Job 2

“Again there was a day when the sons of God came to present themselves before the LORD…”

Job 2:1

Again. A repeat of something that happened previously. An echo. Here we are…again. Here we go…again. Satan steps into the presence of the LORD, and God points to Job, His faithful servant, one of a kind, blameless and righteous, a man who fears God and remains a man of integrity despite crippling loss. A man who has seen trouble fly like sparks from a campfire. A man who has turned from evil, but has been unable to escape calamity and disaster. Job’s suffering is staked like a dog on a chain, coming back around again and again, pressing the limits of the chain. The Adversary levels further accusations (this is his wicked method):

“Skin for skin! All that a man has he will give for his life. But stretch out your hand and touch his bone and his flesh, and he will curse you to your face.”

Job 2:4-5

But Job doesn’t curse God. Even when Satan strikes him with terrible sores that cover his entire body. Even as he sits in ashes and scrapes his sores with a broken piece of pottery; even then Job does not curse God. And when his own wife – bone of his bone and flesh of his flesh – when she presses him to curse God, Job defends God. He responds with heavy theology, a deep belief in the foundational truth that God is God alone. He says,

“You speak as one of the foolish women would speak. Shall we receive good from God, and shall we not receive evil?”

Job 2:10

Can we pause a moment here to offer some compassion and sympathy to Job’s wife? She too has suffered great loss. She has watched the destruction of their wealth, experienced the loss of financial stability, but mostly, she has suffered the horrible pain of losing her children. She is a mother whose ten babies are buried in the dirt. These were children that she carried, nursed, cleaned, changed, fed, put to bed at night, snuggled, played with, taught, children that she raised to adulthood. She watched their footprints grow and carry them away from home. She knew where their bodies were buried when she charged Job to curse God.

She is a wife whose good, kind, righteous husband is also buried, suffocating in grief, shame, and suffering. She speaks from her anguish. Her words are wrong. Her pain is real. She hears Job’s reprimand, but her response is kept from us. We don’t get to know that part.

“Now when Job’s three friends heard of all this evil that had come upon him, they came each from his own place, Eliphaz the Temanite, Bildad the Shuhite, and Zophar the Naamathite. They made an appointment together to come to show him sympathy and comfort him.”

Job 2:11

Job’s three friends come to comfort him in all his suffering. As good friends should. We make a meal to take to a single mom. We send flowers to those grieving the death of a loved one. Cards for the weary, a phone call to a hurting friend. We gather up the spilled-out joy, the broken ambitions, and we sit within the grief of those we love. Love grows when we do this, cords are strengthened and tied. This is how community is built. Sometimes, laying foundations is quiet work. Sometimes, there are no words…

“And when they saw him from a distance, they did not recognize him. And they raised their voices and wept, and they tore their robes and sprinkled dust on their heads toward heaven. And they sat with him on the ground seven days and seven nights, and no one spoke a word to him, for they saw that his suffering was very great.”

Job 2:12-13