And Jehovah said to Satan, Behold, he is in thy hand; only spare his life.
Job has already lost his wealth, his servants and his children — and he still worshipped. Now Satan comes back and asks for Job's body. God's answer gives him permission and a limit in the same breath.
Satan does not act on his own here. He has to ask. What he gets is permission with a fixed limit at each stage.
In Job's case we see Satan using many means to bring extraordinary affliction on Job, and always under God's permission. Even here Satan is strictly limited. In the first trial he may not touch Job himself (ch. 1:12). At the second trial he may afflict Job's body, but he may not touch his life (2:6). So it is a mistake to credit Satan with absolute power to do as he likes.
Before any of this, Satan had complained that God kept Job fenced in. The hedge did not come down; God opened a gap in it.
He had long wanted to crush Job, but he had to admit that God had "put a hedge around him … on every side." He could not reach him until God made a gap in the hedge and let him go so far. He went as far as God allowed, and brought almost unspeakable suffering on Job. But his power had a limit.
God keeps one thing back: Job's life. The reason may not be the one we expect.
And the LORD said to Satan, "Behold, he is in your hand; only spare [literally, abstain from] his life." God held Job's life back from Satan, but not to lessen the trial. He did it so that He might triumph for the good of the afflicted man — and that is the moral of the book.
Commentators differ here. Others read the same words as tenderness, and see what the trial would teach Job.
We may be sure that divine love, as well as divine wisdom, brought this afflicted child of God under fresh attacks from Satan. We see the tenderness in the words, "spare his life." The enemy is to do everything he can, and so prove his own charge false. On the other hand, through the very trials he must face, Job will learn the lesson of all lessons, for all eternity: that God is all in all. As a step to that knowledge, he will see that he is nothing.
God grants what Satan asks. To us that can sound cruel.
God gave Satan permission to do as he pleased with Job's body, while sparing his life (v. 6). It may seem heartless of God to give such permission. But God's pure love was in it, in a way that unbelief cannot understand, and in the end it worked for greater blessing. Satan, though, did show himself heartless, for all he wanted was Job's downfall.
There is comfort in what this verse shows about Satan's reach.
And God tells Satan, "Behold, he is in your hand." What proof that Satan can do nothing against the saints of God without His permission! What a comfort this is! Satan is under God's complete control. And if God permits him to do his evil work, God has His own wise design in it. God's own love and power are on the side of His afflicted people. His own gracious faithfulness will show itself in the trial. But there is a gracious restriction. The Lord said, "Only spare his life." Satan might sift Job, but he could not touch his life, for the lives of God's people are in the hand of the Lord.
One writer sets Job beside the believers at Smyrna, a church facing death for their faith.
Satan might test Job, but God set a limit: "Behold, he is in your hand; only spare his life." (Job 2:6.) Here there is no such limit. They were to be "faithful unto death." God promises them no rescue on this side of the grave. And why? Because a believer now knows Christ not only as able to save from death, but as having triumphed over death. … The death of the body is only a door leading into Christ's presence.
Satan asked for this second round to prove that Job's faith was a pretence. He got everything he asked for and lost anyway.
So I get this fact: everything Satan did against Job failed. The one thing it did was clear Job of Satan's accusation and the charge of hypocrisy. Satan did all he could do, but he could do no more than God allowed.
- Permitted — Satan reaches Job only because God allows it. He never breaks through the hedge; God opens it.
- Limited — the permission stops at Job's life. Satan can do his worst and still no more.
- Purposeful — sparing Job's life keeps him in the trial, so that God may triumph for the sufferer's good.
- Loving — what looks heartless is God's love working toward greater blessing. Satan wants only Job's ruin.
- Defeated — every blow Satan struck failed. It only cleared Job of the charge that his devotion was a pretence.
And Satan went forth from the presence of Jehovah; and he smote Job with a grievous botch from the sole of his foot unto his crown.
This time the blow falls on Job's own body, not on his property or family, and it comes from Satan's hand — but only after God has spoken. Why would God hand His own servant over to the accuser, and what is left of Job once even his health is gone?
Satan looks like the one who starts all this. One writer points further back:
Note carefully here that the spring and source of all these dealings is not Satan's accusations, but God Himself. God knew what His servant Job needed. He Himself brings forward Job's case and sets everything in motion. If He asks Satan whether he had considered His servant Job, it is because He Himself had. Satan is only an instrument, ignorant though clever, and God uses him to bring about His purposes of grace.
The blow is severe, but it stops where God set the limit. Both rounds of Job's suffering had a boundary fixed in advance:
In the case of Job we see Satan, under God's permission, using various means for Job's extraordinary affliction. But even here Satan is strictly limited. At first he may not touch Job's body at all (ch. 1:12). Then at the second trial, when God allows him to afflict Job's body, he may not touch his life (2:6). It is therefore a mistake to credit Satan with absolute power to do as he pleases.
The text names the sores but not the disease. Commentators differ on what it was, and every guess is grim:
It is not necessary for us to know the exact nature of the disease that fell upon Job. Some have thought it was leprosy, the most hopeless, loathsome and deadly of all human afflictions. Others have named it elephantiasis, a repulsive and terrible disease in which every part of the body is affected. It twists and swells the limbs, which is how the disease got its name. It also spreads rotting inflammation through the whole body.
The next verse shows him sitting in ashes, scraping himself with a piece of broken pottery. One writer finds meaning in both details:
Apart from what God has revealed, how wretched and hopeless Job's condition was! Anyone who knew him in his days of prosperity would not have recognised him in the utter misery of his present state, sitting in ashes and scraping himself with a piece of broken pottery? The ashes suggest his mourning for his losses, especially his bereavement. The broken piece of pottery might well picture his own broken condition.
The reader watches the exchange in heaven; Job never does. One writer says much of the book's value rests on that silence:
A main part of the profit this book gives depends on this: God made both His own estimate and Satan's trial known only in heaven. The reason for the trial stayed a secret for the present — a secret not there, but here. Neither Job nor his friends knew anything of what God had said about him. Satan knew well, but he could not conceive of suffering integrity that had no self-interest in it.
Job holds firm under the sores, and Satan's charge collapses. Yet the story does not end there. God had a deeper aim in the trial:
This point is, to a very great extent, the key to the entire book of Job. The Divine object was to expose to Job's view the depths of his own heart. In that way he might learn to delight in the grace and mercy of God and not in his own goodness. His own goodness was like a morning cloud and the early dew that passes away. Job was a true saint of God, and all Satan's accusations were flung back in his face. But all the while Job was unbroken material, and so he was not ready for "the end of the Lord" — that blessed end for every repentant heart, an end marked by pity and tender mercy.
Satan can reach the body itself. But this is the last we see of him in the book:
We may wonder how Satan has the ability to strike a man with painful boils from the sole of his foot to the crown of his head (v. 7). But this does show that Satan can cause physical illness as well as spreading spiritual falsehood. He will use all of these to the fullest advantage he can. But thank God, Satan cannot steal away the faith of the child of God! In fact, when Satan has done his worst, he vanishes from the scene, for we read no more about him in this book.
- Source — The dealings begin with God, not with the accuser; Satan is an instrument, and an ignorant one.
- Limit — God fenced that instrument in both times: first Satan could not touch Job's body, then he could not touch Job's life.
- Body — Within that fence the blow is total, from sole to crown, leaving him in ashes with a piece of broken pottery.
- Silence — Job is never told the reason; the heavenly conversation stays a secret to him and to his friends.
- Purpose — Endurance alone would only have fed Job's self-confidence. God's aim was to show Job his own heart, so that he would rest in God's mercy and not in his own goodness.