©1997 by Thomas Nelson, Inc.
3. Owner of many herds (1:3; 42:12) 4. A wealthy and influential man (1:3b) 5. A priest to his family (1:5) 6. A loving, wise husband (2:9) 7. A man of prominence in community affairs (29:7–11) 8. A man of benevolence (29:12–17; 31:32) 9. A wise leader (29:21–24) 10. Grower of crops (31:38–40) ©1997 by Thomas Nelson, Inc.
JOB—NOTE ON 2:1–3a The scene changes again to the heavenly court, where the angels came before the Lord and Satan was also present, having been again searching the earth for victims to assault. See notes on 1:6–8.
JOB—NOTE ON 2:3 He still holds fast his integrity. God affirmed that Job had won round one. without reason. God uses the same expression the adversary used in Job 1: "for no reason" (1:9) and "without reason" (2:3). The message behind God's turn of words is that the adversary is the guilty party in this case, not Job who had suffered all the disaster without any personal cause. He had done nothing to incur the pain and loss, though it was massive. The issue was purely a matter of conflict between God and Satan. This is a crucial statement, because when Job's friends tried to explain why all the disasters had befallen him, they always put the blame on Job. Grasping this assessment from God— that Job had not been punished for something, but suffered for nothing related to him personally—is a crucial key to the story. Sometimes suffering is caused by divine purposes unknowable to us (see Introduction: Historical and Theological Themes).
JOB—NOTE ON 2:4–5 Skin for skin! Satan contended that what he had done to Job so far was just touching the skin, scratching the surface. Job endured the loss of all that he had, even the lives of his children, but would not endure the loss of his own well-being. If God allowed Satan to make the disaster a personal matter of his own physical body, the Adversary contended, Job's faith would fail.
JOB—NOTE ON 2:6 spare his life. The Lord sovereignly limited the Adversary, although death seemed preferable. Job believed that to be the case (cf. 7:15), as did his wife (2:9).
JOB—NOTE ON 2:7 Satan . . . struck Job. This appears to be an exceptional case
with no other exact parallel in Scripture. In the gospels, demons caused physical problems when they dwelled within people (cf. Luke 13:11, 16), but that is not the case here. God's permissive will operated for purposes Job can't know; God was hidden from him along with the reasons for his suffering. loathsome sores. Although the nature of Job's affliction cannot be diagnosed exactly, it produced extreme physical trauma (cf. 2:13; 3:24; 7:5, 14; 13:28; 16:8; 19:17; 30:17, 30; 33:21). One cannot fully understand Job's conversations throughout the book without considering the extraordinary physical distress he endured in a day without medicine or pain relief. His boils would have been similar to those of the Egyptians (Ex. 9:8–11) and Hezekiah (2 Kings 20:7).
JOB—NOTE ON 2:8 pottery . . . ashes. Suffering terribly, Job took himself to where the lepers go: the ash heap outside the city, where he scraped at his sores with a piece of broken pottery, perhaps breaking them open to release the infection.
JOB—NOTE ON 2:9 your integrity. Through all this, Job's faith remained strong in the confusion, so that his wife could not accuse him of insincerity as Satan had. Her argument in effect was "let go of your piety and curse God; then he will end your life for blaspheming," (i.e., death under these conditions would be preferable to living). She added temptation to affliction because she advised him to sin.
JOB—NOTE ON 2:10 foolish. Not meaning silly or ridiculous, but acting as one who rejects God or God's revealed will. The word is used of the unwise in the Psalms (Ps. 14:1; 53:1) and in Proverbs (Prov. 30:22). She is not seen nor heard of again in this book, except indirectly in Job 42:13–15. receive. Job lived out and explained the text of Deut. 29:29. His words and deeds demonstrated his confidence in God and vindicated God's confidence in him.
JOB—NOTE ON 2:11–13 Here is one of the most moving scenes in the whole story, as Job's friends came to comfort and commiserate with him in his pain. They expressed all the traditional gestures of grief.
JOB—NOTE ON 2:11 Temanite. Most likely Teman was a city of Edom (cf. Gen. 36:4, 11; Jer. 49:7, 20; Ezek. 25:13; Amos 1:12; Obad. 8–9). Shuhite. The Shuhites were descendants of Abraham through Keturah (Gen. 25:2, 6). Naamathite. A resident of an unknown location probably in Edom or Arabia, although some have suggested Naamah on the Edomite border (cf. Josh. 15:41).
JOB—NOTE ON 2:13 his suffering was very great. The expression actually meant that his disease produced pain that was still increasing. The agony was so great, his friends were speechless for a week.
JOB—NOTE ON 3:1–42:6 This whole section is poetry—a dramatic poem of speeches attempting to understand Job's suffering.
JOB—NOTE ON 3:1–37:24 This section covers the cycles of speeches between Job and his well-meaning friends, including Elihu (chs. 32–37).
JOB—NOTE ON 3:1–14:22 The first cycle of speeches given by Job and his three friends begins. Job was the first to break the week-long silence with a lament (3:1–26).
JOB—NOTE ON 3:1–10 Job began his first speech by cursing the day of his birth, which should have been a day of great rejoicing, and welcomed the day he would finally die. In short, Job says "I wish I'd never been born." See 3; 6–7; 9– 10; 12–14; 16–17; 19; 21; 23–24; 26; 40:3–5; 42:1–6 for Job's speeches.
JOB—NOTE ON 3:1 cursed the day of his birth. Job was in deep pain and despair. What God was allowing hurt desperately, but while Job did not curse God (cf. 2:8), he did curse his birth (3:10–11). He wished he had never been conceived (v. 3) or born because the joys of his life were not worth all the pain. He felt it would have been better to have never lived than to suffer like that; better to have never had wealth than to lose it; better to have never had children than to have them all killed. He never wanted his birthday remembered, and wished it had been obliterated from the calendar (vv. 4–7).
JOB—NOTE ON 3:8 those curse . . . Leviathan. Those who pronounce the most powerful curses, even to arousing the destructive sea monster (see note on 41:1; cf. Ps. 74:14; 104:26; Isa. 27:1).
JOB—NOTE ON 3:11–26 Job left the matter of never having been born (vv. 1–10) and moved to a desire to have been stillborn (vv. 11–19), then to a desire for the "light" of life to be extinguished in death (vv. 20–23). There is no hint that Job wanted to take his own life, for there was nothing stopping him. Job still trusted God for his sovereign hand in the matter of death, but he did consider the many ways in which death would be a perceived improvement to the present situation, because of the pain.