to ruin; but this child of God he tormented with affliction, and then tempted to make a bad use of his affliction. That which he aimed at, was, to make Job curse God; now here we are told what course he took both to move him to it, and move it to him; both to give him the provocation, else it would be to no purpose to urge him to it, and to give him the information, else he would not have thought of it: thus artfully is the temptation managed with all the subtilty of the old serpent, who is here playing the same game against Job that he played against our first parents; (Gen. 3.) aiming to seduce him from his allegiance to his God, and to rob him of his integrity.
I. He provokes him to curse God, by smiting him with sore boils, and so making him a burthen to himself, v. 7, 8. The former attack was extremely violent, but Job kept his ground, bravely made good the pass, and carried the day: yet he is still but girding on the harness, there is worse behind; the clouds return after the rain; Satan, by the divine permission, follows his blow, and now deep calls unto deep.
1. The disease was very grievous with which Job was seized; Satan smote him with boils, sore boils, all over him, from head to foot; with an evil inflammation, so some render it; an erysipelas, perhaps, in a higher degree. One boil, when it is gathering, is torment enough, and gives a man abundance of pain and uneasiness. What a condition was Job then in, that had boils all over him, and no part free, and those of as raging a heat as the Devil could make them, and, as it were, set on fire of hell! The small-pox is a very grievous and painful disease, and would be much more terrible than it is, but that we know the extremity of it ordinarily lasts but a few days; how grievous then was Job's disease, who was smitten all over with sore boils or grievous ulcers, which make him sick at heart, put him to exquisite torture, and to spread themselves over him, that he could lay himself no way for any ease. If at any time we be exercised with sore and grievous distempers, let us not think ourselves dealt with any otherwise than as God has sometimes dealt with the best of his saints and servants. We know not how much Satan may have a hand (by divine permission) in the diseases with which the children of men, and especially the children of God, are afflicted; what infections that prince of the air may spread, what inflammations may come from that fiery serpent. We read of one whom Satan had bound many years, Luke xiii. 16. Should God suffer that roaring lion to have his will against any of us, how miserable would he soon make us!
2. His management of himself, in this distemper, was very strange, v. 8.
(1.) Instead of healing salves he took a potsherd, a piece of a broken pitcher, to scrape himself withal: a very sad pass this poor man was come to. When a man is sick and sore, he may bear it the better, if he be well tended and carefully looked after: many rich people have, with a soft and tender hand, charitably ministered to the poor in such a condition as this; even Lazarus had some ease from the tongues of the dogs that came and licked his sores; but poor Job has no help afforded him. [1.] Nothing is done to his sores but what he does himself, with his own hands. His children and servants are all dead, his wife unkind, ch. xix. 17. He has not wherewithal to fee a physician, or surgeon; and, which is most sad of all, none of those he had formerly been kind to had so much sense of honour and gratitude as to minister to him in his distress, and lend him a hand to dress or wipe his running sores, either because the disease was loathsome and noisome, or because they apprehended it to be infectious. Thus it was in the former days, as it will be in the last days; men were lovers of their own selves, unthankful, and without natural affection. [2.] All that he does to his sores is, to scrape them; they are not bound up with soft rags, nor mollified with ointment, not washed or kept clean: no healing plasters laid on them, no opiates, no anodynes, ministered to the poor patient, to alleviate the pain, and compose him to rest, nor any cordials to support his spirits; all the operation is the scraping of the ulcers, which, when they were come to a head, and began to die, made his body all over like a scurf, as is usual in the end of the small-pox. It would have been an endless thing to dress his boils one by one, he therefore resolves thus to do it by wholesale; a remedy which one would think as bad as the disease. [3.] He has nothing to do this with but a potsherd, no surgeon's instrument proper for the purpose, but that which would rather rake into his wounds, and add to his pain, than give him any ease. People that are sick and sore, have need to be under the discipline and direction of others, for they are often but bad managers of themselves.
(2.) Instead of reposing himself in a soft and warm bed, he sat down among the ashes. Probably he had a bed left him; (for, though his fields were stripped, we do not find that his house was burnt or plundered;) but he chose to sit in the ashes, either because he was weary of his bed, or because he would put himself into the place and posture of a penitent, who, in token of his self-abhorrence, lay in dust and ashes, ch. xlii. 6. Isa. lviii. 5. Jon. iii. 6. Thus did he humble himself under the mighty hand of God, and bring his mind to the meanness and poverty of his condition. He complains, (ch. ii. 5.) that his flesh was clothed with worms, and clods of dust; and therefore dust to dust, ashes to ashes. If God lay him among the ashes, there he will contentedly sit down; a low spirit becomes low circumstances, and will help to reconcile us to them. The Septuagint reads it, He sat down upon a dunghill without the city; (which is commonly said, in mentioning this story;) but the original says no more than that he sat in the midst of the ashes, which he might do in his own house.
II. He urges him, by the persuasions of his own wife, to curse God, v. 9. The Jews (who covet much to be wise above what is written) say that Job's wife was Dinah, Jacob's daughter: so the Chaldee paraphrase. It is not likely that she was; but, whoever it was, she was to him like Michal to David, a scoffer at his piety. She was spared to him, when the rest of his comforts were taken away, for this purpose, to be a troubler and tempter to him. If Satan leaves any thing that he has permission to take away, it is with a design of mischief. It is policy to send his temptations by the hand of those that are dear to us, as he tempted Adam by Eve, and Christ by Peter. We must therefore carefully watch, that we be not drawn to say or do a wrong thing by the influence, interest, or entreaty, of any, no not those for whose opinion and favour we have ever so great a value. Observe how strong this temptation was,
I. She banters Job for his constancy in his religion; "Dost thou still retain thine integrity? Art thou so very obstinate in thy religion, that nothing will cure thee of it? So tame and sheepish, as thus to truckle to a God, who is so far from rewarding thy services with marks of his favour, that he seems to take a pleasure in making thee miserable, strips thee, and scourges thee, without any provocation given? Is this a God to be still loved, and blessed, and served?"
Dost thou not see that thy devotion's vain?
What have thy prayers procur'd, but woe and pain?
Hast thou not yet thine int'rest understood?
Perversely righteous, and absurdly good?
