Verse-by-Verse Bible Commentary
Job 2:7

Clarke's Commentary

Verse Job 2:7. Sore boils — בשחין רע bischin ra, "with an evil inflammation." What this diabolical disorder was, interpreters are not agreed. Some think it was the leprosy, and this is the reason why he dwelt by himself, and had his habitation in an unclean place, without the city, (Septuagint, εξω της πωλεως,) or in the open air: and the reason why his friends beheld him afar off, Job 2:12, was because they knew that the disorder was infectious.

His scraping himself with a potsherd indicates a disease accompanied with intolerable itching, one of the characteristics of the smallpox. Query, Was it not this disorder? And in order to save his life (for that he had in especial command) did not Satan himself direct him to the cool regimen, without which, humanly speaking, the disease must have proved fatal? In the elephantiasis and leprosy there is, properly speaking, no boil or detached inflammation, or swelling, but one uniform disordered state of the whole surface, so that the whole body is covered with loathsome scales, and the skin appears like that of the elephant, thick and wrinkled, from which appearance the disorder has its name. In the smallpox it is different; each pock or pustule is a separate inflammation, tending to suppuration; and during this process, the fever is in general very high, and the anguish and distress of the patient intolerable. When the suppuration is pretty far advanced, the itching is extreme; and the hands are often obliged to be confined to prevent the patient from literally tearing his own flesh.

Bridgeway Bible Commentary

Job’s loathsome disease (2:1-13)

Not accepting defeat, Satan still claimed that Job was concerned only for himself. He would sacrifice his possessions, and even his family, provided he himself avoided suffering. He would sacrifice their skin to save his own (2:1-5). God again accepted Satan’s challenge, this time allowing him to attack Job’s body (6). Satan therefore afflicted Job with the most painful and loathsome disease. The faith of Job’s wife failed, but Job’s faith did not, even though he was treated worse than a diseased dog. He was driven from the town and forced to live at the public garbage dump (7-10).
Those who had been Job’s friends in his days of prosperity deserted him. Only three, all of them (like Job) seekers of wisdom, came to comfort him. When they saw his suffering they were so overcome with grief that for several days they could say nothing, only weep (11-13).

Coffman's Commentaries on the Bible

SATAN TORTURES JOB’S BODY WITH A VILE DISEASE

“So Satan went forth from the presence of Jehovah, and smote Job with sore boils from the sole of his foot unto his crown. And he took him a potsherd to scrape himself therewith; and he sat among the ashes. Then said his wife unto him, Dost thou still hold fast thine integrity? renounce God, and die. 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.”

“Satan smote Job… with sore boils” “Modern medical opinion is not unanimous in the diagnosis of Job’s disease.”Wycliffe Old Testament Commentary, p. 463. Driver and Gray, like many others, identified the disease as Elephantiasis,International Critical Commentary, Job, p. 23. basing their conclusion upon many symptoms of the disease mentioned subsequently in the Book of Job, such as, his fetid breath (Job 19:17), maggots breeding in the sores (Job 7:5), the falling off of the skin (Job 30:30), feelings of terror (Job 3:25; 6:40), terrible dreams and horrible nightmares (Job 7:14), a sensation of strangulation (Job 7:15), and disfiguration of his appearance (Job 2:12). Whatever it was, it was as loathsome and pitiful a disease as can be imagined.

“Then said his wife, Dost thou still hold fast thine integrity? Renounce God, and die” As Chrysostom observed, we have here the reason why the devil did not kill Job’s wife during that first test. “It was because Satan thought she would be the best tool by which to scourge him more acutely than by any other means.”Chrysostom, as quoted by C. F. Keil, Keil-Delitzsch’s Old Testament Commentaries (Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company), Vol. 4, p. 72. Some have attempted to defend Job’s wife; but it is evident that she was indeed, “A tool of the tempter,”C. F. Keil, Keil-Delitzsch’s Old Testament Commentaries (Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company), Vol. 4, p. 71. for she suggested here that Job should do the very thing that Satan had predicted that he would do, namely, “renounce God.”

“Thou speakest as one of the foolish women speaketh” In no other response does Job appear more restrained than in this one. In view of the diabolical action she had proposed for him to commit, it appears that Job’s response might have been vehement, derogatory, or angry; but, instead, he merely charged her with foolishness. She no longer believed that Job was righteous.

“What? shall we receive good at the hand of God, and shall we not receive evil” Job here stated the truth that God has the right to send (or allow) either good or evil to befall any person whomsoever. All that God allows is right, regardless of how it may appear to the imperfect perception of men.

“In all this did not Job sin with his lips” Some have hinted that his thoughts in this extremity were sinful, but there is no evidence of that. “There is certainly no veiled suggestion here that Job had cursed God in his heart. Job’s wisdom was sound.”Wycliffe Old Testament Commentary, p. 464.

However, the same writer declared that, “Job truly served God for naught, but for God Himself”;Ibid. and with that opinion, which we find frequently repeated by many scholars, we find it difficult to agree. We believe that Job’s serving God was also, at least, partially motivated by the hope of eternal reward after the sorrows of life were ended. Did he not speak of his Redeemer, and of the resurrection of the dead?

The commentators have overreached themselves when they teach that no hope of reward enters into the motivation for Christian living. Christ himself spoke of those who might be compelled to forsake, “Houses, and brethren, and sisters, and father, or mother, or children, or lands, for his name’s sake,” promising them in the same breath that they should receive, “A hundredfold now in this time… and in the world to come eternal life” (Mark 10:29). Admittedly, the hope of reward is not the highest motive; but we truly believe that God never asked any man to serve God “for naught.” And whatever Job’s motives might have been, he certainly did not serve God for naught.

Job’s wife advised him to renounce God and die; but Job decided to go on living. “And he did so because of his faith in God, and because he was strong enough to endure all that Satan could heap upon him.”R. B. Sweet Publishing Company, No. 216, p. 18.

Keil referred to Job’s rejection of his wife’s evil proposal as his repelling the sixth temptation.C. F. Keil, Keil-Delitzsch’s Old Testament Commentaries (Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company), op. cit., p. 73. The first four were the satanic blows delivered by those four messengers, one after another, announcing the loss of all Job’s possessions and the death of his children. The fifth temptation came in the form of that horrible disease; and this sixth one was that wicked proposal of his wife to “Renounce God, and die.” The seventh temptation would come in the words of those who came to comfort him, but who, instead, were guilty of dishonoring him with their false admonitions to confess his wickedness and repent of his sins. This might have been the strongest of all his temptations.

Barnes' Notes on the Whole Bible

So went Satan forth - Job 1:12.

And smote Job with sore boils - The English word boil denotes the well-known turnout upon the flesh, accompanied with severe inflammation; a sore angry swelling. “Webster.” The Hebrew word, however, is in the singular number שׁחין sh^echı̂yn, and should have been so rendered in our translation. Dr. Good renders it “a burning ulceration.” The Vulgate translates it, “ulcere pessimo.” The Septuagint, ἕλκει πονηρῶ helkei ponērō - “with a foul ulcer.” The Hebrew word שׁחין sh^echı̂yn means a burning sore; an inflamed ulcer, a bile. “Gesenius.” It is derived from שׁכן shâkan, an obsolete root, retained in Arabic, and meaning to be hot or inflamed. It is translated “bile” or “boil,” in Exodus 9:9-11; Leviticus 13:18; 2 Kings 20:7;: Isaiah 28:21, (see the notes on that place), Leviticus 13:19-20; Job 2:7; and “botch,” Deuteronomy 28:27, Deuteronomy 28:35. The word does not occur elsewhere in the Scriptures. In Deuteronomy 28:27, it means “the botch of Egypt,” some species of leprosy, undoubtedly, which prevailed there.

In regard to the disease of Job, we may learn some of its characteristics, not only from the usual meaning of the word, but from the circumstances mentioned in the book itself. It was such that he took a potsherd to scrape himself with, Job 2:8; such as to make his nights restless, and full of tossings to and fro and to clothe his flesh with clods of dust, and with worms, and to break his flesh, or to constitute a running sore or ulcer, Job 7:4-5; such as to make him bite his flesh for pain, Job 13:14, and to make him like a rotten thing, or a garment that is moth eaten, Job 13:28; such that his face was foul with weeping, Job 16:16, and such as to fill him with wrinkles, and to make his flesh lean, Job 16:8; such as to make his breath corrupt, Job 17:1, and his bones cleave to his skin, Job 19:20, Job 19:26; such as to pierce his bones with pain in the night, Job 30:17, and to make his skin black, and to burn up his bones with heat, Job 30:30.

It has been commonly supposed that the disease of Job was a species of black leprosy commonly called “elephantiasis,” which prevails much in Egypt. This disease received its name from ἐλέφας elefas, “an elephant,” from the swelling produced by it, causing a resemblance to that animal in the limbs; or because it rendered the skin like that of the elephant, scabtons and dark colored. It is called by the Arabs judhām (Dr. Good), and is said to produce in the countenance a grim, distorted, and “lion-like” set of features, and hence has been called by some “Leontiasis.” It is known as the black leprosy, to distinguish it from a more common disorder called “white leprosy” - an affection which the Greeks call “Leuce,” or “whiteness.” The disease of Job seems to have been a universal ulcer; producing an eruption over his entire person, and attended with violent pain, and constant restlessness. A universal bile or groups of biles ever the body would accord with the account of the disease in the various parts of the book. In the elephantiasis the skin is covered with incrustations like those of an elephant. It is a chronic and contagious disease, marked by a thickening of the legs, with a loss of hair and feeling, a swelling of the face, and a hoarse nasal voice. It affects the whole body; the bones as well as the skin are covered with spots and tumors, at first red, but afterward black. “Coxe, Ency. Webster.” It should be added that the leprosy in all its forms was regarded as contagious, and of course involved the necessity of a separation from society; and all the circumstances attending this calamity were such as deeply to humble a man of the former rank and dignity of Job.

Smith's Bible Commentary

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 ). "

Dr. Constable's Expository 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. James 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.

Gill's Exposition of the Whole Bible

So went Satan forth from the presence of the Lord,.... With leave and license, with power and authority, as the Targum; having got his commission enlarged, on a fresh grant, to do more mischief to Job, he departed directly and immediately, being eager to put in execution what he had a permission to do; :-;

and smote Job with sore boils, from the sole of his foot unto his crown: with hot and burning ulcers, such as were inflicted on the Egyptians in the plague of the boils and blains, called the botch of Egypt, see Exodus 9:10; it is in the original text "with a bad boil", or "the worst" a; it was as it were but one boil; they stood so thick and close together, that they were as one, reaching from head to foot, and spreading all over his body, so that there was no part free; he was full of sores; as Lazarus, and to him may be applied what is said in a figurative sense of the Jews, Isaiah 1:6; and this boil or boils were of the worst sort, and most hot and angry, and gave the most exquisite pain, and what Job was "smitten" with at once; they did not rise up in pimples and pustules at the first, and gradually gathered and came to an head, but he was at once covered with burning ulcers at their height, and with running sores; this was done by Satan, through divine permission; who, when he has leave, can inflict diseases on the bodies of men, as he did in the days of Christ on earth, see

Matthew 17:15; some Jewish writers, as R. Simeon, say, that the devil heated the air, and thereby caused inflammation in Job's blood, which broke out in boils; but then this would have affected others besides him: many are the conjectures of learned men b about this disease of Job's, some taking it to be the leprosy c, others the scurvy, others an erysipelas, c. Bolducius reckons up no less than fourteen diseases that are attributed to him, collected from his own words, Job 7:5 a late learned writer d thinks it was the smallpox.

a בשחין רע "nicere malo", Pagninus, Montanus, Piscator, Schmidt; "maligno", Cocceius, Michaelis, "pessimo", Junius & Tremellius, Schultens. b Vid. Reiskii dissert. de Morbo Jobi, in Thesaur. Dissert. Philolog. par. 1. p. 556. c Origen contr. Cels. l. 6. p. 305. So Michaelis in Lowth. Praelect. de Sacr. Poes. Heb. p. 182, 201, 202. d Delaney's Life of King David, vol. 2. p. 147.

Henry's Complete Commentary on the Bible

      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.   8 And he took him a potsherd to scrape himself withal; and he sat down among the ashes.   9 Then said his wife unto him, Dost thou still retain thine integrity? curse God, and die.   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.

      The devil, having got leave to tear and worry poor Job, presently fell to work with him, as a tormentor first and then as a tempter. His own children he tempts first, and draws them to sin, and afterwards torments, when thereby he has brought them to ruin; but this child of God he tormented with an affliction, and then tempted to make a bad use of his affliction. That which he aimed at was to make Job curse God; now here we are told what course he took both to move him to it and move it to him, both to give him the provocation, else he would not have thought of it: thus artfully in the temptation managed with all the subtlety of the old serpent, who is here playing the same game against Job that he played against our first parents (Genesis 3:1-24), aiming to seduce him from his allegiance to his God and to rob him of his integrity.

      I. He provokes him to curse God by smiting him with sore boils, and so making him a burden to himself, Job 2:7; Job 2:8. The former attack was extremely violent, but Job kept his ground, bravely made good the pass and carried the day. Yet he is still but girding on the harness; there is worse behind. The clouds return after the rain. Satan, by the divine permission, follows his blow, and now deep calls unto deep.

      1. The disease with which Job was seized was very grievous: Satan smote him with boils, sore boils, all over him, from head to foot, with an evil inflammation (so some render it), an erysipelas, perhaps, in a higher degree. One boil, when it is gathering, is torment enough, and gives a man abundance of pain and uneasiness. What a condition was Job then in, that had boils all over him, and no part free, and those as of raging a heat as the devil could make them, and, as it were, set on fire of hell! The small-pox is a very grievous and painful disease, and would be much more terrible than it is but that we know the extremity of it ordinarily lasts but a few days; how grievous then was the disease of Job, who was smitten all over with sore boils or grievous ulcers, which made him sick at heart, put him to exquisite torture, and so spread themselves over him that he could lie down no way for any ease. If at any time we be exercised with sore and grievous distempers, let us not think ourselves dealt with any otherwise than as God has sometimes dealt with the best of his saints and servants. We know not how much Satan may have a hand (by divine permission) in the diseases with which the children of men, and especially the children of God, are afflicted, what infections that prince of the air may spread, what inflammations may come from that fiery serpent. We read of one whom Satan had bound many years, Luke 13:16. Should God suffer that roaring lion to have his will against any of us, how miserable would he soon make us!

      2. His management of himself, in this distemper, was very strange, Job 2:8; Job 2:8.

      (1.) Instead of healing salves, he took a potsherd, a piece of a broken pitcher, to scrape himself withal. A very sad pass this poor man had come to. When a man is sick and sore he may bear it the better if he be well tended and carefully looked after. Many rich people have with a soft and tender hand charitably ministered to the poor in such a condition as this; even Lazarus had some ease from the tongues of the dogs that came and licked his sores; but poor Job has no help afforded him. [1.] Nothing is done to his sore but what he does himself, with his own hands. His children and servants are all dead, his wife unkind, Job 19:17; Job 19:17. He has not wherewithal to fee a physician or surgeon; and, which is most sad of all, none of those he had formerly been kind to had so much sense of honour and gratitude as to minister to him in his distress, and lend him a hand to dress or wipe his running sores, either because the disease was loathsome and noisome or because they apprehended it to be infectious. Thus it was in the former days, as it will be in the last days, men were lovers of their own selves, unthankful, and without natural affection. [2.] All that he does to his sores is to scrape them; they are not bound up with soft rags, not mollified with ointment, not washed or kept clean, no healing plasters laid on them, no opiates, no anodynes, ministered to the poor patient, to alleviate the pain and compose him to rest, nor any cordials to support his spirits; all the operation is the scraping of the ulcers, which, when they had come to a head and began to die, made his body all over like a scurf, as is usual in the end of the small-pox. It would have been an endless thing to dress his boils one by one; he therefore resolves thus to do it by wholesale--a remedy which one would think as bad as the disease. [3.] He has nothing to do this with but a potsherd, no surgeon's instrument proper for the purpose, but that which would rather rake into his wounds, and add to his pain, than give him any ease. People that are sick and sore have need to be under the discipline and direction of others, for they are often but bad managers of themselves.

      (2.) Instead of reposing in a soft and warm bed, he sat down among the ashes. Probably he had a bed left him (for, though his fields were stripped, we do not find that his house was burnt or plundered), but he chose to sit in the ashes, either because he was weary of his bed or because he would put himself into the place and posture of a penitent, who, in token of his self-abhorrence, lay in dust and ashes, Job 42:6; Isaiah 58:5; Jonah 3:6. Thus did he humble himself under the mighty hand of God, and bring his mind to the meanness and poverty of his condition. He complains (Job 7:5; Job 7:5) that his flesh was clothed with worms and clods of dust; and therefore dust to dust, ashes to ashes. If God lay him among the ashes, there he will contentedly sit down. A low spirit becomes low circumstances, and will help to reconcile us to them. The LXX. reads it, He sat down upon a dunghill without the city (which is commonly said, in mentioning this story); but the original says no more than that he sat in the midst of the ashes, which he might do in his own house.

      II. He urges him, by the persuasions of his own wife, to curse God, Job 2:9; Job 2:9. The Jews (who covet much to be wise above what is written) say that Job's wife was Dinah, Jacob's daughter: so the Chaldee paraphrase. It is not likely that she was; but, whoever it was, she was to him like Michal to David, a scoffer at his piety. She was spared to him, when the rest of his comforts were taken away, for this purpose, to be a troubler and tempter to him. If Satan leaves any thing that he has permission to take away, it is with a design of mischief. It is his policy to send his temptations by the hand of those that are dear to us, as he tempted Adam by Eve and Christ by Peter. We must therefore carefully watch that we be not drawn to say or do a wrong thing by the influence, interest, or entreaty, of any, no, not those for whose opinion and favour we have ever so great a value. Observe how strong this temptation was. 1. She banters Job for his constancy in his religion: "Dost thou still retain thy integrity? Art thou so very obstinate in thy religion that nothing will cure thee of it? so tame and sheepish as thus to truckle to a God who is so far from rewarding thy services with marks of his favour that he seems to take a pleasure in making thee miserable, strips thee, and scourges thee, without any provocation given? Is this a God to be still loved, and blessed, and served?"

      Thus Satan still endeavours to draw men from God, as he did our first parents, by suggesting hard thoughts of him, as one that envies the happiness and delights in the misery of his creatures, than which nothing is more false. Another artifice he uses is to drive men from their religion by loading them with scoffs and reproaches for their adherence to it. We have reason to expect it, but we are fools if we heed it. Our Master himself has undergone it, we shall be abundantly recompensed for it, and with much more reason may we retort it upon the scoffers, "Are you such fools as still to retain your impiety, when you might bless God and live?" 2. She urges him to renounce his religion, to blaspheme God, set him at defiance, and dare him to do his worst: "Curse God and die; live no longer in dependence upon God, wait not for relief from him, but be thy own deliverer by being thy own executioner; end thy troubles by ending thy life; better die once than be always dying thus; thou mayest now despair of having any help from thy God, even curse him, and hang thyself." These are two of the blackest and most horrid of all Satan's temptations, and yet such as good men have sometimes been violently assaulted with. Nothing is more contrary to natural conscience than blaspheming God, nor to natural sense than self-murder; therefore the suggestion of either of these may well be suspected to come immediately from Satan. Lord, lead us not into temptation, not into such, not into any temptation, but deliver us from the evil one.

      III. He bravely resists and overcomes the temptation, Job 2:10; Job 2:10. He soon gave her an answer (for Satan spared him the use of his tongue, in hopes he would curse God with it), which showed his constant resolution to cleave to God, to keep his good thoughts of him, and not to let go his integrity. See,

      1. How he resented the temptation. He was very indignant at having such a thing mentioned to him: "What! Curse God? I abhor the thought of it. Get thee behind me, Satan." In other cases Job reasoned with his wife with a great deal of mildness, even when she was unkind to him (Job 19:17; Job 19:17): I entreated her for the children's sake of my own body. But, when she persuaded him to curse God, he was much displeased: Thou speakest as one of the foolish women speaketh. He does not call her a fool and an atheist, nor does he break out into any indecent expressions of his displeasure, as those who ar sick and sore are apt to do, and think they may be excused; but he shows her the evil of what she said, and she spoke the language of the infidels and idolaters, who, when they are hardly bestead, fret themselves, and curse their king and their God,Isaiah 8:21. We have reason to suppose that in such a pious household as Job had his wife was one that had been well affected to religion, but that now, when all their estate and comfort were gone, she could not bear the loss with that temper of mind that Job had; but that she should go about to infect his mind with her wretched distemper was a great provocation to him, and he could not forbear thus showing his resentment. Note, (1.) Those are angry and sin not who are angry only at sin and take a temptation as the greatest affront, who cannot bear those that are evil,Revelation 2:2. When Peter was a Satan to Christ he told him plainly, Thou art an offence to me. (2.) If those whom we think wise and good at any time speak that which is foolish and bad, we ought to reprove them faithfully for it and show them the evil of what they say, that we suffer not sin upon them. (3.) Temptations to curse God ought to be rejected with the greatest abhorrence, and not so much as to be parleyed with. Whoever persuades us to that must be looked upon as our enemy, to whom if we yield it is at our peril Job did not curse God and then think to come off with Adam's excuse: "The woman whom thou gavest to be with me persuaded me to do it" (Genesis 3:12), which had in it a tacit reflection on God, his ordinance and providence. No; if thou scornest, if thou cursest, thou alone shalt bear it.

      2. How he reasoned against the temptation: Shall we receive good at the hand of God, and shall we not receive evil also? Those whom we reprove we must endeavour to convince; and it is no hard matter to give a reason why we should still hold fast our integrity even when we are stripped of every thing else. He considers that, though good and evil are contraries, yet they do not come from contrary causes, but both from the hand of God (Isaiah 45:7; Lamentations 3:38), and therefore that in both we must have our eye up unto him, with thankfulness for the good he sends and without fretfulness at the evil. Observe the force of his argument.

      (1.) What he argues for, not only the bearing, but the receiving of evil: Shall we not receive evil, that is, [1.] "Shall we not expect to receive it? If God give us so many good things, shall we be surprised, or think it strange, if he sometimes afflict us, when he has told us that prosperity and adversity are set the one over against the other?" 1 Peter 4:12. [2.] "Shall we not set ourselves to receive it aright?" The word signifies to receive as a gift, and denotes a pious affection and disposition of soul under our afflictions, neither despising them nor fainting under them, accounting them gifts (Philippians 1:29), accepting them as punishments of our iniquity (Leviticus 26:41), acquiescing in the will of God in them ("Let him do with me as seemeth him good"), and accommodating ourselves to them, as those that know how to want as well as how to abound, Philippians 4:12. When the heart is humbled and weaned, by humbling weaning providence, then we receive correction (Job 3:2) and take up our cross.

      (2.) What he argues from: "Shall we receive so much good as has come to us from the hand of God during all those years of peace and prosperity that we have lived, and shall we not now receive evil, when God thinks fit to lay it on us?" Note, The consideration of the mercies we receive from God, both past and present, should make us receive our afflictions with a suitable disposition of spirit. If we receive our share of the common good in the seven years of plenty, shall we not receive our share of the common evil in the years of famine? Qui sentit commodum, sentire debet et onus--he who feels the privilege, should prepare for the privation. If we have so much that pleases us, why should we not be content with that which pleases God? If we receive so many comforts, shall we not receive some afflictions, which will serve as foils to our comforts, to make them the more valuable (we are taught the worth of mercies by being made to want them sometimes), and as allays to our comforts, to make them the less dangerous, to keep the balance even, and to prevent our being lifted up above measure?2 Corinthians 12:7. If we receive so much good for the body, shall we not receive some good for the soul; that is, some afflictions, by which we partake of God's holiness (Hebrews 12:10), something which, by saddening the countenance, makes the heart better? Let murmuring therefore, as well as boasting, be for ever excluded.

      IV. Thus, in a good measure, Job still held fast his integrity, and Satan's design against him was defeated: In all this did not Job sin with his lips; he not only said this well, but all he said at this time was under the government of religion and right reason. In the midst of all these grievances he did not speak a word amiss; and we have no reason to think but that he also preserved a good temper of mind, so that, though there might be some stirrings and risings of corruption in his heart, yet grace got the upper hand and he took care that the root of bitterness might not spring up to trouble him, Hebrews 12:15. The abundance of his heart was for God, produced good things, and suppressed the evil that was there, which was out-voted by the better side. If he did think any evil, yet he laid his hand upon his mouth (Proverbs 30:32), stifled the evil thought and let it go no further, by which it appeared, not only that he had true grace, but that it was strong and victorious: in short, that he had not forfeited the character of a perfect and upright man; for so he appears to be who, in the midst of such temptations, offends not in word,James 3:2; Psalms 17:3.