Year 2, Day 96: Job 2

God vs. Satan 2.0

Job  2 ends the contest between Satan and God.  I know, it seems like it just began. But halfway through this chapter we have the defeat of Satan’s plan.  Let’s explore this a little.

Satan comes before God and they have a very familiar exchange.  God again points Job out to Satan.  Satan tells God that so long as God keeps up the hedge of protection against Job, Job will praise God.  But if God drops the hedge of protection, Satan is sure Job will curse God. 

Parenthetically, it makes sense for God to keep the hedge around Job’s life.  If Satan kills Job, then Job cannot respond and we wouldn’t be able to know how he would have reacted.  Had Satan killed Job – or been able to – the conversation between God and Satan would have been moot.

Therefore, Job’s life is cursed.  His health is cursed.  His body breaks out in boils.  In other verses within Job we get more of the picture: sleeplessness (7:4), depression (7:16; 30:15), dimmed eyesight (16:16), putrid breath (19:17), rotting teeth (19:20), emaciation (19:20), and exhausting fevers (30:30).  His life has been destroyed and now his health tanks.  Yet in all of this Job does not sin with his mouth.

This is where Satan loses.  Satan says to God that if Job is unprotected he will curse God to his face.  Job doesn’t.  Satan loses.  Satan has been able to afflict Job in every dimension short of killing him, yet Job remains in a positive relationship with God.  Satan has lost the bet, proving that he doesn’t know everything that he thinks that he does.

Keep in mind that all throughout the Bible Satan’s main goal is to destroy the relationship between humanity and God.  In Genesis we are told about Satan’s work in the Garden of Eden.  Here we see Satan willing to toss away a human life to prove his point to God – a point that is false.  In Peter’s letters in the New Testament we are told that Satan is a roaring lion seeking any life that he can devour.  Satan’s thrust of work is to destroy the relationship between humanity and God.  Thanks be to God that he doesn’t win and God is stronger than Satan.

Job’s Wife

This brings us to Job’s wife.  I mourn for Job in this respect.  When Job is down, what character does his wife prove?  She says, “Curse God and die.”  She shows that her perspective is in the world, not above.  She doesn’t understand what Job understands.  She doesn’t understand that nothing is worth compromising the eternal.  No amount of hardship in this life is worth cursing God.

This makes me think about the world.  How many times do we hear of human beings cursing God for the events in our lives?  How many times have I come to the brink of being angry with God and making false accusations against God because of the way that my life was unfolding for a time?  Yet, in the end, is any event in this life worth risking the eternal?  Is any circumstance in this life so big that God cannot redeem it in the life to come?  Is there any condition in this world that is so offensive that we cannot put up with it or tolerate it for the sake of God?  I know.  That’s a really high bar to set.  Trust me, I get it.  But it is the bar that is set by the story of Job here.  Nothing is so big that it is worth going against God.

Job’s Friends

Then we get Job’s friends.  When they see Job, they don’t recognize him.  They mourn and wail for him.  But they don’t have anything to say.  They spend seven days with Job without having a thing to say to him.

There is great wisdom in this.  They have nothing to say to him, so they don’t say anything.  They simply are present with him.  How many times do human beings feel like they don’t have something to say and thus they say anything just to say something – usually with disastrous results?  In fact, keep this in mind as we read through the rest of the book.  How might the lives of the friends been better if they had just kept their mouth shut in order to learn rather than trying to solve Job’s problems and speak out against God’s wisdom?

There is a time and a place for speaking.  But trying to incorrectly explain God’s ways is not good.  Neither is speaking out against God.  I don’t know about you, but I could stand to learn a bit better when to open my mouth and when to keep it shut and simply minister in presence.

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