Job 2: What the Passage Says

The Chapter in a Sentence

The sons of God gather before the LORD a second time, and Satan comes with them. The LORD points to Job's continued integrity; Satan says Job will curse God if his own body is struck, and the LORD allows it while forbidding Satan to take Job's life. Job is covered with painful boils, his wife tells him to curse God and die, and he refuses. Three friends (Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar) come to mourn with him and sit silently with him for seven days and nights.

Claim by Claim

1. 2:1
   • There was a day when the sons of God came to present themselves before the LORD.
   • Satan also came among them to present himself before the LORD.
2. 2:2
   • The LORD asked Satan where he had come from.
   • Satan answered the LORD.
   • Satan said he came from roaming about in the earth and from walking back and forth in it.
3. 2:3
   • The LORD asked Satan whether he had set his attention on the LORD's servant Job.
   • The LORD said there is none like Job in the earth.
   • The LORD said Job is a blameless and upright man.
   • The LORD said Job fears God.
   • The LORD said Job turns away from evil.
   • The LORD said Job still holds fast his integrity.
   • The LORD said Satan had incited him against Job.
   • The LORD said the incitement was to swallow up Job without cause.
4. 2:4
   • Satan answered the LORD.
   • Satan said, Skin for skin.
   • Satan said a man will give all that he has for his life.
5. 2:5
   • Satan told the LORD to stretch out his hand.
   • Satan told the LORD to touch Job's bone and his flesh.
   • Satan said that if the LORD did so, Job would curse the LORD to his face.
6. 2:6
   • The LORD told Satan that Job was in Satan's hand.
   • The LORD told Satan to spare Job's life.
7. 2:7
   • Satan went out from the presence of the LORD.
   • Satan struck Job with grievous boils.
   • The boils covered Job from the sole of his foot to the crown of his head.
8. 2:8
   • Job took a potsherd to scrape himself with.
   • Job sat among the ashes.
9. 2:9
   • Job's wife spoke to him.
   • Job's wife asked whether he still held fast his integrity.
   • Job's wife told him to curse God and die.
10. 2:10
    • Job answered his wife.
    • Job said she spoke as one of the foolish women speaks.
    • Job asked whether they should receive good from God and not receive evil.
    • In all this Job did not sin with his lips.
11. 2:11
    • Job's three friends heard of all this evil that had come upon him.
    • Each of them came from his own place.
    • The friends were Eliphaz the Temanite, Bildad the Shuhite, and Zophar the Naamathite.
    • They made an appointment together to come to mourn with Job and to comfort him.
12. 2:12
    • They lifted up their eyes from afar off.
    • They did not recognize Job.
    • They lifted up their voice and wept.
    • Each of them tore his robe.
    • They threw dust upon their heads toward heaven.
13. 2:13
    • They sat with Job on the ground seven days and seven nights.
    • No one spoke a word to him.
    • They did not speak because they saw that his pain was very great.

Words Worth Explaining

Every language note in this chapter, gathered. These explain what a word meant, never what it means for the reader.

2:1

"The sons of God" in the King James is a Hebrew phrase for members of the divine court (supernatural beings who attend on God the way officials attend on a king. It does not mean human sons. "Satan" here translates Hebrew *ha-satan*, "the accuser" or "the adversary": in the Hebrew it carries the definite article, so it reads as a title or office) the prosecutor of the heavenly court, rather than as a personal name. The scene repeats the assembly of chapter 1 almost word for word.

2:2

Satan's answer sounds like a scout reporting back. He has been traveling the earth, looking at what people do. In Hebrew his name means "the accuser," someone who brings charges against another person.

2:3

"Blameless" (King James "perfect") translates a Hebrew word meaning whole, sound, all of a piece (a person with no crack running through him. It does not claim Job is sinless. "Integrity" in verses 3 and 9 is from the same root. "For no reason" translates a Hebrew word meaning "for nothing, without payment") the same word the accuser used in 1:9 when he asked whether Job served God "for nothing." The question of who is getting something for nothing runs through both scenes.

2:4

"Skin for skin" appears to be a proverb, and its exact sense is not recoverable; it is not explained anywhere else in the Bible. It has been read as a trader's phrase, one hide swapped for another of equal worth, with the point being either that Job will trade anything, even someone else's skin, to save his own, or that what Job has lost so far cost him nothing that touched his own body. The second half of the verse gives the argument plainly: a man will pay everything for his life.

2:5

"His bones and his flesh" is a Hebrew way of saying a person's own body, his very self, as opposed to his property and children, which is all the accuser was permitted to touch in chapter 1.

2:6

"He is in thine hand" means Job is in Satan's power now. God sets one limit: Satan may not kill him.

2:7

The Hebrew word covers a range of inflamed skin eruptions; the same word is used of one of the plagues on Egypt and of a disease threatened in the law. No specific modern diagnosis can be recovered from it. "From the soles of his feet to the top of his head" is a stock phrase meaning completely, head to toe.

2:8

A potsherd is a fragment of a smashed clay jar, the commonest piece of rubbish in an ancient town, and hard enough to use as a scraper. The ashes are an ash heap: the tip outside a settlement where hearth ash and refuse were dumped. Sitting in ash or dust was also a standard posture of mourning and humiliation, so the detail says both where he is and what state he is in.

2:9

The Hebrew verb here is actually "bless." Scribes appear to have substituted "bless" for "curse" where the object was God, to avoid writing the words out; the same substitution occurs in 1:5, 1:11 and 2:5. Translators render the intended sense, "curse." His wife's line is also open in Hebrew as to its force, bitter advice to end it, or a challenge to see whether his integrity can survive being spoken against.

2:10

"Foolish" here is not stupidity but moral senselessness, the Hebrew word describes a person who lives as though there were no God and no consequences. It is an accusation about character, not intelligence. Note that Job says she is *talking* like such a woman, not that she is one. "Job did not sin in what he said" is the narrator's verdict, and the qualification "with his lips" is in the Hebrew: it rules out his speech, and says nothing about his thoughts.

2:11

The three friends are foreigners, like Job himself, and their homelands are places east and southeast of Israel. Teman was a district of Edom with a reputation for wisdom. Shuah and Naamah are less certainly located, somewhere in the same desert region. Placing all four men outside Israel keeps the book's argument general: this is a debate about God and suffering, not about Israel's law or history. Coming to "grieve with him and comfort him" was a recognized social duty, with expected forms of behavior, which is what the next verse describes.

2:12

Tearing one's outer robe and putting dust or earth on the head were the customary public signs of grief in this world, visible, deliberate acts performed in company, not private breakdown. The friends do for Job what mourners did for the dead.

2:13

Seven days and seven nights was the standard mourning period for a death. By sitting it out beside a living man they treat him as though he were already being buried. Staying silent was also the convention: the visitor waited for the sufferer to speak first, which is exactly what happens when Job opens his mouth in the next chapter.