Satan Smites Job’s Person
After this great proof and triumph of Job’s faith in God, his love and his submission, there came another gathering of the “sons of God,” before the Lord of Heaven. Again came Satan from his “going to and fro in the earth.” The Lord spake to the Adversary with joy and pleasure at Job’s vindication from Satan’s malicious sneer. Then Satan answered with those blackest words of coarse materialism. He declared that no spiritual sufferings were so great as those of the body. Emotions he ranked as shadows. “Skin for skin, yea, all that a man hath will he give for his life.” This expresses an Eastern proverb: the wealth of those days was counted in animals; and all of these animals’ skins, according to Satan, would a man give up rather than have his own skin, his own body injured.
The Lord, said the Evil One, had not tested Job far enough. “But put forth thine hand now, and touch his bone and his flesh, and he will curse thee to thy face.” So God bade Satan try Job with physical affliction; and Satan, savagely accepting the mission, smote Job with an eruption of most painful boils.
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