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Job 2

Job’s bodily suffering tests Satan’s claim that faith depends on self-preservation, while his friends confront grief too great for words.

Satan appears again before YHWH and challenges Job’s integrity, claiming that bodily suffering will make him renounce God. YHWH permits an attack on Job’s health while forbidding Satan to take his life. Covered in painful sores, Job sits among ashes and scrapes himself with a potsherd. His wife urges him to renounce God, but he refuses. Three friends arrive to comfort him, weep at his condition, and share seven days of silence on the ground.

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1Again, on the day when God’s sons came to present themselves before the LORD, Satan came also among them to present himself before the LORD.
2The LORD said to Satan, “Where have you come from?” Satan answered the LORD, and said, “From going back and forth on the earth, and from walking up and down in it.”
3The LORD said to Satan, “Have you considered my servant Job? For there is no one like him on 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.”
4Satan answered the LORD, and said, “Skin for skin. Yes, all that a man has he will give for his life.
5But stretch out your hand now, and touch his bone and his flesh, and he will renounce you to your face.”
6The LORD said to Satan, “Behold, he is in your hand. Only spare his life.”
7So Satan went out from the presence of the LORD, and struck Job with painful sores from the sole of his foot to his head.
8He took for himself a potsherd to scrape himself with, and he sat among the ashes.
9Then his wife said to him, “Do you still maintain your integrity? Renounce God, and die.”
10But 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.
11Now 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.
12When 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.
13So they sat down with him on the ground seven days and seven nights, and no one spoke a word to him, for they saw that his grief was very great.
World English BibleRead in NIV in Psalmlog →Highlighted verses are the most connected.
Key verses
Job 2:2Satan’s report of roaming the earth sets the scene for another challenge to Job’s integrity before YHWH.
Job 2:4Satan claims that preserving his own life matters more to Job than remaining faithful to God.
Job 2:10Job refuses to renounce God amid suffering, and the narrator affirms that his words contain no sin.
Where this chapter reaches

The roaming Satan shares a motif with 1 Peter’s picture of the devil prowling in search of someone to devour. James names Job as an example of endurance, linking his response under suffering with steadfastness through trials.

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Notice

After reading the whole chapter

How does God’s description of Job challenge the way you understand suffering?

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What do you notice about the friends’ silence and their choice to share Job’s place on the ground?

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Questions people ask about Job 2

Why did God allow Satan to afflict Job?

The chapter presents Satan’s claim that Job will abandon God if his own body suffers. God permits the test while setting a limit: Job’s life must be spared. God also affirms Job’s integrity and says his ruin is without cause. The scene offers no complete explanation of why God permits suffering.

What does Job mean by receiving evil from God in Job 2:10?

Here, evil refers to the calamity Job suffers. His reply concerns receiving suffering as well as good from God’s hand. The narrative identifies Satan as the one who strikes him, acting within God’s permission. It then states that Job did not sin with his lips.

Why did Job’s friends stay silent for seven days?

The text gives their reason: they saw that Job’s grief was very great. They had come to sympathize with him and comfort him, and his appearance shocked them. Their tears, torn robes, dust, and silence express mourning. At this point, they offer no explanation for his suffering.

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Job · 42 chapters
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What the Bible says about grief →

Cross-reference data from OpenBible.info (CC BY). Scripture from the World English Bible (public domain). Arc diagram after Chris Harrison and Christoph Römhild (2007).