Job 2:3 Commentary and Bible Study

The Lord again sets before Satan the uprightness, the fear of God, and the separation from evil which Job exhibits. The words are repeated as if to say to Satan, ‘Nothing has changed. You have done your worst, and still I put the same question to you: have you considered my servant Job? Have you considered his character, so different from your own?’ Job is at the centre of the argument recorded here between the Lord and Job. One can almost see Satan squirming as the Lord with his perfect integrity rehearses in full the four aspects of Job’s character that pleased him. Satan is deeply cynical about faith and thinks he knows what motivates someone who follows the Lord, but the book shows that it is God who knows his people and how they will respond, and he keeps them in their walk through this world. The work of grace in believers’ lives is an affront to Satan, and it will be part of his final humiliation which will add to the torment of his pride, that a creature which he regards as so far beneath him, will be exalted over him, and has something that he can never have. Of course he despises Christian virtues, and claims to want nothing to do with them, but it galls him that God prizes them so highly.But the situation is not the same, and so the Lord adds something else. Job is not the man he was the last time this question was put. He is now someone who has been through a great trial and proved his integrity by not abandoning his faith. Satan had made a prediction and that prediction was in error. He is therefore now in an even worse state as far as this argument between him and the Lord is concerned. The Lord can now add further tribute to Job because he has done even better by holding fast his faith in spite of the severe trials that Satan has engineered against him. ‘And still he holdeth fast his integrity, although thou movedst me against him, to destroy him without cause.’ We learn that although we read previously: ‘And the LORD said unto Satan, Behold, all that he hath is in thy power’, that it was the Lord who sovereignly made these things happen to Job, under Satan’s provocation. Whatever Satan’s powers may be, this passage does not give grounds to believe that he can himself cause all the extraordinary trials that Job faced in chapter 1. Yet Job has held fast his integrity. He has refused the very strong pressure he was under to see God as acting unreasonably or ceasing to worship him.This is the last opportunity Satan has to claim to be able to bring down Job. No further conversations with the Lord are recorded. The rest of the book plays out the result of the permission given below in verse 6 by the Lord, and fact that Satan has nothing more to say, tells us that he is conclusively refuted and utterly silenced by Job’s faith by the time we come to the end of the book. Whatever unworthy things Job says, he does not deny the Lord, and finally he repents of all his hasty words. In this argument between the Lord and Satan, Satan is proved completely and utterly wrong, and he cannot recover from this defeat.