Job 2:1–13 - When Suffering Gets Worse but God Is Still in Control (Session 5

In this verse-by-verse Bible study of Job 2:1–13, Reasoning Through the Bible continues the story of Job as Satan appears again before the Lord and receives permission to strike Job’s body, though his life is spared. This session explores how suffering intensifies in Job chapter 2 while God remains fully sovereign and in complete control.

The study highlights the contrast between chaos on earth and order in heaven, showing that while Job sees only pain, loss, and confusion, heaven remains calm under God’s rule. It also explains why Job’s suffering is still not caused by his own sin, why Satan’s attack is limited by God, and what it means that Job still holds fast to his integrity.

This episode also examines Job’s physical affliction, his wife’s painful counsel to curse God and die, and the arrival of Job’s friends, who begin by doing the one thing sufferers often need most: showing up, weeping, and sitting in silence. The passage speaks directly to believers walking through suffering, confusion, and the silence of God.

Topics in this episode include:

•  Job 2:1–13 explained 
•  Satan returns to test Job 
•  God’s sovereignty over suffering 
•  chaos on earth and order in heaven 
•  why Job’s suffering was not his fault 
•  Job’s wife and “curse God and die” 
•  God sets limits on Satan 
•  true faith in adversity 
•  how to comfort someone in suffering 

Reasoning Through the Bible is a verse-by-verse Bible teaching ministry committed to careful exposition, biblical context, and faithful application.

Transcript

Recap And Chapter Two Setup

SPEAKER_00 0:16

If you were with us last time, we saw Job chapter one, where God approached Satan and said, Have you considered my servant Job? God lets down the hedge a little and tells Satan, you can go this far, but no further. We saw Satan then attack everything around Job, and we saw Job's response. Job has passed the first of the experiences here. Now we're in Job chapter 2, and we're going to see round two of God and Satan having a conversation about Job. So the storyline might go, meanwhile, in heaven, we see what happens again with God and Satan. So Steve, can you read the first six verses of Job chapter two?

SPEAKER_01 1:04

Again, there was a day when the sons of God came to present themselves before the Lord. And Satan also came among them to present himself to the Lord. The Lord said to Satan, Where have you come from? Then Satan answered the Lord and said, From roaming about on the earth and walking around on it. The Lord said to Satan, Have you considered my servant Job? For there is no one like him on earth, a blameless and upright man, fearing God and turning away from evil, and he still holds firm to his integrity, although you incited me against him to ruin him without cause. Satan answered the Lord and said, Skin for skin, yes, all that a man has he will give for his life. However, reach out with your hand now and touch his bone and his flesh, and he will curse you to your face. So the Lord said to Satan, Behold, he is in your power, only spare his life.

Chaos On Earth Order In Heaven

SPEAKER_00 2:12

So we see God again having this conversation with Satan. This, of course, is going on in heaven, and Job sees none of this. Let's talk about what Job does see from his perspective. What is Job seeing and experiences from his sandals on earth?

SPEAKER_01 2:31

Job is experiencing personal tragedy. His sons and daughters have been taken along with their families. His livestock has been taken. His servants have been taken, his livelihood has been taken away from him. So he sees nothing but personal tragedy that's going on. And it's not extending to other people, it's something that is happening to him directly.

SPEAKER_00 2:58

From Job's perspective, there's nothing but chaos, death, destruction, and misery on the earth. In heaven, we see the exact same thing or very similar going on as back in chapter one. What is the control that God has in heaven? It's not chaos. What is it? It's order.

SPEAKER_01 3:21

It says, again, there was a day when the sons of God came to present themselves to the Lord. And then Satan came with them. So we see that there's an orderly events that are happening in heaven, and that God is presiding all of these events.

Satan Wanders Without Peace

SPEAKER_00 3:40

That's exactly it. In the earth, Job is seeing, again, nothing but chaos and death and destruction. Meanwhile, in heaven, everything is running just like it always did. God's in control, he's on the throne. All the created beings still have to parade periodically in front of him. He is in total, complete control, and nothing is happening outside of his purview. So that's one of the great lessons in the book of Job is that the blowing winds of chaos on the earth really don't affect God. God is still in total control. And we have here God acting for his purposes. Therefore, from our perspective, we may see the same thing. We may see mass death. We may see great sickness, great tragedy, great suffering. And we wonder where is God? That's going to be part of Job's question as we go through the book of where is God? But we see God on his throne in total control. Everything in heaven is happening calm and orderly. It's just Job can't see this. And that's one of the great lessons is that we should not interpret the chaos that we see with whether or not God is in control. We still see here in chapter two, all the heavenly beings are underneath God's total sovereignty. Satan can do nothing without God's permission. We have here God in complete sovereign control. And then in verse two, what does it say Satan is doing? What is he still doing? Has he found any rest or peace?

SPEAKER_01 5:23

No, it says that he is out roaming about on the earth and walking around on it. So this is something that apparently Satan is doing on a regular basis.

Job Is Blameless Without Cause

SPEAKER_00 5:35

We saw this again in chapter one. Satan gets no rest, no peace. He never sits and rests. He is continually wandering, continually going and doing. He is always uncomfortable. He is never satisfied. Without Christ, we have no peace. Satan is without Christ. He wanders forever with no peace. Those who are apart from God find no peace. They just wander. They wander through life. They wander through circumstances, but there's never any calmness there. There's never any peace. Those of us that know the Lord and have studied these passages, such as the book of Job, we know, hey, we may see some suffering and it may be quite uncomfortable for us, but we know God is in control. And we know that as long as we sit at the Lord's feet, then we will see great blessings in the end simply because he is in control. And we can take confidence that the world's not spinning outside of God's control. He's still knows what he's doing, and we can take great comfort in that. That's one of the great lessons in the book of Job is that in the midst of great chaos, we can have peace and comfort. Notice also here, Satan may go away. What did it say in chapter one? He went away and attacked Job. Well, here he is back again. He may go away, but he doesn't give up. Satan will always return to tempt, lie, steal, and destroy. From verse three, what is God's opinion of Job?

SPEAKER_01 7:19

The same one that he had in chapter one. He offers him up, says, Have you considered my servant Job? So that's the first thing is he sees Job as being a servant to him. And he says, There's no one like him on the earth, same as before, blameless, upright, fearing God, and turning away from evil. So this is the way that God sees Job, and he sees him the same as he saw him in chapter one, even though all of this tragedy has happened. At the end of chapter one, it says that Job worshiped God and didn't blame God for anything that had happened to him. And now we see God recognizing that.

SPEAKER_00 8:12

So God's opinion of Job, he repeats this: that he is blameless, upright, God-fearing, and turns from evil. It's really the third time in the book so far, in a chapter and a half, that it has repeated that. God is emphasizing that Job has maintained his integrity. The repetition of this tells us that it's trying to communicate to us that this is not Job's fault. The problems that happened to Job are not caused by Job. The repetition of the blamelessness here at the beginning is the foundation for really the entire rest of the book. Job can't understand why these things would be happening. And his friends keep trying to blame him. But we're told here again, three times in a chapter and a half by God that it is not Job's fault. He is blameless. He is upright. He shuns evil. So therefore, it is God and his purposes alone that are allowing this. At the end of verse 3, God says that Satan's attack was without a cause, is the phrase it uses. Satan's attack on Job did not have a valid reason. Satan just hated Job and wanted his destruction. Have you ever witnessed somebody who hates for no reason? Some people just seem to go through life just hating other people for no reason, just for hate. I think, Steve, we see that, do we not? I'm reminded of some crimes that get committed for no other reason than somebody just hates somebody else. There's no valid reason behind all this hate. There's just seems to be uh hate in some people that comes from a very dark source.

SPEAKER_01 10:01

Through this exchange between Satan and God, what is happening? God is offering up a servant of his that has great integrity, says that no other person on earth is like him. And what is Satan doing in return? He is challenging God's knowledge of who Job is and the relationship that he has with him. This is, I think, what's meant. And I think it's interesting here that in the latter part of verse three, God says, although you incited me against him to ruin him without cause. Now, God didn't cause any of the destruction that happened to Job in chapter one. That was all caused by Satan. What happened was that God gave all that Job owned and his family in Satan's power. That's what happened. So that's the inciting there that God did. But God didn't cause the things that happened to Job in chapter one. Satan caused all of those things. So I think it's interesting there the way it's worded as to what is happening between God and Satan. Satan, I don't think so much has a hatred for Job. He just has a hatred for God. And he wants to show that God really doesn't have these type of people that are devoted to him. After all, what was it that caused Satan to fall? Pride, we're told in Scripture. Satan wanted to be like God himself. So this caused his fall and his demise. We still see the prideful nature in Satan with this exchange with God. Yeah, Job worships you. Look at everything that you've given to him. Take all that away from him, and he will curse you. But God says in the exchange with Satan in chapter two that Job is still blameless, God fearing, turning away from evil, and he still holds firm to his integrity, it says in verse three. So who has been proven right in the first exchange in chapter one, God or Satan? And at this point, it is God who has been chosen to be right.

Skin For Skin Faith Under Threat

SPEAKER_00 12:29

Verse three again, God approaches Satan. Have you considered my servant Job? God again is the one who initiates the conversation. This is quite important in the teaching about God's sovereignty and God's purposes. Have you considered my servant Job? The next verse, verse four, Satan replies, skin for skin, yes, all that a man has he will give for his life. That phrase there, skin for skin, that Satan says, Satan was implying that Job was willing to give the life of his children for his own life. He was willing to give up other people around him and give up all these things just to save his own skin. Well, Satan thinks in those verses that all people will deny God when their life is threatened. At least that's his strong implication. Many Christians over the centuries have indeed been faced with either keeping to the confession of Christ and being martyred, being killed, or denying Christ to save their life. This has happened around the world many times. I submit that Satan is wrong. Many Christians have gone to their death rather than deny Christ. Each of us should be prepared in advance. What if somebody gives me that question? If they put a weapon to us and say, I'm going to take your life unless you deny Christ, what are we going to do? Are we going to keep to the confession and go to our death? Or are we going to deny Christ to save our own skin? And I submit that we need to think about that in advance, simply because many Christians in many countries have been faced with that exact same decision over the centuries. And as time goes on and our societies continue to degrade, we will increasingly be faced with whether or not we want to save our life to deny Christ, or whether we go to our grave confessing the Lord. Nevertheless, look at verse 6. What is God's response to this? What restriction does God impose on Satan?

SPEAKER_01 14:40

He tells Satan that he is in your power or your hand, only spare his life. Satan is insisting that Job's faith stems from self-interest, like you just pointed out. He's given up all these things in order to save his life. So now Satan is telling God, well, sure, if you now touch his life itself, he will curse you to your face. He's saying that Job doesn't have genuine devotion to God. And through this permission that God is giving him to afflict Job's uh possessions and his person, he believes, he being Satan believes that personal pain will break his commitment to God. So, in a way, Satan is revealing that adversity hitting us personally might test the quality of our faith. That's really what he's getting at with this challenge to God. So as the verses progress in chapter two, we're going to find out whether or not Job's personal quality of faith truly is affected.

Boils Ash Heap And A Bitter Test

SPEAKER_00 15:53

Note that this is the second time now that God has put a restriction on Job. In chapter one, God told him, okay, I'll lower the hedge and you can touch everything around Job, but you can't touch him. He was saying, in effect, this far and no further. Here in chapter two, he says, now you can touch Job, but you can't take his life. He is again saying, this far and no further. So now we reinforce this idea that God is in complete, total control of Satan and what Satan can do and how much freedom he has. And note this was before the cross. Nothing really changed in the relationship here between God's power and Satan's submission before the cross and after the cross. Satan was legally destroyed at the cross, but practically God always had complete sovereign control of Satan and has been since the beginning of creation. Moving on to this next section, we're going to see what happened when Satan again attacks Job. Steve, can you start at verse 7 and read through verse 10?

SPEAKER_01 17:04

Then Satan went out from the presence of the Lord and struck Job with severe boils from the sole of his foot to the top of his head. And Job took a piece of pottery to scrape himself while he was sitting in the ashes. Then his wife said to him, Do you still hold firm to your integrity? Curse God and die. But he said to her, You are speaking as one of the foolish women speaks. Shall we actually accept good from God, but not accept adversity? Despite all this, Job did not sin with his lips.

SPEAKER_00 17:43

We have here again Satan attacking Job. In this note, it is Satan that attacks Job. This is a critical part because later some of Job's friends is going to be accusing God of attacking Job. And it's very clearly Satan that's doing it. God's in total control of how far Satan can go, but the hate and the attacks are coming from Satan. The book of Job has these very vivid descriptions, very graphic emotional poetry through it. And verse 8 is one of those. It has Job scraping his oozing sores with a piece of broken pottery while sitting in an ash heap. It's just a very vivid picture of this man. It paints this very colorful, very emotional word pictures throughout the book. The Bible teaches these great spiritual truths, but can do so through great literature. So we have here this horrible picture of Job. He has oozing sores all over him. He's totally destroyed emotionally. He's sitting in an ash heap in a garbage dump, if you will. In verse 9, Steve, what advice does Job's wife give him at that point?

SPEAKER_01 19:04

Her end advice is to curse God and die, meaning that if he curses God, that God will take retribution and take his life. That is her advice to him. But prior to that, she asked him, said, Are you still holding to your integrity? In other words, are you still honoring God and worshiping God in the midst of everything that has happened? You could almost hear it in her voice of saying, Don't you realize our children have been taken from us? Everything we own has been taken from us. We don't have anything. We're destitute. Look at you. Your skin is disfigured. You have sores covering yourself. You're isolated from the others. You're out here in this ash heap, stripped of the honor that you once had. Why is it that you're choosing to hold on to your integrity? Meaning, why is it that you're choosing to still honor God? What's the advice she gives him? Just curse God and get it over with.

SPEAKER_00 20:10

What I think of with this passage, Steve, is the relationship really between a husband and a wife and what's needed there. On one hand, we can give Job's wife a little bit of slack because she lost her 10 children as well. But on the other hand, this was a time when he really needed her and she made it worse. A man encounters a lot of stress and pressure from the world. It's difficult to make a living. Jobs and careers are very stressful, very difficult, has a lot of stress, and the husbands face the brunt of that on a daily basis. Men can take it. Men can take a lot of stress and pressure from the world, but what they need is a wife that's going to make a safe place for them to come home to. They need a wife that's going to show them some respect because a man does not get respect from the world. A man gets challenges, they get abused, they get emotionally stressed, sometimes physically, they feel emotionally beat up as they go through all of this worldly stress and pressure during the workday. And when they come home, they need a wife that can relieve that pressure. Ephesians 5.33 says wives should respect their husband. A husband often gets no respect when he's out into the world and needs a wife that can give him respect when he gets home. Some wives are going to say, My husband does not deserve respect. Well, he may not, but the biblical command was to show him respect anyway. Job is as low as he can be, as low as he can go. He's physically. Emotionally destroyed, he's sitting on an ash heap, and his wife comes along and emotionally steps on him. The one person that Job thought he could depend on tries to crush him when he's down. Job's wife told him to curse God and die, which is exactly what Satan wanted Job to do. Satan had wagered God that Job would curse him to his face, knowingly or not, Job's wife was contributing to Satan's cause. She was doing Satan's bidding. Sometimes the people closest to us can have the worst advice. While we can seek guidance from godly people, all of us should follow God's commands and the leading of the Holy Spirit. This was a time when Job's wife could have supported him and shown him some compassion, and she made it worse. We also now should focus a little bit on this idea of taking one's life. Now, Steve, I'm not a counselor. I don't pretend to be. It's not one of my gifts here. It's not one of my talents. But right now, that's what she's almost advising him to do is to go and take his own life. I don't pretend to understand all of the emotional things that would be involved in suicide, but I do know it's not an answer. The situations I've heard about, I've had some extended family encounters with suicide, and it always makes it worse. And I always counsel people if that ever comes into your head, then seek godly counsel. That's what pastors are for. Steve, I just see this last little dig here from Job's wife as being sort of the last straw. It makes Job as low as he can go.

SPEAKER_01 23:49

She's really abandoning him. She's questioning his persistence in holding on to God. You've got the feel for Job from a perspective of everything that's happening to him. And yes, she has been affected in this tragedy as well. But Job now has been taken to a next level to where he himself is personally being affected. And it's not just something minor, it is boils all over him from head to feet that is affecting him. So he's got this physical pain going on. He's got this mental pain that's going on, wondering why this is happening to him, even though he has this great relationship with God. And now his wife comes along and essentially is abandoning him at this time of need that he has, asking him, why are you continuing to wanting to hold on to this relationship with God? Why not just go ahead and curse him and get it over with? So, yes, it is a time where Job is at his deepest, darkest point, it seems. It's a teaching moment, I think, from us, Glenn, that true faith persists during both good and bad times. And that we recognize, as we talked about in last session, that God gives and yet God can take away from us. Job can't control these circumstances that is happening to him, but he can control to choose to continue to honor God in the response that he gives back. And it seems like his wife has abandoned this. So whenever we're at the depths of despair, whenever we're at our lowest point, whenever we get some advice from someone that, oh, you just need to just go ahead and take care of it and exit this world, no, that's not the response that we should have. And it's not the response that Job gives. The response to his wife is, you're just speaking as one of the foolish women speak. In other words, you're just talking about the same thing and giving the advice that other women would give, other in your circle would give that don't have a relationship with God. How is it that we can actually accept good from God, but not accept the adversity? So we see that Job actually kind of has this viewpoint that there seems to be that there's going to be adversity that comes in our life from time to time, and that we need to understand that when that comes, we should still stay faithful to God.

Friends Who Comfort By Silence

SPEAKER_00 26:32

Again, if you're ever in a spot where there's a dark cloud that you can't see your way out of, suicide is never the answer. It always makes it worse. If you're in such a spot, reach out to a local pastor or Christian counselor. That's what they're there for. I'd like to go ahead and read these last few verses in chapter two. We see now our friends here, or at least Job's friends, that show up, and we're going to meet them now. I'm starting in Job 2, 11. Now, when Job's three friends heard of all this adversity that had come upon him, they came each one from his own place: Eliphaz the Temanite, Bildad the Shuhite, and Zophar the Naamathite. And they made an appointment together to come to sympathize with him and comfort him. When they lifted up their eyes at a distance and did not recognize him, they raised their voices and wept, and each of them tore his robe and they threw dust over their heads towards the sky. Then they sat down on the ground with him for seven days and seven nights, with no one speaking a word to him, for they saw that his pain was very great. So, Steve, what did these friends do when they first saw Job?

SPEAKER_01 27:45

When they first saw him, they had sympathy for him, and they wanted to join along with him in his lament. They too put the ashes over their head. They initially wanted to comfort Job as they approached him.

SPEAKER_00 28:01

So they showed empathy to him. Job was in such a bad shape physically and emotionally that they didn't even recognize him. But they showed empathy to him. They at first cried with him and sat down and didn't say a word for seven days. That is the part where I think they were in the right. And this is really the only spot in the whole book where they did something that was right. But really, there's nothing to say when someone has gone through great tragedy. As we're going to see, their their talking made it worse. They should have stopped here and they would have remained great friends. The ulcers on his body and the depression from losing his family and his wealth made him almost unrecognizable. This was no small affliction. When his friends came, they showed empathy. They sat down and tried their best to show him that they felt some of his pain. When someone has a tragedy, often they do not need advice. They just need a friend to come and be with them, just to sit with them. If they would have remained silent and stopped here, they would have stayed friends. But Steve, as we're going to see as we go through this book, they don't stop here and they actually make things worse as we go on through the book.

SPEAKER_01 29:16

You know, Glenn, we're told in the New Testament that Christians should love one another. We're to love them in a special way, and that we're called to comfort one another whenever we come across these type of tragedies in our fellow Christians' life and identify with them. So we have this example here at the last part of chapter two of Job's friends showing that and sitting down with him and comforting him. But then we're going to find out a little bit later that they're going to have a little bit of a difference of heart.

SPEAKER_00 29:49

Hope you're with us next time because we're into the poetic part. We're going to see Job's Lament next time. Thank you so much for watching and listening.

SPEAKER_01 29:57

May God bless you.