Job's trial, however, was not completed, as we have seen, when his
property was removed. When the LORD challenged Satan a second time:
"Hast thou considered my servant Job ... ?" Satan has no word of
commendation, but a further insinuation: "Skin for skin, yea, all
that a man hath will he give for his life ... touch his bone and his
flesh, and he will curse Thee to Thy face." Receiving further
permission to afflict him bodily, but with the charge withal to save
his life, Satan went forth from the presence of the LORD, and smote
Job with sore boils from the sole of his foot to his crown.
The pain of his disease, the loathsomeness of his appearance, must
have been very great; when his friends came to see him they knew him
not. His skin was broken and had become loathsome; his flesh was
clothed with worms and clods of dust. Days of vanity and wearisome
nights followed in sad succession; his rest at night was scared by
dreams and terrified through visions; so that, without ease or
respite, strangling would have been a relief to him, and death chosen
rather than life. But of death there was no danger, for Satan had
been charged not to touch his life.
His kinsfolk failed him, and his familiar friends seem to have
forgotten him. Those who dwelt in his house counted him as a
stranger, and his servant gave no answer to his call when he
entreated help from him. Nay, worse than all, his own wife turned
from him, and in his grief he exclaimed: "My breath is strange to my
wife, though I entreated for the children's sake of mine own body."
No wonder that those who looked on thought that GOD Himself had
become his enemy.
Yet it was not so. With a tender Father's love GOD was watching all
the time; and when the testing had lasted long enough to vindicate
the power of GOD'S grace, and to prepare Job himself for fuller
blessing, then the afflictions were taken away; and in place of the
temporary trial, songs of deliverance were vouchsafed to him.