Job 30:18

His garment was no longer a fine covering. It had become disfigured because his body was so wasted away, and the collar of his coat no longer fitted him.

His body was in such a state that only the greatest force could get his clothing changed. It clung round him as tightly as the collar of a close-fitting garment.

We do not need to know the exact nature of the disease that fell on Job. Some have thought it was leprosy, the most hopeless, disgusting and deadly of all human illnesses. Others have named it elephantiasis, a repulsive and frightening disease in which every part of the body suffers. It twists and swells the limbs, which is where its name comes from, and it spreads a rotting inflammation through the whole body.

It is all as vivid as a picture, and as repulsive. Job lays all of it at God's door. It is His great force that has wasted him away and laid his honour in the dust. He has brought him into the mire and made him as worthless as the dust and ashes he sits in. Do we hear him talking with his own soul in this time of suffering? — "Why are you cast down, O my soul, and why are you in turmoil within me? Hope in God; for I shall again praise Him, my salvation and my God" (Ps. 42:11). No. Instead of encouraging himself like that, he accuses his Maker.

It is good that he recognises this. Whatever suffering he has, and from whatever source, God is the One who has allowed it. But Job ought to have realised that God would not allow it if it was not going to be of pure blessing to Job in the end. Later he did realise the truth of Romans 8:28, "And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to His purpose."

He cries to God but is not heard. Of course God heard him, but God answers only at the right time and in the right way. Had God become cruel to him? He thought so, but it was the love of God that delayed an answer. What he considered God's hand strong against him was really the strength of God's love for him.

God had given Satan permission to do his worst, short of taking his life. With evil skill Satan reduced his body to a state of disgusting disease that, we suppose, no man has suffered before or since. In any other case the victim would have died before so much bodily trouble could build up. Let us not judge Job harshly. In such a dreadful plight as his we would likely have said far worse things than he did.

God sends the discipline to set self aside, and to bring the heart into its true relationship with Him, apart from self. So the effect of the discipline is to expose the secret workings and feelings of self. Otherwise they would never be spotted or known, and what is not known is never given up. ... Job little knew the place he held before God, or how God was preparing him, through terrible sufferings, to prove to Satan that His own estimate of him was right.