Skin for Skin
1 Again, on the day when God’s sons came to present themselves before Yahweh, Satan came also among them to present himself before Yahweh. 2 Yahweh said to Satan, “Where have you come from?” Satan answered Yahweh, and said, “From going back and forth on the earth, and from walking up and down in it.” 3 Yahweh said to Satan, “Have you considered my servant Job? For there is no one like him on the earth, a blameless and an upright man, one who fears God, and turns away from evil. He still maintains his integrity, although you incited me against him, to ruin him without cause.” 4 Satan answered Yahweh, and said, “Skin for skin. Yes, all that a man has he will give for his life. 5 But stretch out your hand now, and touch his bone and his flesh, and he will renounce you to your face.” 6 Yahweh said to Satan, “Behold, he is in your hand. Only spare his life.” 7 So Satan went out from the presence of Yahweh, and struck Job with painful sores from the sole of his foot to his head. 8 He took for himself a potsherd to scrape himself with, and he sat among the ashes. 9 Then his wife said to him, “Do you still maintain your integrity? Renounce God, and die.” 10 But he said to her, “You speak as one of the foolish women would speak. What? Shall we receive good at the hand of God, and shall we not receive evil?” In all this Job didn’t sin with his lips.
God states that the ruin had no cause in Job, which settles the argument thirty chapters before anyone starts making it.
The second council repeats the first almost word for word, and then adds a sentence that decides the whole book.
God's report on the first round ends: he still maintains his integrity, although you incited me against him, to ruin him without cause Job 2:3.
Without cause is the key to everything that follows. It is a statement, made by God, that Job's suffering had no basis in Job's conduct. The three friends will spend the entire poem arguing the opposite, on the assumption that suffering of this magnitude must be earned, and the reader has had the answer since this verse.
God also says you incited me against him, taking the permission onto himself rather than disowning it. The narrative uses the ordinary idiom that credits to God what he allows within his government, and it keeps the agency clear at the same time: the striking in the next paragraph is done by the accuser.
The second accusation narrows the ground. Skin for skin. Yes, all that a man has he will give for his life Job 2:4. The first round is conceded, and reinterpreted — Job kept faith because his own body was untouched, and a man will trade any possession, including his children, for himself. It is a cynical reading of the first result rather than a denial of it.
The permission is granted with the same shape as before: he is in your hand. Only spare his life Job 2:6. A limit, again, and the accuser does not exceed it.
Job's wife has one line, and she is usually judged too quickly. She has lost the same ten children and is watching her husband scrape himself with a shard on an ash heap. Do you still maintain your integrity? Renounce God, and die Job 2:9 — which is exactly the outcome the accuser predicted, proposed by the one person left who loves him.
Her sentence is despair rather than malice, and Job's answer is careful about that distinction. You speak as one of the foolish women would speak Job 2:10. He says the counsel is foolish. He does not call her a fool.
Then the question that is the high point of the prologue: shall we receive good at the hand of God, and shall we not receive evil? It is not resignation, and it is not an explanation. It is a refusal to hold a double standard about where things come from — a man who took the good without asking why declines to demand a reason for the rest.
And the narrator's verdict has quietly narrowed. Not that Job did not sin, but that Job didn't sin with his lips Job 2:10. The next chapter is about to open his mouth.
settled What this mark means