Job 2 Summary - 5 Minute Bible Study

Job 2 Short Summary:

After failing to turn Job’s heart away from God in Job 1, Satan told the Lord Job would abandon faith if his health was taken from him. God gave Satan permission to test his theory. Satan afflicted Job with disease and sores that covered his body, but Job’s faith remained steadfast. At the end of the chapter, Job is joined by 3 friends (Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar) who come to comfort him.

Job 2 Bible Study

SHORT OUTLINE OF THE BOOK OF JOB

• Job 1-2 – Job is Persecuted by Satan

• Job 3-37 – Job and His Friends Discuss the Reason He is Experiencing Persecution

• Job 38-41 – God Speaks with Job and Reveals His Greatness to Him.

• Job 42 – God Restores What Job Lost

WHEN:

• The date of the writing of Job is unknown and still debated. Some believe it was written during the time of the patriarchs (Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob) or even earlier, while others suspect it was written during the time of Judah’s Babylonian captivity (607-537 B.C.).

• I take the earlier date. The description of Job as the “greatest of all the people of the east” (1:3) and an absence of references to Israel, Jerusalem, and the Temple suggests to me that this book was written early.

KEY CHARACTERS:

• God – The sovereign Creator of our universe.

• The Sons of God – Angelic or heavenly beings. They are not equals with God but subject to Him.

• Satan – An enemy of God whose desire is to lead men away from God and into sin.

• Job – A blameless and upright man who Satan persecuted in an attempt to turn his heart away from God.

• Job’s Wife - She encouraged Job to abandon his confidence in God.

• Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar - Job’s 3 friends who came to comfort him in his suffering.

WHERE:

• Most scholars surmise the land of Uz was in northern Saudi Arabia, either immediately south of the Dead Sea, I the land that would become known as Edom, or immediately east of the Dead Sea, which is today the country of Jordan.

OUTLINE:

• SATAN APPEARS BEFORE GOD A SECOND TIME (2:1-6):

  • Sometime after Satan’s initial persecution of Job, during which he failed to turn Job’s heart against the Lord, Satan and the sons of God appeared before God again.

  • God asked Satan the same question, “From where have you come?” (2:2).

  • Satan responded the same way he did in chapter 1, saying, “From going to and fro on the earth, and from walking up and down on it” (2:2).

  • God reminded Satan of Job’s faithfulness, which persisted even after all his family and possessions had been taken from him.

  • Satan suggested that if he were allowed to inflict Job with bad health, that would be the breaking point that would get Job to curse God.

  • God gave him permission to test his theory, and Satan departed from God’s presence.

• SATAN AFFLICTS JOB WITH BAD HEALTH (2:7-10):

  • Satan struck Job with an illness that caused sores all over his body, from the top of his head to the bottom of his feet.

  • Job sat in ashes (a sign of mourning in those days) and used a piece of broken pottery to scratch and scrape his soars.

  • It must have been a miserable scene.

  • Job’s wife asked him why he was still faithful to God after so much suffering. She told him it would be better for him to curse God and die.

  • Job dismissed her suggestion. He had received many good days from the Lord in his lifetime; he was not going to curse God during the hard days.

  • “In all this Job did not sin with his lips” (2:10).

• JOB’S THREE FRIENDS (2:11-13):

  • When Job’s 3 friends heard about all the calamity that had befallen Job, they came and sat with him for 7 days, comforting him and showing him sympathy.

  • Their names were Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar.

  • They didn’t say anything to Job for the first 7 days because they saw his immense suffering.

APPLICATION

• When you’re in a war, you expect to take fire from enemy forces.

• You know that the enemy is actively trying to do you harm.

• Sometimes in the Christian life, we forget that we are in a war.

• We forget that we have a real enemy who is shooting at us, with real weapons that can inflict harm.

• The result of forgetting that we are in a war is that we turn on our own general. We start accusing our general of firing on us, as if he were trying to inflict suffering on us, when in reality, it’s the enemies across the battle line.

• In any normal circumstance, it would be ridiculous for an army to blame their own general for the bullets flying at them from across enemy lines, so why do we do that to God?

• We often blame God for the bad things that happen to us and the suffering we face. Job chapter 2 places the blame where it belongs, on the real enemy.

• Next time something goes wrong in your life, how about you curse Satan! Don’t curse God!

• One of Satan’s greatest tricks is taking shots at us and getting us to blame God for shooting at us!