercy. The wicked one was not content merely with robbing Job of his family and his wealth, he wanted also to attack Job personally in his body.

Those who follow Satan are following a cruel master. Think of the woman bent double with disease, whom Satan had bound for eighteen years. Consider the man of Gadara, dwelling among the tombs; the demoniac whom no man could tame, driven of Satan.

Even the Lord Jesus, when He came into the hour of darkness where Satan held sway, found no pity and no remorse with Satan.

VI. SATAN SMITING JOB’S BODY (Job 2:7)

Our verse says that Satan went forth from the presence of the Lord, and smote Job with sore boils from the sole of his foot unto his crown.

1. Satan as the author of physical ailments and deformities. We must keep before us constantly, in the study of Job, this positively stated fact, that Satan smote Job with boils.

There are various reasons to which sickness and physical infirmities may be traced.

(1) One may be sick from natural causes, such as improper diet, the drinking of impure and tainted water, the breathing in of diseased germs, the abuse of the laws of hygiene and of sanitation. The majority of diseases doubtless come from these causes.

(2) One may be sick because of Divine chastisement. “Whom the Lord loveth He chasteneth,” and that chastening may at times take the form of physical suffering.

(3) One may be sick because of Satan’s attack. There are various incidents of this in the Word of God.

Job’s physical plight was due to our third reason. Job was not sick because God was chastening him; for God distinctively said to Satan, “Thou movest Me against him, to destroy him without cause.”

Job, however, while he complained at times because of physical oppression, and while he doubted, he never was reproved by the Lord for misrepresenting Deity.

There are abroad, many who still contend that every sickness and every human ill befalling the children of God is due to their sinning, and is a result of Divine chastisement. Not so with Job.

2. Satan in the case of Job gave him the worst of all physical ills. We may not be right, but we can imagine nothing harder to bear than boils from the sole of the foot to the crown of the head. One boil is more than enough for most people, but a body covered with boils is unbearable.

Job was not only in physical pain, but he was greatly embarrassed. He sat down among the ashes, and took him a potsherd to scrape himself withal.

VII. JOB’S PHYSICAL ANGUISH IS SUGGESTIVE TO US OF THE SAVIOUR’S SUFFERING ON CALVARY (Psa 22:14-15)

1. The Lord Jesus, like Job, was in terrible physical anguish. The Bible says that His face was more marred than any man, and His form more than the sons of men. Remember the crown of thorns that had been beaten down into the brow of the Lord. Remember the back that had been lacerated with stripes at the whipping-post. Remember the nail-pierced hands and feet, the unnatural position, the inflamed wounds, and the exposed nerves.

2. The Lord Jesus, like Job, was surrounded by accusers. In the case of Job, his own wife said unto him, “Curse God, and die.” His three supposed friends did nothing but berate him, criticize, and condemn him.

The Lord Jesus was betrayed with a kiss by His own familiar friend. His own disciples forsook Him and fled. The people of His own race to whom He had come with hands outstretched with blessings, surrounded the Cross, and like maddening bulls and hungry dogs, cried out against Him.

AN ILLUSTRATION

Satan could not touch Job against God’s wilt. As God protected Job during his testings, and preserved him unto a final fruitfulness, so has He kept His people Israel during twenty-three hundred years of wandering.

“Anti-Semitism will never destroy the Jew. Attacked and persecuted as no other nation ever has been or will be, Israel survives and always will survive. ‘Hath God cast away His people? God forbid. Although scattered among the nations, Israel has never been assimilated by the nations; this is a miraculous part of her history, God predicted it in the words: ‘The people shall dwell alone, and shall not be reckoned among the nations,’ although Jehovah ‘shall scatter thee among all people, from the one end of the earth even unto the other.’ This word from Moses went on. to declare that ‘among these nations shalt thou find no ease, neither shall the sole of thy foot have rest: but the Lord shall give thee there a trembling heart, and failing of eyes, and sorrow of mind: and thy life shall hang in doubt before thee: and thou shalt fear day and night, and shalt have none assurance of thy life: in the morning thou shalt say, Would God it were even! and at even thou shalt say, Would God it were morning! for the fear of thine heart wherewith thou shalt fear.’

“Yet, as a well-known Bible teacher has said: ‘Destroy Israel? You might as well try to destroy God Himself. His Word cannot be broken. He is preserving His gainsaying and disobedient people for His own purpose. Who shall hinder Him?'”

Fuente: Neighbour’s Wells of Living Water

Job 2:1. Again there was a day Another appointed season, some convenient time after the former calamities. Heath translates , vajehi hajom, Again it was the day. Of this and the two next verses, see notes on Job 1:6-8.

Fuente: Joseph Bensons Commentary on the Old and New Testaments

Job 2:1. There was a day when the sons of God &c. As on the former chapter, Job 2:6.

Job 2:4. Skin for skin. Septuagint, skin after skin. Mens riches in the first periods of society very much consisted in cattle and skins; and the honest man would sooner give up his skins to the Arabian robbers than his life. But as the Hebrew language labours under many difficulties from the bearing of its prepositions, those who follow the LXX, skin after skin, make the sense to be, that providence takes away our dearest comforts, as cattle and children, by a succession of strokes. This phrase being so antique, marks the antiquity of the book.

Job 2:9. Curse God and die. barack, to bless, to curse, to devote, to blaspheme. The word is used by the witnesses against Naboth: we heard him blaspheme God and the king. The sense determines that the English reading is correct, and that the French reading, Bless God and die, is an erroneous acceptation of the word.

Job 2:11. Eliphaz the Temanite. The LXX read, king of the Thaimanites. See on Gen 36:4.Bildad the Shuhite. The LXX read, tyrant, which in a good sense, as used here, signifies governor of the Shuhites. Zophar the Naamathite. The LXX call him also king, as Job was king in the host: Job 29:25. These four persons were all kings or chiefs in their respective cities.

Job 2:12. They rent every one his mantle, and sprinkled dust upon their heads. So the ancients expressed their grief in the strongest characters. The poets abound with examples of this sort. When Nestors illustrious son told Achilles, that Patrocles lay among the slain; at once on the chief, a dark cloud of sorrow arose. He raised the ashes in both his hands; poured them profusely on his head, and disfigured his face. To his garments divine, the dark dust copiously adhered. He covered a wide space on the earth, and as he lay rolling, he tore his heavy locks with his hands.Iliad 18:22. Macpherson.

Job 2:13. Seven days, the usual time of mourning for the dead. Not only Jobs children, but most of his servants were slain. These men, following custom, opened not their conversations till the time of decency was past. Gen 50:10. 1Sa 31:13. Eschylus, in his description of parental sorrows, represents Niob, as sitting three days together disconsolately upon the tomb of her children, and observing a profound silence.

REFLECTIONS.

We have here a view of the restless malice of our common foe, and constant accuser. He never ceases to tempt and vex a soul till it has reached the peaceful shores of eternity. In a second assembly, though vanquished in all his efforts, he yet persists in all his lies, and avers that Job was but partially tried; that his body remained untouched, and that a stroke at his flesh would make him abjure his God. Satan having obtained a power over his body, smote him with boils, painful as they were noisome. Thus good men, especially those who are signally honoured of providence, must expect affliction. One has his family trials, another his thorn in the flesh.

Satan having afflicted the body of Job with disease, thence took occasion to tempt his soul to sin. A thousand injections would be whispered in his ear, that God had used him ill, and laid upon him an unfair proportion of affliction. His wife, the only comfort left, was so managed, that she spake aloud what Satan had suggested, urging him to view his affliction in a wrong light, and abandon himself with execrations to entire despair and death. Thus on some occasions the common enemy makes a grand effort to destroy the soul.

From Jobs reply to his wife we learn, that when tempted to sin, we are not simply to refuse assent, as though the dire suggestion came from a mistaken friend; we should turn away from it with horror and detestation. Jesus said even to Peter, who thought to speak for his masters good, Get thee behind me, Satan. Jobs three friends, through a mistake, as we shall see at large, Satan managed to the same effect. Let us beware of entertaining hard thoughts of God. Why should we complain of afflictions, seeing we have deserved banishment from the Lord? Let faith aid us when reason fails: the Lord has some good design in view which the narrower limits of reason are unable to penetrate.

From the kind visits of Jobs three friends, who, foregoing their many cares at home, came unsolicited to share his affliction, we learn an important duty to afflicted friends. If we cannot restore the dead to life, or give ease in pain, we may lend an attentive ear, while the afflicted ease their hearts of grief; for grief, like streams of water, seems diminished by being divided. But we may do more; we may urge the promises of divine support, for the faith which alone supports in affliction is best nourished by truth, and most emboldened by heroic example. A full persuasion that, in one way or other, God will bring us well through, is to anticipate the victory, and rejoice in hope of the glory that shall follow.

Fuente: Sutcliffe’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments

Job 2:1-10. The Narrative of the Second Conversation between Yahweh and the Satan and its Issues.Again the heavenly council comes together, and Yahweh reproaches the Satan with instigating Him to bring undeserved affliction on Job. The terrible trial has been shown to be unnecessary. Job still holds fast his integrity. Satans answer is ready. He speaks impudently, using a common proverb, the origin of which, however, we do not know. Perhaps, says Duhm, the Bedouin may have threatened the shepherd, that he should pay with his own skin, if the cattle he tended were lost. The meaning is, as the second part of the sentence shows: nothing is more precious than life. What the Satan would say then is: the wager is not lost yet, the trial did not touch Job near enough. His goods, his children indeed have been touched, but that is not enough. His life has been spared. Yahweh consequently permits the Satan further to afflict Job, and this time personally. But He still makes the reservation that his life be spared, which indeed is necessary, as his death would make the trial useless The malicious craft of the Satan is seen in the stroke with which he afflicts Job, the kind of leprosy known as elephantiasis, the symptoms of which are frequently mentioned in the poem. (This is the usual identification of Jobs disease; others are the Oriental sore (Macalister in HDB, iii. p. 330) and ecthyma (see Peakes Commentary, p. 66)). Leprosy is a disease from which no recovery is to be expected, which therefore cuts off from Job even the possibility of hope for the return of happiness. Thus the test of Jobs piety is made absolute. If he still holds on, it can only be because his service of God is purely disinterestedevery motive of interest has been removed. Note too that the Satan in his malice anticipates the usual course of the leprosy, which is normally gradual in its development, breaking out first in one point only, and by degrees spreading over the body. Job is smitten at once from the sole of his foot to the crown of his head (Job 2:7). As a leper, he is driven forth from men; and his sole refuge is the village dunghill or refuse heap, the only resting-place of outcasts, who, stricken with some loathsome disease, are excluded from the dwellings of men. We now see how the natural man would behave under Jobs misfortune. This is exemplified by the behaviour of his wife. Her advice means that an instantaneous death as the result of blasphemy would be a less evil than Jobs perpetual torment. She is not a godless woman, but hopelessly embittered by Jobs misfortunes. Her religion is just what the Satan said Jobs was, a fair-weather religion only. Compare Mr. By-ends in the Pilgrims Progress. Tis true we differ in religion from those of the strict sort, yet but in one or two small points: (1) we never strive against wind and tide, (2) we are always most zealous when religion goes in his silver slippers: we love most to walk with him in the street, if the sun shines and the people applaud him.

Job 2:10. Jobs answer: Foolish means godless because of thoughtlessness. Job bows before the absoluteness of God: he recites again the creed of Oriental piety (cf. Job 1:21-22). Job stands where he was before.

Fuente: Peake’s Commentary on the Bible

SATAN INFLICTS BODILY SUFFERING ON HIM

(vv.1-10),

Another day comes when Satan presents himself to God among the sons of God, and his response to God’s first question was the same as in Chapter 1. Then God faces him with the fact that Job had not done what Satan said he would if deprived of his possessions (v.3). Certainly Satan ought to have acknowledged he had been wrong and to have apologised for his manifest error. But Satan is like too many people. Instead of admitting wrong, they want to bolster their pride by introducing another possibility which is just as faulty as Satan’s first claim.

Satan’s words, “Skin for skin! Yes, all that a man has he will give for his life” are sadly true of an unbeliever, but faith is something that Satan does not understand. He confidently asserted that if God would afflict Job bodily, Job would surely curse God to His face (vv.4-5).

Therefore God gave Satan permission to do as he pleased in afflicting Job’s body, while sparing his life (v.6). It may seem heartless on God’s part to give Satan such permission, but God’s pure love was in this in a way that unbelief cannot understand, for this eventually worked for greater blessing, But Satan did show himself heartless, for he wanted only to accomplish Job’s downfall.

We may wonder how Satan has ability to inflict a man with painful boils from the sole of his foot to the crown of his head (v.7), but this does show that Satan can cause physical ills as well as promoting spiritual falsehood, and he will use all of these to the fullest advantage he can. But thank God, Satan cannot steal away the faith of the child of God! In fact, when Satan has done his worst, he vanishes from the scene, for we do not read any more about him in this book. Though he was so completely defeated, we do not read that he ever honestly admitted defeat.

However, we read much more of Job. Sitting in an ash heap, he used a potsherd to scrape the sores that pained him. What a dreadful contrast to his former prosperity and dignity! Also, his wife, his only near relative remaining, was not only no help to him, but practically abusive. She could not understand his uncomplaining attitude, and asked him, “Do you still hold fast to your integrity?” But worse still, she advised him to “curse God and die!” (v.9).

How true and faithful was Job’s response! – “You speak as one of the foolish women speaks. Shall we indeed accept good from God, and shall we not accept adversity?” (v.10). Job did not call her a foolish woman, but rightly said she was speaking as one. He was careful still to guard his lips, so that in all this he did not sin. This is not the usual way in which men would be affected, and his patient self-restraint is surely to be admired.

THREE FRIENDS COME

(vv.11-13)

Though Satan had been defeated, yet God had serious lessons still for Job to learn, so that He allowed three of his friends to come in order that Job would express to them what was really in his heart, and at the same time that his friends would learn the sin of their own hearts. These friends had made an appointment to come together to commiserate with Job and comfort him (v.11). This was their avowed object, though they actually went further than this.

On arrival they were deeply affected in seeing Job’s condition, they wept and tore their garments, sprinkling dust on their heads in token of humbly feeling their compassion for him (v.12). They must have had a great deal of regard for Job, for they sat down with him for seven days, not speaking (v.13).

Fuente: Grant’s Commentary on the Bible

2:1 Again there was a day when the {a} sons of God came to present themselves before the LORD, and {b} Satan came also among them to present himself before the LORD.

(a) That is, the angels, Job 1:6.

(b) Read Job 1:6.

Fuente: Geneva Bible Notes

2. The second test 2:1-10

Satan again claimed that Job served God only because God had made it advantageous for Job to do so. Job still had his own life. Satan insinuated that Job had been willing to part with his own children and his animals (wealth) since he still had his own life (skin, Job 2:4).

"Satan implies that Job, by his doxology had only feigned love for God as the exorbitant but necessary fee for health insurance." [Note: Kline, p. 463.]

Satan could do nothing to Job without God’s permission. Having received that, he went out to strip Job of his health. In view of the symptoms mentioned later in the book, Job’s ailment (Job 2:7-8) seems to have been a disease called pemphigus foliaceous or something similar to it, perhaps elephantiasis (cf. Job 2:7-8; Job 2:12; Job 3:24-25; Job 7:5; Job 9:18; Job 16:16; Job 19:17; Job 19:20; Job 30:17; Job 30:27; Job 30:30; Job 33:21). It appears to have afflicted Job for several months (cf. Job 7:3; Job 29:2).

Job’s illness resulted in an unclean condition that made him a social outcast. He had to take up residence near the city dump where beggars and other social rejects stayed. He had formerly sat at the city gate and enjoyed social prestige as a town judge (Job 29:7). The change in his location, from the best to the worst place, reflects the change in his circumstances, from the best to the worst conditions.

Another effect of his disease was his wife’s reaction (Job 2:9). She evidently concluded that God was not being fair with Job. He had lived a godly life, but God had afflicted rather than awarded him. She had the same retributive view of the divine-human relationship that Job and his friends did, but she was "foolish" (Job 2:10, spiritually ignorant, not discerning). Her frustration in seeing her husband suffer without being able to help him or to understand his situation undoubtedly aggravated her already chafed emotions. She gives evidence in the text of being bitter toward God. Had she been simply anxious that Job’s suffering would end, she probably would not have urged him to abandon his upright manner of life by cursing God.

"The narrative reminds us repeatedly of the temptation in Eden (Genesis 3). Job’s wife plays a role remarkably like that of Eve. Each woman succumbed to the tempter and became his instrument for the undoing of her husband. Satan had spared Job’s wife-as he had spared the four messengers-for his further use in his war on Job’s soul." [Note: Andersen, p. 88.]

"In times of severe testing, our first question must not be, ’How can I get out of this?’ but ’What can I get out of this?" [Note: Wiersbe, p. 13.]

The third result of Job’s suffering was his fresh submission to God (Job 2:10). Even though Job did not understand why he was in agony, he refused to sin with his lips by cursing God. He continued to worship God even though he gained nothing in return (cf. Jas 5:11). This response proved Satan wrong (Job 2:5) and vindicated God’s words (Job 2:3).

Though many people today conclude, as Job’s wife did, that the reason for suffering is that God is unjust, this is not the reason good people suffer. The basis for the relationship between God and man is not retribution, with good deeds resulting in prosperity and bad deeds yielding punishment in this life. [Note: For a critique of the "prosperity gospel" movement, which teaches that it is never God’s will for any believer to be sick or poor, see Ken K. Sarles, "A Theological Evaluation of the Prosperity Gospel," Bibliotheca Sacra 143:572 (October-December 1986):329-52.]

These two tests reveal much about Satan. He is an accuser of the righteous. He knows what is going on in the world and in the lives of individuals, though there is no evidence in Scripture that he can read people’s minds. He has great power over individuals and nature, but his power is subject to the sovereign authority of God.

Fuente: Expository Notes of Dr. Constable (Old and New Testaments)

V.

THE DILEMMA OF FAITH

Job 2:1-13

As the drama proceeds to unfold the conflict between Divine grace in the human soul and those chaotic influences which hold the mind in doubt or drag it back into denial, Job becomes a type of the righteous sufferer, the servant of God in the hot furnace of affliction. All true poetry runs thus into the typical. The interest of the movement depends on the representative character of the life, passionate in jealousy, indignation, grief, or ambition, pressing on exultantly to unheard of success, borne down into the deepest circles of woe. Here it is not simply a mans constancy that has to be established, but Gods truth against the Adversarys lie; the “everlasting yea” against the negations that make all life and virtue seem the mere blossoming of dust. Job has to pass through profoundest trouble, that the drama may exhaust the possibilities of doubt, and lead the faith of man towards liberty.

Yet the typical is based on the real; and the conflict here described has gone on first in the experience of the author. Not from the outside, but from his own life has he painted the sorrows and struggles of a soul urged to the brink of that precipice beyond which lies the blank darkness of the abyss. There are men in whom the sorrows of a whole people and of a whole age seem to concentrate. They suffer with their fellow men that all may find a way of hope. Not unconsciously, but with the most vivid sense of duty, a Divine necessity brought to their door, they must undergo all the anguish and hew a track through the dense forest to the light beyond. Such a man in his age was the writer of this book. And when he now proceeds to the second stage of Jobs affliction every touch appears to show that, not merely in imagination, but substantially he endured the trials which he paints. It is his passion that strives and cries, his sorrowful soul that longs for death. Imaginary, is this work of his? Nothing so true, vehement, earnest, can be imaginary. “Sublime sorrow,” says Carlyle, “sublime reconciliation; oldest choral melody as of the heart of mankind.” But it shows more than “the seeing eye and the mildly understanding heart.” It reveals the spirit battling with terrible enemies, doubts that spring out of the darkness of error, brood of the primaeval chaos. The man was one who “in this wild element of a life had to struggle onwards; now fallen, deep abased; and ever with tears, repentance, with bleeding heart, rise again, struggle again, still onwards.” Not to this writer, any more than to the author of “Sartor Resartus,” did anything come in his dreams.

A second scene in heaven is presented to our view. The Satan appears as before with the “sons of the Elohim,” is asked by the Most High whence he has come, and replies in the language previously used. Again he has been abroad amongst men in his restless search for evil. The challenge of God to the Adversary regarding Job is also repeated; but now it has an addition: “Still he holdeth fast his integrity, although thou movedst me against him, to destroy him without cause.” The expression “although thou movedst me against him” is startling. Is it an admission after all that the Almighty can be moved by any consideration less than pure right, or to act in any way to the disadvantage or hurt of His servant? Such an interpretation would exclude the idea of supreme power, wisdom, and righteousness which unquestionably governs the book from first to last. The words really imply a charge against the Adversary of malicious untruth. The saying of the Almighty is ironical, as Schultens points out: “Although thou, forsooth, didst incite Me against him.” He who flings sharp javelins of detraction is pierced with a sharper javelin of judgment. Yet he goes on with his attempt to ruin Job, and prove his own penetration the keenest in the universe.

And now he pleads that it is the way of men to care more for themselves, their own health and comfort, than for anything else. Bereavement and poverty may be like arrows that glance off from polished armour. Let disease and bodily pain attack himself, and a man will show what is really in his heart. “Skin for skin, yea, all that a man hath will he give for himself. But put forth Thine hand now, and touch his bone and his flesh, and he will renounce Thee openly.”

The proverb put into Satans mouth carries a plain enough meaning, and yet is not literally easy to interpret. The sense will be clear if we translate it “Hide for skin, yea, all that a man hath will he give for himself.” The hide of an animal, lion or sheep, which a man wears for clothing will be given up to save his own body. A valued article of property often, it will be promptly renounced when life is in danger; the man will flee away naked. In like manner all possessions will be abandoned to keep ones self unharmed. True enough in a sense, true enough to be used as a proverb, for proverbs often express a generalisation of the earthly prudence not, of the higher ideal, the saying, nevertheless, is in Satans use of it a lie-that is, if he includes the children when he says, “all that a man hath will he give for himself.” Job would have died for his children. Many a father and mother, with far less pride in their children than Job had in his, would die for them. Possessions indeed, mere worldly gear, find their real value or worthlessness when weighed against life, and human love has Divine depths which a sneering devil cannot see. The portraiture of soulless human beings is one of the recent experiments in fictitious literature, and it may have some justification; when the design is to show the dreadful issue of unmitigated selfishness, a distinctly moral purpose. If, on the other hand, “art for arts sake” is the plea, and the writers skill in painting the vacant ribs of death is used with a sinister reflection on human nature as a whole, the approach to Satans temper marks the degradation of literature. Christian faith clings to the hope that Divine grace may create a soul in the ghastly skeleton. The Adversary gloats over the lifeless picture of his own imagining and affirms that man can never be animated by the love of God. The problem which the Satan of Job long ago presented haunts the mind of our age. It is one of those ominous symptoms that point to times of trial in which the experience of humanity may resemble the typical affliction and desperate struggle of the man of Uz.

A grim possibility of truth lies in the taunt of Satan that, if Jobs flesh and bone are touched, he will renounce God openly. The test of sore disease is more trying than loss of wealth at least. And, besides, bodily affliction, added to the rest, will carry Job into yet another region of vital experience. Therefore it is the will of God to send it. Again Satan is the instrument, and the permission is given, “Behold, he is in thine hand: only save his life-imperil not his life.” Here, as before, when causes are to be brought into operation that are obscure and may appear to involve harshness, the Adversary is the intermediary agent. On the face of the drama a certain formal deference is paid to the opinion that God cannot inflict pain on those whom He loves. But for a short time only is the responsibility, so to speak, of afflicting Job partly removed from the Almighty to Satan. At this point the Adversary disappears; and henceforth God is acknowledged to have sent the disease as well as all the other afflictions to His servant. It is only in a poetic sense that Satan is represented as wielding natural forces and sowing the seeds of disease; the writer has no theory and needs no theory of malignant activity. He knows that “all is of God.”

Time has passed sufficient for the realisation by Job of his poverty and bereavement. The sense of desolation has settled on his soul as morning after morning dawned, week after week went by, emptied of the loving voices he used to hear, and the delightful and honourable tasks that used to engage him. In sympathy with the exhausted mind, the body has become languid, and the change from sufficiency of the best food to something like starvation gives the germs of disease an easy hold. He is stricken with elephantiasis, one of the most terrible forms of leprosy, a tedious malady attended with intolerable irritation and loathsome ulcers. The disfigured face, the blackened body, soon reveal the nature of the infection; and he is forthwith carried out according to the invariable custom and laid on the heap of refuse, chiefly burnt litter, which has accumulated near his dwelling. In Arab villages this mezbele is often a mound of considerable size, where, if any breath of wind is blowing, the full benefit of its coolness can be enjoyed. It is the common playground of the children, “and there the outcast, who has been stricken with some loathsome malady, and is not allowed to enter the dwellings of men, lays himself down, begging alms of the passers by, by day, and by night sheltering himself among the ashes which the heat of the sun has warmed.” At the beginning Job was seen in the full stateliness of Oriental life: now the contrasting misery of it appears, the abjectness into which it may rapidly fall. Without proper medical skill or appliances, the houses no way adapted for a case of disease like Jobs, the wealthiest pass like the poorest into what appears the nadir of existence. Now at length the trial of faithfulness is in the way of being perfected. If the helplessness, the torment of disease, the misery of this abject state do not move his mind from its trust in God, he will indeed be a bulwark of religion against the atheism of the world.

But in what form does the question of Jobs continued fidelity present itself now to the mind of the writer? Singularly, as a question regarding his integrity. From the general wreck one life has been spared, that of Jobs wife. To her it appears that the wrath of the Almighty has been launched against her husband, and all that prevents him from finding refuge in death from the horrors of lingering disease is his integrity. If he maintains the pious resignation he showed under the first afflictions and during the early stages of his malady, he will have to suffer on. But it will be better to die at once. “Why,” she asks, “dost thou still hold fast thine integrity? Renounce God, and die.” It is a different note from that which runs through the controversy between Job and his friends. Always on his integrity he takes his stand; against his right to affirm it they direct their arguments. They do not insist on the duty of a man under all circumstances to believe in God and submit to His will. Their sole concern is to prove that Job has not been sincere and faithful and deserving of acceptance before God. But his wife knows him to have been righteous and pious; and that, she thinks, will serve him no longer. Let him abandon his integrity; renounce God. On two sides the sufferer is plied. But he does not waver. Between the two he stands, a man who has integrity and will keep it till he die.

The accusations of Satan, turning on the question whether Job was sincere in religion or one who served God for what he got, prepare us to understand why his integrity is made the hinge of the debate. To Job his upright obedience was the heart of his life, and it alone made his indefeasible claim on God. But faith, not obedience, is the only real claim a man can advance. And the connection is to be found in this way. As a man perfect and upright, who feared God and eschewed evil, Job enjoyed the approval of his conscience and the sense of Divine favour. His life had been rooted in the steady assurance that the Almighty was his friend. He had walked in freedom and joy, cared for by the providence of the Eternal, guarded by His love, his soul at peace with that Divine Lawgiver whose will he did. His faith rested like an arch on two piers-one, his own righteousness which God had inspired; the other, the righteousness of God which his own reflected. If it were proved that he had not been righteous, his belief that God had been guarding him, teaching him, filling his soul with light, would break under him like a withered branch. If he had not been righteous indeed, he could not know what righteousness is, he could not know whether God is righteous or not, he could not know God nor trust in Him. The experience of the past was, in this case, a delusion. He had nothing to rest upon, no faith. On the other hand, if those afflictions, coming why he could not tell, proved God to be capricious, unjust, all would equally be lost. The dilemma was that holding to the belief in his own integrity, he seemed to be driven to doubt God; but if he believed God to be righteous he seemed to be driven to doubt his own integrity. Either was fatal. He was in a narrow strait between two rocks, on one or other of which faith was like to be shattered.

But his integrity was clear to him. That stood within the region of his own consciousness. He knew that God had made him of dutiful heart and given him a constant will to be obedient. Only while he believed this could he keep hold of his life. As the one treasure saved out of the wreck, when possessions, children, health were gone, to cherish his integrity was the last duty. Renounce his conscience of goodwill and faithfulness? It was the one fact bridging the gulf of disaster, the safeguard against despair. And is this not a true presentation of the ultimate inquiry regarding faith? If the justice we know is not an adumbration of Divine justice, if the righteousness we do is not taught us by God, of the same kind as His, if loving justice and doing righteousness we are not showing faith in God, if renouncing all for the right, clinging to it though the heavens should fall, we are not in touch with the Highest, then there is no basis for faith, no link between our human life and the Eternal. All must go if these deep principles of morality and religion are not to be trusted. What a man knows of the just and good by clinging to it, suffering for it, rejoicing in it, is indeed the anchor that keeps him from being swept into the waste of waters.

The womans part in the controversy is still to be considered; and it is but faintly indicated. Upon the Arab soul there lay no sense of womans life. Her view of providence or of religion was never asked. The writer probably means here that Jobs wife would naturally, as a woman, complicate the sum of his troubles. She expresses ill-considered resentment against his piety. To her he is “righteous over much,” and her counsel is that of despair. “Was this all that the Great God whom he trusted could do for him?” Better bid farewell to such a God. She can do nothing to relieve the dreadful torment and can see but the one possible end. But it is God who is keeping her husband alive, and one word would be enough to set him free. Her language is strangely illogical, meant indeed to be so, -a womans desperate talk. She does not see that, though Job renounced God, he might yet live on, in greater misery than ever, just because he would then have no spiritual stay.

Well, some have spoken very strongly about Jobs wife. She has been called a helper of the Devil, an organ of Satan, an infernal fury. Chrysostom thinks that the Enemy left her alive because he deemed her a fit scourge to Job by which to plague him more acutely than by any other. Ewald, with more point, says: “Nothing can be more scornful than her words which mean, Thou, who under all the undeserved sufferings which have been inflicted on thee by thy God, hast been faithful to Him even in fatal sickness, as if He would help or desired to help thee who art beyond help, – to thee, fool, I say, Bid God farewell, and die!” There can be no doubt that she appears as the temptress of her husband, putting into speech the atheistic doubt which the Adversary could not directly suggest. And the case is all the worse for Job that affection and sympathy are beneath her words. Brave and true life appears to her to profit nothing if it has to be spent in pain and desolation. She does not seem to speak so much in scorn as in the bitterness of her soul. She is no infernal fury, but one whose love, genuine enough, does not enter into the fellowship of his sufferings. It was necessary to Jobs trial that the temptation should be presented, and the ignorant affection of the woman serves the needful purpose. She speaks not knowing what she says, not knowing that her words pierce like sharp arrows into his very soul. As a figure in the drama she has her place, helping to complete the round of trial.

The answer of Job is one of the fine touches of the book. He does not denounce her as an instrument of Satan nor dismiss her from his presence. In the midst of his pain he is the great chief of Uz and the generous husband. “Thou speakest,” he mildly says, “as one of the foolish, that is, godless, women speaketh.” It is not like thee to say such things as these. And then he adds the question born of sublime faith, “Shall we receive gladness at the hand of God, and shall we not receive affliction?”

One might declare this affirmation of faith so clear and decisive that the trial of Job as a servant of God might well close with it. Earthly good, temporal joy, abundance of possessions, children, health, -these he had received. Now in poverty and desolation, his body wrecked by disease, he lies tormented and helpless. Suffering of mind and physical affliction are his in almost unexampled keenness, acute in themselves and by contrast with previous felicity. His wife, too, instead of helping him to endure, urges him to dishonour and death. Still he does not doubt that all is wisely ordered by God. He puts aside, if indeed with a strenuous effort of the soul, that cruel suggestion of despair, and affirms anew the faith which is supposed to bind him to a life of torment. Should not this repel the accusations brought against the religion of Job and of humanity? The author does not think so. He has only prepared the way for his great discussion. But the stages of trial already passed show how deep and vital is the problem that lies beyond. The faith which has emerged so triumphantly is to be shaken as by the ruin of the world.

Strangely and erroneously has a distinction been drawn between the previous afflictions and the disease which, it is said, “opens or reveals greater depths in Jobs reverent piety.” One says: “In his former trial he blessed God who took away the good He had added to naked man; this was strictly no evil: now Job bows beneath Gods hand when he inflicts positive evil.” Such literalism in reading the words “shall we not receive evil?” implies a gross slander on Job. If he had meant that the loss of health was “evil” as contrasted with the loss of children, that from his point of view bereavement was no “evil,” then indeed he would have sinned against love, and therefore against God. It is the whole course of his trial he is reviewing. Shall we receive “good”-joy, prosperity, the love of children, years of physical vigour, and shall we not receive pain-this burden of loss, desolation, bodily torment? Herein Job sinned not with his lips. Again, had he meant moral evil, something involving cruelty and unrighteousness, he would have sinned indeed, his faith would have been destroyed by his own false judgment of God. The words here must be interpreted in harmony with the distinction already drawn between physical and mental suffering, which, as God appoints them, have a good design, and moral evil, which can in no way have its source in Him.

And now the narrative passes into a new phase. As a chief of Uz, the greatest of the Bene-Kedem, Job was known beyond the desert. As a man of wisdom and generosity he had many friends. The tidings of his disasters and finally of his sore malady are carried abroad; and after months, perhaps (for a journey across the sandy waste needs preparation and time), three of those who know him best and admire him most, “Jobs three friends,” appear upon the scene. To sympathise with him, to cheer and comfort him, they come with one accord, each on his camel, not unattended, for the way is beset with dangers.

They are men of mark all of them. The emeer of Uz has chiefs, no doubt, as his peculiar friends, although the Septuagint colours too much in calling them kings. It is, however, their piety, their likeness to himself, as men who fear and serve the True God, that binds them to Jobs heart. They will contribute what they can of counsel and wise suggestion to throw light on his trials and lift him into hope. No arguments of unbelief or cowardice will be used by them, nor will they propose that a stricken man should renounce God and die. Eliphaz is from Teman, that centre of thought and culture where men worshipped the Most High and meditated upon His providence. Shuach, the city of Bildad, can scarcely be identified with the modern Shuwak, about two hundred and fifty miles southwest from the Jauf near the, Red Sea, nor with the land of the Tsukhi of the Assyrian inscriptions, lying on the Chaldaean frontier. It was probably a city, now forgotten, in the Idumaean region. Maan, also near Petra, may be the Naamah of Zophar. It is at least tempting to regard all the three as neighbours who might without great difficulty communicate with each other and arrange a visit to their common friend. From their meeting place at Teman or at Maan they would, in that case, have to make a journey of some two hundred miles across one of the most barren and dangerous deserts of Arabia, clear enough proof of their esteem for Job and their deep sympathy. The fine idealism of the poem is maintained in this new act. Men of knowledge and standing are these. They may fail; they may take a false view of their friend and his state; but their sincerity must not be doubted nor their rank as thinkers. Whether the three represent ancient culture, or rather the conceptions of the writers own time, is a question that may be variously answered. The book, however, is so full of life, the life of earnest thought and keen thirst for truth, that the type of religious belief found in all the three must have been familiar to the author. These men are not, any more than Job himself, contemporaries of Ephron the Hittite or the Balaam of Numbers. They stand out as religious thinkers of a far later age, and represent the current Rabbinism of the post-Solomonic era. The characters are filled in from a profound knowledge of man and mans life. Yet each of them, Temanite, Shuchite, Naamathite, is at bottom a Hebrew believer striving to make his creed apply to a case not yet brought into his system, and finally, when every suggestion is repelled, taking refuge in that hardness of temper which is peculiarly Jewish. They are not men of straw, as some imagine, but types of the culture and thought which led to Pharisaism. The writer argues not so much with Edom as with his own people.

Approaching Jobs dwelling the three friends look eagerly from their camels, and at length perceive one prostrate, disfigured, lying on the mezbele, a miserable wreck of manhood. “That is not our friend,” they say to each other. Again and yet again, “This is not he; this surely cannot be he.” Yet nowhere else than in the place of the forsaken do they find their noble friend. The brave, bright chief they knew, so stately in his bearing, so abundant and honourable, how has he fallen! They lift up their voices and weep; then, struck into amazed silence, each with torn mantle and dust-sprinkled head, for seven days and nights they sit beside him in grief unspeakable.

Real is their sympathy; deep too, as deep as their character and sentiments admit. As comforters they are proverbial in a bad sense. Yet one says truly, perhaps out of bitter experience, “Who that knows what most modern consolation is can prevent a prayer that Jobs comforters may be his? They do not call upon him for an hour and invent excuses for the departure which they so anxiously await; they do not write notes to him, and go about their business as if nothing had happened; they do not inflict upon him meaningless commonplaces.” It was their misfortune, not altogether their fault, that they had mistaken notions which they deemed it their duty to urge upon him. Job, disappointed by and by, did not spare them, and we feel so much for him that we are apt to deny them their due: Yet are we not bound to ask, What friend has had equal proof of our sympathy? Depth of nature; sincerity of friendship; the will to console: let those mock at Jobs comforters as wanting here who have travelled two hundred miles over the burning sand to visit a man sunk in disaster, brought to poverty and the gate of death, and sat with him seven days and nights in generous silence.

Fuente: Expositors Bible Commentary