Job 2:1-13
With the LORD’s permission, Satan launched a new attack against Job. This time he attacks his body. This is too much for Job’s wife. "Curse God, and die," she cries — another ordeal for our patriarch. His own wife is the instrument of the Enemy to get him to curse God to His face (as Satan had vowed he would: Job 1:11; Job 2:5). But Job remains firm, receiving the evil as well as the good "at the hand of God" (v. 10; Lamentations 3:38). We, who are so often irritated by such small things, would do well to admire and imitate the example of this man of God. Our tendency is always to seize on the visible causes of our difficulties. But for Job it is not the Sabeans, nor the Chaldeans, nor even Satan, who are responsible for his misfortunes. He recognizes the hand of God behind these human agents (only he does not yet know that it is a loving hand). And we have an incomparably greater Example — the One who received everything from His Father’s hand, including the cup of God’s wrath against sin (John 18:11).
The chapter ends with a moving scene: Job and his three friends, sitting in silence for seven days in the face of unprecedented grief and in the presence of profound mystery.