Job 2

1 The day came again when the messengers of God came to stand before the Lord, and the Accuser came in among them to stand before the Lord. [a] 2 The Lord said to the Accuser, “Where do you come from?” Then the Accuser said before the Lord, “I have been passing through what is under heaven and walking about the whole of it, and here I am.” 3 The Lord said to the Accuser, “Have you turned your mind to my servant Job? There is no one on earth like him — an innocent man, true, blameless, reverent toward God, keeping away from every evil. And he still holds on to his innocence, while you told me to destroy what he has for nothing.” [b]

4 The Accuser answered the Lord, “Skin for skin! Everything a man has he will pay out for his life. 5 Only stretch out your hand and touch his bones and his flesh — he will bless you to your face.” 6 The Lord said to the Accuser, “Look, I hand him over to you; only keep his life safe.”

7 So the Accuser went out from the Lord and struck Job with terrible sores from his feet to his head. 8 Job took a piece of broken pottery to scrape the discharge away, and he sat down on the dung heap outside the city.

9 After a long time had gone by, his wife said to him, “How long will you hold out, saying, ‘Look, I am waiting a little longer, expecting the hope of my rescue’? Look — every memory of you has been wiped off the earth: your sons and daughters, the birth pangs and the pains of my own womb, whom I wore myself out over, and all for nothing. And you yourself sit in the rot of worms, spending your nights out in the open air, while I wander and hire myself out, from place to place and from house to house, watching for the sun to go down so that I can rest from the toil and the pain that have hold of me now. Say some word against the Lord, and die.” [c] 10 But he looked at her and said, “You have spoken like one of the foolish women. If we accepted good things from the Lord’s hand, will we not bear the bad?” In all these things that happened to him, Job did not sin with his lips before God. †

11 Now when his three friends heard of all the evils that had come on him, they came to him, each from his own country: Eliphaz the king of Teman, Bildad the ruler of the Shuhites, and Zophar the king of the Minaeans. They came to him of one mind, to comfort him and to see him. [d] 12 When they saw him from a distance they did not recognize him. They cried out with a loud voice and wept, and each of them tore his own robe and sprinkled dust over himself. 13 They sat down beside him for seven days and seven nights, and not one of them said a word, because they saw that his suffering was terrible and very great.