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Chapter two begins with a repeat of the scene in heaven described in chapter one. Again God is holding court, again Satan enters, again God asks where Satan has been and again Satan is evasive. Moreover, God brags on Job again and adds that Job has withstood Satan's attack without blemish. God has won the challenge. One addition is that in the first instance (1:6) it says, “Satan came also among them.” In the second instance (2:1) it says, “Satan came also among them to present himself before the LORD.” In this case, Satan has a specific mission on which to report. God is in firm control of the situation.
God is taking full responsibility for Job's afflictions. “Thou movedst me against him, to destroy him without cause” (2:3). Satan has influenced or ‘moved’ God against Job. In the Hebrew, this is ‘sûth’, which Strong defines “to prick, that is, (figuratively) stimulate; by implication to seduce” (Strong, H5496). In this, I believe that God is giving Satan more credit than he is due. In essence, God is seducing Satan into believing himself to be the determining factor. But, although Satan is actually bringing on the calamity, God says, ‘I was persuaded to destroy him without cause.’ Although Satan does the afflicting, God says that it is He who has come against Job.
Let's get rid of a current bit of theology: God's will is God's will. God's ‘permissive will’ bears no more than a semantic difference from His ‘active will’. God's will is God's intention. We could call His primary goal His active will. If, because of our recalcitrance, God must permit suffering to achieve His end goal for us, His will must follow an indirect route counter to His heart of mercy. We can call this God's permissive will. I do not desire punishment for my son, but will punish, or, for instance, permit the school to punish him, to bring him in line with my desires for him and his future. If my son says to me that the school punished him according to my permissive will, I am likely to suggest that not only did I permit it, but I desired it. The distinction is purely fictional. From the very beginning, before Adam and Eve ate from the forbidden tree, God provided for punishment. “But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die” (Gen. 2:17). “The Lord hath made all things for himself: yea, even the wicked for the day of evil” (Prov. 16:4). Satan is not only permitted to operate, but he is operating with God's complete support. It seems that this bit is the hardest for us to grasp. To look at it any other way is to reject the Bible. Satan tempts Jesus by the will of the Father. The only legitimate distinction is between the need for correction and the lack thereof. It is my highest desire that neither of my sons be required to suffer except in the cause of righteousness. The same can be said of God's desire for us.
The attempt to divide between 'permissive' and 'active' will attempts to reconcile God's actions with our human concept of right and wrong. Do I need to mention what tree that fruit hangs on? God is not shy about claiming credit for all the misery we suffer. God Himself starts the punishment with Genesis 3:14-17. Job has just gotten a very big lesson in the difference between his own will and God's will. Unfortunately it is only chapter two of our narrative and it will be chapter forty-two before the light penetrates Job's head.
I don't imagine you'll let me off that easy, however. It get's more complicated when God promises health and well-being. “Wherefore it shall come to pass, if ye hearken to these judgments, and keep, and do them, that the LORD thy God shall keep unto thee the covenant and the mercy which he sware unto thy fathers: And he will love thee, and bless thee, and multiply thee: he will also bless the fruit of thy womb, and the fruit of thy land, thy corn, and thy wine, and thine oil, the increase of thy kine, and the flocks of thy sheep, in the land which he sware unto thy fathers to give thee. Thou shalt be blessed above all people: there shall not be male or female barren among you, or among your cattle. And the LORD will take away from thee all sickness, and will put none of the evil diseases of Egypt, which thou knowest, upon thee; but will lay them upon all them that hate thee” (Deut. 7:12-15). The children of Israel immediately turned from God to worship a golden calf before forty days were up so their continued troubles would not contradict the conditional promise here. But Job, at least in his mind and the minds of his friends, is operating under a similar conditional promise. Job has been holding up his end of the bargain. We know from the narrative that his troubles are not because of crimes committed by his fathers. He legitimately has the right to ask, why am I being tormented so horribly? At this point, I hope we are all asking this question.
Make no mistake, God puts pain, sickness or other troubles into our lives if it suits His purpose for us. At first blush, the suffering of Job, seems without purpose. We will see that it serves a very real purpose in Job's life. At this point of the narrative the reason is not apparent, but will, I hope, become apparent. More than that, God is quite willing to use cruel and unusual punishment. In this case, it's not actually punishment, since Job hasn't done anything wrong, but God is being cruel to Job, in fact, He is being unusually cruel. As Job will come to discover, our human idea of justice and what is or is not called for are simply irrelevant to God. He will not listen to Job's complaint. He will not turn aside. God knows what He wants and will not turn aside until it is accomplished. I want to show that Job's suffering is serving a purpose. All too often, we won't listen and continue to suffer needlessly. Job is in this predicament. Job eventually admits to his failure to listen (42:3) when God penetrates his thick hide. But this is getting ahead of the narrative. Job has yet to complain.
Satan is ready. He is definitely not ready to concede defeat. He sneers that if God but afflict Job's flesh Job will curse God. “Skin for skin” (2:4), says Satan. If the covering of his flesh is attacked, he will curse the covering of the Lord. Apparently this expression means to give all the skins one has (animals, property, even children) to protect one's life. This sentiment is echoed: “all that a man hath will he give for his life” (2:4; see: Barnes, note on 2:4). Satan is certain that by moving directly into the outer court of Job's person, his flesh, he can break Job's faith. If the tone was capricious at the beginning, it is definitely less capricious now. Satan wants his prey.
It is often easy for Satan to dislodge the saints with a little suffering. The saint is tied in knots: ‘You must have offended God’, so the saint becomes despondent. Oswald Chambers comments, “There is a wicked inspiration in it; the thing underneath is the wickedness of desolation. Desolation is never a right thing; wrong things happen actually because things are wrong really. One of the dangers of fanaticism is to accept disaster as God's appointment, as part of His design. It is not God's design, but His permissive will” (Chambers, 1990, 22). Thankfully, God's design leaves room for the wayward path. This does not imply that there is suffering that is totally capricious. All suffering serves God. The point is that in many cases, this one in particular, it is not punishment. Job's suffering is “without cause” (2:3). The Hebrew term for ‘without cause’, is ‘chinnâm’, “from gratis, that is, devoid of cost, reason or advantage” (Strong, H2600). The understanding is that Job has done nothing to earn this great suffering. However, technically there is a cause. God and Satan are pushing the limits of Job's faith, testing him. Satan believes that he can dislodge Job. God has a deeper purpose as well. He intends to dislodge something in Job which is blocking his ability to meet God face-to-face.
God accepts Satan's new challenge, but instructs Satan that he may not kill Job. The disaster already poured out on Job is now brought to an incredible level of tribulation. If the death of his children is not personal enough, it is going to get more personal. Job must physically suffer and become a pariah. For Job, the cruelest blow yet, it the loss of his personal dignity.
Satan afflicts Job with boils all over his body so that Job is racked with pain, and must separate from his community and dwell outside the town on an ash heap. The ash heap is the dump where the refuse from cooking fires is deposited. Here he sits in misery scraping his sores with a broken bit of pottery. The sores are too loathsome to touch. As his sores were probably considered leprous (Barnes, note on 2:7) he would not have had an easy time convincing others to come to his aid, such as washing and bandaging them.
Job is now ‘down to zero’. Satan can take him no lower. Death would be a relief. “For it is a day of trouble, and of treading down, and of perplexity by the Lord God of hosts in the valley of vision, breaking down the walls, and of crying to the mountains” (Isa. 22:5). Job's case is more poignant because the seemingly frivolous reason for it is not even known. Job has lived an outstanding life before God and now stands alone and perplexed facing God's holy terror and he doesn't have a clue as to why.
Job's wife now goads him to curse God and die (2:9). She is prompting Satan's suggested course of action. This is undoubtedly Satan speaking through her by the nudge of a reasonable suggestion, much as Peter is used by Satan to try to dissuade Jesus. Discerning the actual source of the suggestion, Jesus rebukes Satan directly (Matt. 16:23; Mark 8:33). Job's wife suggests that Job's integrity is no longer of any value: “Dost thou still retain thine integrity?” (2:9). In case Job doesn't think of it himself, Satan wants him to have all the excuses for throwing in the towel. Job is unmoved. He rebukes his wife and remains steadfast in his righteousness.
Raymond Scheindlin notes that the word “foolish” in verse 10 is normally translated ‘disgraceful’, but almost all translations stay with ‘foolish’. The Amplified Bible says “impious and foolish”. And the NET Bible says, “But he replied, ‘You're talking like one of the godless women would do!’.” In defense of the King James Bible, which many translations defer to, the meaning of ‘foolish’ in 1611 was closer to the ‘foolishness’ of Proverbs, that is to refuse to hear God's wise council. Unfortunately the meanings of words do drift. I like Scheindlin's wording: “You are speaking like a disgraceful woman!” (Scheindlin, 57).
Jessie Penn-Lewis notes, Job is “a thoroughly surrendered soul”, (Penn-Lewis, 34). Even in deep affliction, he is still faithful to God. He accepts whatever God brings him, whether it be good or bad. The classic text, The Practice of the Presence of God, by Brother Lawrence, takes this surrender a step further. Brother Lawrence answers a letter asking for prayer, “I do not pray that you may be delivered from your pains, but I pray God earnestly that He would give you strength and patience to bear them as long as He pleases”, (Lawrence, 1967, 53). Like Job, Lawrence assumes that affliction is ultimately from God and therefore should be accepted. It is worth noting here that Brother Lawrence had been injured as a soldier at a young age. Damage to his sciatic nerve left him in severe pain and crippled for the rest of his life. After conversion in his early fifties, Lawrence served in the kitchen at his Carmelite monastery (Lawrence, 2002, editor's introduction).
Job's three closest friends now come to comfort him. They are clearly unprepared for the sight of total desolation that has been visited upon him. Job has become unrecognizable (2:12).
Notice that these are incredibly loyal friends. I say this, because the beliefs and fears of these friends will cause them to chastise Job severely. Before opening their mouths, they spend an entire week in a silent vigil with Job. Once the dialog begins, they will stay to the end trying to save Job. As the dialog progresses and the friends come in for some harsh criticism, it is important not to forget that they are there for Job. Although he was a man of great power and privilege, everyone he knew has abandoned him, but for these three friends who come to mourn in a traditional manner: “they lifted up their voice, and wept; and they rent every one his mantle, and sprinkled dust upon their heads toward heaven. So they sat down with him upon the ground seven days and seven nights” (2:12-13). “And when I heard this thing, I rent my garment and my mantle, and plucked off the hair of my head and of my beard, and sat down astonished” (Ezra 9:3). “And shall cause their voice to be heard against thee, and shall cry bitterly, and shall cast up dust upon their heads, they shall wallow themselves in the ashes: And they shall make themselves utterly bald for thee, and gird them with sackcloth, and they shall weep for thee with bitterness of heart and bitter wailing” (Ezek. 27:30-31).
Seven days is a common Hebrew period of cleansing. The mourning for Jacob is seven days (Gen. 50:10). The men of Jabeshgilead fast seven days after they bury Saul (1 Chron. 10:12; 1 Sam. 31:13). Although Mosaic law would not apply, since we assume Job comes before Moses and is probably not Israelite, it is interesting to note that under Levitical law one suspected of leprosy must separate themselves for seven days. If the suspect inflammation does not spread, “the priest shall pronounce him clean” (Lev. 13:21-23). As the men in this account clearly have a similar understanding of God's law and are related to Abraham, it is reasonable to assume that this seven day period was a common practice at the time. The friends may have been ready to start their rounds of criticism right away, but in deference to Job, they withhold for the traditional period.
Job, himself, is the first to break the silence.
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