Job – Part 2

Job chapter 2 finds Job in a similar predicament that chapter one did. God’s in heaven, Satan comes before him, God mentions how great Job is and how he “still maintains his integrity, though you incited me against him to ruin him without any reason.” Satan is a wily devil – he likes to test people and make them turn their backs on God and so he claims to God that “a man will give all he has for his own life.” In other words Satan is convinced that the only reason Job is still blameless before God is because he still had his health. God gives Satan permission to do what he wants to Job AS LONG AS his life is spared. Things have just gone from bad to worse.

If you remember in Job 1, Job lost a ton of stuff – animals, servants, and family. He shaved his head and is sitting naked worshiping God. This torment isn’t enough for Satan and he now comes and afflicts Job with painful sores from the soles of his feet to the top of his head. Job takes a piece of broken pottery in order to….scrape himself as he sits among the ashes. Ouch! It seems that the pain of scraping himself somehow lessened the pain of the sores and he does this while sitting in ashes. Pretty soon, a new character comes into the picture (and we’re going to meet a few more in a minute) – his wife! She looks at him and tells hims to curse God and die!! What a support! He answers by telling him that she’s foolish because “should we accept good from God, and not trouble?” There he goes again: God gives and takes away, he gives us good and trouble!”

Job’s wife wasn’t the only one around though, he had three friends: Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar. When they heard about the troubles Job was having, they had a pow-wow and thought it would be nice go to comfort and sympathize with Job. They all traveled together to where Job was but when they saw him, they couldn’t hardly recognize him. They were really good friends of Job and when they saw how bad Job was, they began to cry, tear their robes, and sprinkled dust on their heads! On a side note, these old testament people tore their robes as a sign of shame, humility, and sadness (I can almost picture Hulk Hogan ripping of his shirt whenever I read about them tearing their robes. Don’t know if it’s accurate, but…). These buddies of Job’s sat down on the ground with him for seven days and nights and didn’t say a word cause they could see how much he was suffering.

There’s more to come! Stay tuned for what happens next!