Job 2:1,2

Job 2:1-10. Job's second trial and its issue: he sinned not with his lips

How long time intervened between Job's first trial and the second is not stated. The Targum seems to conjecture a year. The new trial is introduced like the first by a scene in heaven. The Council of God convenes. His ministers stand before Him, and among them the one whose office is, as the Targum says, to scrutinize the deeds of men. The Lord speaks of His servant Job with approval and with compassion, reproaching the Satan with instigating Him to bring undeserved affliction upon him. Satan's answer is ready: the trial did not touch Job near enough; safe himself, his children may perish; if the hand of God would touch him in his own bone and flesh, he would renounce Him to his face. Satan receives permission to afflict Job himself, with the reservation that he shall spare his life. Straightway Satan goes forth and smites Job with sore boils, the leprosy called Elephantiasis or botch of Egypt, Deuteronomy 28:27; Deuteronomy 28:35. The deeper affliction only opens or reveals greater deeps in Job's reverent piety. In his former trial he blessed God who took away the good He had added to naked man; this was strictly no evil: now he bows beneath His hand when He inflicts positive evil, "We receive good at the hand of God and shall we not also receive evil?" And again the Writer sums up the issue of the trial with the words, "In all this Job sinned not."