Job 2:7 Commentary and Bible Study

Satan cannot act soon enough, and with malicious zeal puts his plan into immediate effect. He goes from the presence of the Lord, the God of all holiness and kindness and mercy, to execute the most cruel and ferocious plan he can think of. He is inventive and not short of ideas about how to bring Job down. It gives him pleasure not only to attack the cause of God, but to show personal hostility to believers whom he despises. Job had been beyond his reach for a long time, since God had not permitted this kind of attack until this point. Now that Job was in his hands he straight away launched this vicious attack. We see the nature of his schemes in all the evil that subsequently befalls Job, and though this is an exceptional event, yet it exposes the strategies of the devil. This is one purpose of the book.Satan does not hold back; he does not spare Job any suffering that he is capable of inflicting. His aim is to disprove that Job is a child of God, to bring conversion into disrepute, and he is given this singular opportunity. He is not going to fail if he can. God does not allow the same attack on every Christian, though some trials come to all. He proportions our trials according to our ability to bear them. So Abraham was not tested with the hardest of tests until his faith had become strong (Genesis 22). But in many respects the sufferings of Job are unique and the book teaches us many other lessons besides how to handle trials.