Job 2 – Job's Health Is Struck

Job's trial deepens from lost possessions to physical suffering.

Job 2: Job's Body Is Afflicted

Returning to the heavenly scene of Job 1, Satan argues that Job only held firm because his own body was untouched, so the LORD allows him to strike Job with painful boils from head to foot. Job's wife urges him to curse God and die, but he refuses, insisting they must accept evil from God's hand as readily as good.


Again it happened on the day when the sons of God came to present themselves before Yahweh, that Satan came also among them to present himself before Yahweh.

Yahweh said to Satan, \"Where have you come from?\" Satan answered Yahweh, and said, \"From going back and forth in the earth, and from walking up and down in it.\"

Yahweh said to Satan, \"Have you considered my servant Job? For there is none like him in 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.\"

Satan answered Yahweh, and said, \"Skin for skin. Yes, all that a man has will he give for his life.

But put forth your hand now, and touch his bone and his flesh, and he will renounce you to your face.\"

Yahweh said to Satan, \"Behold, he is in your hand. Only spare his life.\"

So Satan went forth from the presence of Yahweh, and struck Job with painful sores from the sole of his foot to his head.

He took for himself a potsherd to scrape himself with, and he sat among the ashes.

Then his wife said to him, \"Do you still maintain your integrity? Renounce God, and die.\"

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.

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.

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.

So they sat down with him on the ground seven days and seven nights, and none spoke a word to him, for they saw that his grief was very great.

Word of Job's suffering reaches three friends, Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar, who travel to comfort him but are so struck by his condition that they simply sit with him on the ground for seven silent days and nights. That patient suffering anticipates the endurance praised in <a href="/bible/web/james/chapter-1/12">James 1:12</a>, before Job finally breaks his silence in <a href="/bible/web/job/chapter-3">Job 3</a>.