Shall We Not Receive Evil?

The second test begins like the first. Yahweh again asks Satan whether he has considered His servant Job, and adds that Job still maintains his integrity, although Satan incited Him against Job to ruin him without cause. Satan answers, Skin for skin. He says that if God touches Job's bone and flesh, Job will renounce Him to His face. Yahweh says, Behold, he is in your hand. Only spare his life.

Satan strikes Job with painful sores from the sole of his foot to his head. Job sits among the ashes, scraping himself with a potsherd. His wife asks whether he still holds to his integrity and tells him to renounce God and die. Job answers that she speaks as one of the foolish women would speak. What? Shall we receive good at the hand of God, and shall we not receive evil? In all this Job didn't sin with his lips. Satan's claim about Job has failed a second time.

Eliphaz the Temanite, Bildad the Shuhite, and Zophar the Naamathite hear of Job's trouble and make an appointment together to sympathize with him and comfort him. They do not recognize him from a distance. They raise their voices and weep, tear their robes, and sprinkle dust on their heads toward the sky. Then they sit with him on the ground seven days and seven nights, and no one speaks a word, for they see that his grief is very great. Later their many words will go wrong, but their first silence shows real sympathy.