Again Satan came among the angels before God who anew directed His attention to Job. Satan now said that man, and particularly Job, would give anything to keep his life; if his bone and ins flesh were touched, Satan was sure job would do as he said before.—-would curse God to His face. And God, who had great purposes of blessing in view for Job now put him again into Satan's hands, except as to his life.
Of all that had been said in the presence of God about himself, Job knew nothing, of course. He only felt the heaviness of the trials laid upon him, but he would not, did not, sin.
Satan smote Job with a grievous botch, a dreadful disease touching every part of his skin from head to foot, and he took a potsherd, a fragment of pottery, to scrape himself with, and sat among the ashes. What a pitiful object he must have been, and what a contrast there was from what he had been not long before!
His wife, angry with God because of His allowing her husband to be so tried, bade him curse God—the thing Satan hoped for. But Job would not; they had received good from Him should they not receive evil, also?
Satan, twice defeated, is heard of no more in connection with Job; he had taken away everything on which in his poor opinion Job's piety was built, and the poor man was only acknowledging God in his calamities; his devotion to God only shone out more clearly.
But if Satan was through with Job, God was not. The depths of his heart were not reached, nor the full lesson learned; he did not know what he was in himself, what the first part of Rom. 7:1818For I know that in me (that is, in my flesh,) dwelleth no good thing: for to will is present with me; but how to perform that which is good I find not. (Romans 7:18) expresses; he had never been really in the presence of God, hut see his words in chapter 42:5-6, when his lesson was truly learned. As yet, though a pious man, his conscience had not been duly exercised before God, and true peace and the love of God were not known and enjoyed.
God now proceeds to work upon Job through three men,—three friends of Job who, having heard what had befallen him, came to sympathize with and comfort him. When the three friends saw him from the distance, they wept aloud, tore their clothes in their grief, and sprinkled dust on their heads. Finally sitting down with Job on the ground for seven days and seven nights, they said not a word to him, seeing how great his anguish was, and surely it was great!