Job 2
Big idea: A second round with the limit moved to the skin, a wife who says the one thing everyone is thinking, and three friends who travel a long way, do not recognise him, and then sit on the ground with him for a week saying nothing at all.
The seven days of silence are the last thing anyone in the book does right; everything afterwards is speech.
2:1–10 — Shall we receive good, and not receive evil?
The second court scene repeats the first almost word for word, with one addition that sharpens the whole book: he still maintains his integrity, although you incited me against him, to ruin him without cause. The last two words are the accuser's own — Job serves for nothing, and is now ruined for nothing. The new challenge is a proverb about self-preservation: skin for skin; all that a man has he will give for his life. Touch his bone and his flesh.
1 Again, on the day when God’s sons came to present themselves before Yahweh, Satan came also among them to present himself before Yahweh. 2 Yahweh said to Satan, “Where have you come from?” Satan answered Yahweh, and said, “From going back and forth on the earth, and from walking up and down in it.” 3 Yahweh said to Satan, “Have you considered my servant Job? For there is no one like him on the earth, a blameless and an upright man, one who fears God, and turns away from evil. He still maintains his integrity, although you incited me against him, to ruin him without cause.” 4 Satan answered Yahweh, and said, “Skin for skin. Yes, all that a man has he will give for his life. 5 But stretch out your hand now, and touch his bone and his flesh, and he will renounce you to your face.” 6 Yahweh said to Satan, “Behold, he is in your hand. Only spare his life.” 7 So Satan went out from the presence of Yahweh, and struck Job with painful sores from the sole of his foot to his head. 8 He took for himself a potsherd to scrape himself with, and he sat among the ashes. 9 Then his wife said to him, “Do you still maintain your integrity? Renounce God, and die.” 10 But he said to her, “You speak as one of the foolish women would speak. What? Shall we receive good at the hand of God, and shall we not receive evil?” In all this Job didn’t sin with his lips.
2:11–13 — They sat down with him on the ground seven days
Three men make an appointment and travel from different places for the stated purpose of sympathising with him and comforting him. The detail that they had to arrange it together says something about the friendship, and so does the fact that when they lift their eyes at a distance they do not recognise him.
11 Now when Job’s three friends heard of all this evil that had come on him, they each came from his own place: Eliphaz the Temanite, Bildad the Shuhite, and Zophar the Naamathite; and they made an appointment together to come to sympathize with him and to comfort him. 12 When they lifted up their eyes from a distance, and didn’t recognize him, they raised their voices, and wept; and they each tore his robe, and sprinkled dust on their heads toward the sky. 13 So they sat down with him on the ground seven days and seven nights, and no one spoke a word to him, for they saw that his grief was very great.
Scripture text: World English Bible (public domain).