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Commentaries and Other Bible Study Helps - Prayer Tents - Prayer Tents
2:1-10 The Second Test. This section presents the setting, dialogue, and events relating to Job's second test, which parallel the description and extend the sphere of the first test (1:6-22).
2:1-6 The Challenge in Heaven. The second glimpse of the heavenly court (Again, v. 1) deliberately echoes the first (cf. 1:6-12). Taking ultimate responsibility for Job's calamities, the Lord again fixes Satan's attention on Job's blameless and God-honoring character (2:3). Satan responds by seeking permission to attack Job himself, urging that this will reveal the insincerity of Job's devotion to God (vv. 4-5; cf. 1:9).
2:3 The Lord points out to Satan that even after all that has happened to him, Job still holds fast his integrity, a description referring to the whole of his grief, worship, and profession in 1:20-21 as a faithful response.
2:4-5 Skin for skin! It is possible that the metaphor refers to the further test Satan is about to request, namely, the permission to afflict Job's own body. However, the structure of vv. 4-5 suggests that it and the following phrase (All that a man has he will give for his life) are referring primarily to what has already happened. Satan is crassly suggesting that Job maintained his integrity because it cost him only the "skin" of his livestock and family, which he was happy to trade for his own. The next phrase begins with an explicit adversative in Hebrew (But), which contains Satan's final plea: afflict Job in his bone and his flesh and then he will surely curse God outright.
2:6 only spare his life. The sparing of Job's life is not a mercy, and not merely a concession necessary to the test, but is integral to the test. The most difficult of life's sorrows are sometimes found when even the mercy of death is denied (cf. 3:20-23; 6:9). This was the ultimate test of faith.
2:7-10 Job's Affliction and Confession. Already in a physical and emotional posture of grief (see 1:20), Job is struck with sores (2:7) and his wife's question (v. 9), to which he responds further in grief (v. 8) and trust in God (v. 10).
2:9 Although the reference to Job's wife is very brief, the content of her speech is significant for how it relates to the heavenly dialogue and for what this connection reveals about the nature of her comments. Her rhetorical question doubts the sensibility of the very thing God finds commendable about Job (Do you still hold fast your integrity? see v. 3), and her suggested response advises Job to take the action Satan was looking to provoke (Curse God and die; see 1:11; 2:4).
2:10 Job responds to his wife with a measured rebuke: he does not presume to know her heart fully, but warns her against speaking like one of the foolish women.
