Job 2:7

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.