Study Desk

In every province and every city, wherever the king’s command and his law reached, joy and rejoicing took place among the Jews. There was a celebration and a holiday. And many of the ethnic groups of the land professed themselves to be Jews because fear of the Jews had overcome them.

For Mordecai exercised great power in the palace, and his fame spread throughout the provinces as he became more and more powerful.

But when the matter was brought before the king, he commanded by letter that the evil plan Haman had devised against the Jews return on his own head and that he should be hanged with his sons on the gallows.

All of his powerful and magnificent accomplishments and the detailed account of Mordecai’s great rank with which the king had honored him, have they not been written in the Book of the Historical Events of the Kings of Media and Persia?

Mordecai the Jew was second only to King Ahasuerus. He was famous among the Jews and highly esteemed by many of his relatives. He continued to pursue prosperity for his people and to speak for the well-being of all his descendants.

His estate included seven thousand sheep and goats, three thousand camels, five hundred yoke of oxen, five hundred female donkeys, and a very large number of servants. Job was the greatest man among all the people of the east.

His sons used to take turns having banquets at their homes. They would send an invitation to their three sisters to eat and drink with them.

Whenever a round of banqueting was over, Job would send for his children and purify them, rising early in the morning to offer burnt offerings for all of them. For Job thought, “Perhaps my children have sinned, having cursed God in their hearts.” This was Job’s regular practice.

Haven’t you placed a hedge around him, his household, and everything he owns? You have blessed the work of his hands, and his possessions have increased in the land.

Then Job stood up, tore his robe, and shaved his head. He fell to the ground and worshiped,

Then the Lord said to Satan, “Have you considered my servant Job? No one else on earth is like him, a man of perfect integrity, who fears God and turns away from evil. He still retains his integrity, even though you incited me against him, to destroy him for no good reason.”

“Skin for skin!” Satan answered the Lord. “A man will give up everything he owns in exchange for his life.

But stretch out your hand and strike his flesh and bones, and he will surely curse you to your face.”

“Very well,” the Lord told Satan, “he is in your power; only spare his life.”

So Satan left the Lord’s presence and infected Job with terrible boils from the soles of his feet to the top of his head.

His wife said to him, “Are you still holding on to your integrity? Curse God and die!”

Now when Job’s three friends—Eliphaz the Temanite, Bildad the Shuhite, and Zophar the Naamathite—heard about all this adversity that had happened to him, each of them came from his home. They met together to go and sympathize with him and comfort him.

When they looked from a distance, they could barely recognize him. They wept aloud, and each man tore his robe and threw dust into the air and on his head.

Then they sat on the ground with him seven days and nights, but no one spoke a word to him because they saw that his suffering was very intense.

Both small and great are there,and the slave is set free from his master.