Job 1 Commentary: The Day Heaven Held Its Breath

Introduction: Two Worlds, One Wager

Most chapters of the Bible operate on a single plane. You are either in heaven or on earth, watching God act among men or listening to angels worship in the throne room. Job 1 does something almost no other chapter dares to do: it rips the curtain between both worlds and forces you to watch them simultaneously.

On earth, a man named Job lives in quiet, staggering prosperity. He has ten children, thousands of livestock, a household so large he is called the greatest of all the men of the east. He rises before dawn to offer sacrifices for his sons and daughters, not because they have sinned openly but because he fears they may have sinned in their hearts. He is, by divine testimony, the finest human being alive.

In heaven, a very different scene unfolds. The sons of God – angelic beings – assemble before the throne of the Almighty. Among them, uninvited in spirit if not in body, stands the Adversary. And God, in an act that has troubled theologians for three thousand years, raises Job’s name Himself. “Have you considered my servant Job?” He asks. What follows is the most consequential wager in the history of the cosmos – not a gamble on God’s part, for God does not gamble, but a challenge laid before the accuser that will reverberate through every generation of suffering saints who have ever asked: Why?

At its heart, Job 1 contains perhaps the single most important question ever posed about the nature of faith. Satan frames it with devastating simplicity: “Does Job fear God for nothing?” (“hachinnam”). Strip away the blessings, remove the hedge, let the fire fall and the wind blow – will this man still worship? Or is all human piety merely a sophisticated transaction, a spiritual insurance policy that collapses the moment the premiums exceed the payouts?

Every person who has ever prayed through tears, every believer who has buried a child or watched a life’s work disintegrate in a single afternoon, every Christian who has lain awake at three in the morning wondering whether God has forgotten – they are all living in Job 1. And the answer this chapter gives is one of the most astonishing affirmations of grace in all of Scripture.

The chapter divides into four movements:

The Man from Uz (1:1-5) – Job’s character and prosperity, culminating in his priestly intercession for his children.
The Heavenly Court (1:6-12) – The assembly of the sons of God, Satan’s accusation, and God’s devastating permission.
The Four Catastrophes (1:13-19) – The systematic annihilation of everything Job possesses, climaxing in the death of all ten of his children.
The Response That Silenced Heaven (1:20-22) – Job’s worship in the ashes, and the narrator’s verdict.

Every verse. Every word that matters. Every layer the English obscures. Let us begin where the story begins – with a man whose very name would become a synonym for suffering, but who was first a synonym for blessing.

The Man from Uz (1:1-5)

Verse 1: A Fourfold Portrait of Integrity

“There was a man in the land of Uz, whose name was Job; and that man was perfect and upright, and one that feared God, and eschewed evil.” – Job 1:1 (KJV)

“There was a man” – The Hebrew “ish” is not merely a gender marker. It denotes a man of substance, dignity, and public reputation. Walton observes that the retribution principle Job’s friends will later invoke was “basically common in the ancient Near East and one we have seen in Mesopotamian literature,” where “the justice of God is defended” and “the inscrutability of deity” is affirmed (Ancient Israelite Literature in Its Cultural Context, p.187). But Job himself stands outside all such neat categories. He is introduced not as a prophet, not as a priest, not as a king, but simply as a man – and this is deliberate. The book of Job is the most universal book in the Old Testament. It contains no reference to the Abrahamic covenant, no mention of the Exodus, no appeal to the Mosaic law, no invocation of the name Israel. It is a book about humanity before God, stripped of every national and ceremonial particular. Job is not an Israelite. He is a human being, and his story belongs to every human being who has ever walked the earth.

“In the land of Uz” – The location of Uz (“Uts”) has been debated for centuries, but the evidence converges on a region in northern Arabia, east of Judea, with connections to Edom, Aram, and the Arabian desert. MacArthur specifies that “Job’s home was a walled city with gates (29:7, 8), where he held a position of great respect. The city was in the land of Uz in northern Arabia, adjacent to Midian, where Moses lived for 40 years (Ex. 2:15)” (MacArthur Study Bible, NKJV, p.22). The Septuagint places it “on the borders of Idumea and Arabia.” Lamentations 4:21 associates the land of Uz with the daughter of Edom. Genesis traces the name to two possible progenitors: Uz the son of Nahor, Abraham’s brother (Gen 22:21), and Uz the grandson of Seir the Horite (Gen 36:28). Keil and Delitzsch locate the Uzzites in the Arabian desert west of Babylon, citing Ptolemy’s Aisitai. The convergence of evidence places Uz in a transitional zone between Edom, Aram, and Arabia – a frontier land, a border territory, which fits the international character of the entire book.¹

That Job lived outside of Israel matters profoundly. The entire book demonstrates that true faith in the living God is not confined to a single nation or covenant community. Job is what John Gill called “an early proof of what the Apostle Peter observed: that God is no respecter of persons, but in every nation he that feareth God and worketh righteousness is accepted with him” (Acts 10:34-35). God has His servants in every land, sealed ones out of every people. The book of Job is the Melchizedek of the Old Testament – a witness to the universality of true religion before the covenant of circumcision was given.

Matthew Henry makes the same point from the opposite direction: “When God called one good man out of that country” – speaking of Abraham’s departure from Ur – “yet he left not himself without witness, but raised up another in it to be a preacher of righteousness. God has his remnant in all places, sealed ones out of every nation.” The Tyndale study notes add that Job “was not an Israelite – he lived before the nation was born and outside its later territory.” He stands as evidence that the grace of God is wider than the covenant of Israel, that the knowledge of God was not extinguished among the nations even in the patriarchal age, and that genuine holiness can flourish in soil that has never been tilled by the plow of the Mosaic law. This is a truth of enormous importance for the church, which exists precisely to carry the knowledge of God to every nation – and which finds in Job a reminder that God was at work among the nations long before the church was born.

“Whose name was Job” – The name “Iyyov” has been variously interpreted. Some derive it from a root meaning “to be hostile,” making him “the one who is treated as an enemy.” Others connect it to an Arabic root meaning “to return” or “to repent.” Delitzsch, following Ewald, proposes a derivation from a cognate of “shuv”, suggesting “the one who comes back” – which, given the arc of the story, is almost prophetic. What is certain is that the name is not symbolic in the manner of allegory. Job is a real person. Ezekiel names him alongside Noah and Daniel as paragons of righteousness (Ezek 14:14, 20). James holds him up as an example of patient endurance (Jas 5:11). He is no literary fiction but a historical figure whose suffering became paradigmatic for the people of God.

“That man was perfect and upright, and one that feared God, and eschewed evil.” Four predicates, each building on the last, forming a composite portrait of genuine piety:

“tam” – This is not sinless perfection. The word describes wholeness, integrity, an undivided heart. MacArthur elaborates: “Hebrew tam – 1:1, 8; 2:3; 8:20; 9:20-22 – means ‘to be complete.’ This word signifies an individual’s integrity: a wholeness and wholesomeness. The word is used as a term of endearment for the Shulamite bride in the Song of Solomon (see ‘perfect’ in 5:2; 6:9)” (The MacArthur Bible Handbook, p.109). Jacob is called tam in Genesis 25:27, where it is contrasted with Esau’s wildness – and the Anchor Bible Dictionary notes that the Hebrew phrase ish tam in that verse is “exactly as Job 1:8; 2:3,” adding: “Translations use attenuated words (‘plain’ KJV, ‘quiet’ RSV, ‘mild’ JPS), but tam clearly implies moral excellence. This, then – moral excellence – is to be Israel’s vocation” (Anchor Bible Dictionary, p.4124). The Theological Dictionary of the Old Testament traces the root tmm through the Psalms, Proverbs, and Job, observing that “the predominant use of the root in the realm of morality and ethics” reflects the particular emphases of these wisdom writings (TDOT vol. 15, p.731). A tam man is one whose inner reality matches his outward profession – no hidden compartments, no secret double life, no partition between the Sunday face and the Monday face. Sincerity is gospel perfection. Job had it.
“yashar” – This is moral straightness in thought and action. An upright man does not deviate from the path of justice. He is faithful to his promises, honest in his dealings, consistent in his character. The word implies rectitude before both God and men.
“yere – The fear of God is the controlling principle of his entire existence. This is not servile terror but filial reverence – the kind of fear that produces obedience, shapes worship, and governs the conscience. It is what Proverbs calls the beginning of wisdom (Prov 1:7; 9:10), and what the entire Wisdom tradition treats as the foundational human virtue. Job feared God with a fear that sprang from grace, was attended by confidence, and produced genuine holiness.
“sar – He did not merely avoid gross sins; he departed from evil with deliberate, habitual determination. The construction implies active, ongoing effort – a man who watches his steps, guards his tongue, and examines his motives. “The fear of the Lord is to hate evil” (Prov 8:13), and by that fear Job departed from it (Prov 16:6).

These four predicates are not the narrator’s opinion. They are repeated by God Himself in verse 8, and again in 2:3. They constitute the divine evaluation of Job’s character. When the Almighty looks at this man, He sees integrity all the way down. This matters, because everything that follows depends on it. If Job is a hypocrite, Satan is right and the book collapses. If Job is genuine, then the question of disinterested faith has a chance of being answered.

◆“The

Job is described with four interlocking terms: blameless (tam), upright (yashar), God-fearing (yere Elohim), and turning from evil (sar mera). These are not the narrator’s assessment alone – God Himself will repeat them verbatim. Job is the finest human being on earth, and the entire drama depends on that being true.

Verses 2-3: The Measure of a Man in the East

“And there were born unto him seven sons and three daughters. His substance also was seven thousand sheep, and three thousand camels, and five hundred yoke of oxen, and five hundred she asses, and a very great household; so that this man was the greatest of all the men of the east.” – Job 1:2-3 (KJV)

The numbers are not accidental. Seven sons and three daughters – ten children, the number of completeness. Seven thousand sheep, three thousand camels, five hundred yoke of oxen, five hundred she-asses. The totals are round, symmetric, and staggering. In the ancient Near East, wealth was measured not in currency but in livestock and servants, and by this reckoning Job was an economic empire unto himself.

The sheep would have provided wool, milk, and sacrificial animals. The camels – three thousand of them – were the freight trains of the ancient world, essential for long-distance trade across the Arabian desert. Walton confirms that “the size of Job’s herds was enormous. Aristotle claims that the Arabs had as many as three thousand camels, the same number listed here. The numbers can be compared to the three thousand sheep and one thousand goats of Nabal (1 Sam 25:2)” (The IVP Bible Background Commentary, p.507). Aristotle notes that some inhabitants of upper Asia possessed camels numbering exactly three thousand, and among the Arabs, wealth was estimated primarily by the size of one’s herds.² The five hundred yoke of oxen implies a thousand animals and an enormous agricultural operation. The five hundred she-asses were prized for their milk and for transportation. And behind all of this stood “a very great household” (“avuddah) – the workforce necessary to manage an enterprise of this scale.

“So that this man was the greatest of all the men of the east” – The “bene. These are the tribal peoples extending from Arabia Deserta northward toward Mesopotamia – the same peoples whose wisdom is mentioned alongside Egypt’s in 1 Kings 4:30. Job was the wealthiest, most powerful, most honored man in an entire civilization. He sat at the summit of the ancient world.

Matthew Henry draws a vital connection between Job’s piety and his prosperity: “He was pious, and his piety was a friend to his prosperity; for godliness has the promise of the life that now is. He was prosperous, and his prosperity put a lustre upon his piety, and gave him who was so good so much greater opportunity of doing good.” The two were not in tension. Job’s wealth was the platform from which his righteousness operated – enabling generosity, hospitality, and the large-scale sacrificial worship that characterized his household.

Yet the narrator has already told us that his defining characteristic is not wealth but piety. The prosperity is real and God-given, but it is secondary. Job is introduced as tam and yashar before he is introduced as rich. This ordering is theologically deliberate. The man’s character precedes his circumstances. His identity is in his integrity, not his inventory.

This is precisely the distinction that Satan will refuse to make. In Satan’s economy, the piety and the prosperity are indistinguishable – the one is merely the price paid for the other. The narrator, by listing character before cattle, has already preemptively answered the accuser’s charge. Job’s defining possession is not his seven thousand sheep but his undivided heart. When the sheep are gone, the heart will remain. But Satan cannot imagine such a thing, because he himself has never loved anything except for what it could give him.

Verses 4-5: The Father Who Could Not Stop Praying

“And his sons went and feasted in their houses, every one his day; and sent and called for their three sisters to eat and to drink with them. And it was so, when the days of their feasting were gone about, that Job sent and sanctified them, and rose up early in the morning, and offered burnt offerings according to the number of them all: for Job said, It may be that my sons have sinned, and cursed God in their hearts. Thus did Job continually.” – Job 1:4-5 (KJV)

The picture of Job’s family is a portrait of warmth and unity. The seven sons, each established in his own household, took turns hosting one another in a rotating feast. Each hosted on “his day” – most likely a weekly rotation, though some commentators suggest birthday celebrations. The brothers included their three sisters in every gathering, sending for them and inviting them to share the table. Keil and Delitzsch see in this detail a picture of “family peace and union which had been uninterruptedly cherished.” The sons were generous toward their sisters; the sisters were modest enough not to presume an invitation. The entire family functioned in harmony.

But Job’s concern ran deeper than social propriety. Clines offers a provocative reading of this behavior: “We are shown a man who is incessantly calculating, holding strongly to a retributionary theology and seeking to employ it to control his fate. Thus his prophylactic sacrifices for potential flaws of his family” (A Critical Engagement: Essays on the Hebrew Bible in Honour of J. Cheryl Exum, p.165). Whether or not we accept Clines’s critical edge, his observation sharpens the portrait: Job’s piety was active, vigilant, and concrete. When the cycle of feasting had completed its round, Job acted as the priest of his household. He “sent and sanctified them” – summoning his children to undergo ceremonial preparation, likely involving ritual washing and spiritual self-examination, in anticipation of sacrifice. Then he “rose up early in the morning” – the eagerness of a man whose heart burned with concern for his children’s souls – and offered burnt offerings (“olot”) “according to the number of them all.” One sacrifice for each child. Ten individual offerings, each representing one son or daughter standing before God.

The reason Job gives is piercing: “It may be that my sons have sinned, and cursed God in their hearts.” The Hebrew here requires careful attention. The word translated “cursed” is “bereku”, the verb “barak”. This is one of the most well-known euphemisms in the Hebrew Bible. In contexts where the act is too horrifying to name directly, the scribes substituted “bless” for “curse” – an antifrastic euphemism driven by reverence for the divine name. The same usage appears in 1 Kings 21:10-13 with Naboth, and recurs throughout the book of Job (1:11; 2:5, 9). Job feared that in the abandon of celebration, his children might have entertained thoughts unworthy of God – not outright blasphemy, but the subtle forgetfulness that prosperity breeds. “When they were full, they were ready to deny God” (Prov 30:9). The danger was not drunken cursing but the quiet, internal dismissal of the Almighty that creeps in when life is easy.

Keil and Delitzsch understand barak here as valedicere – “to bid farewell to God,” to take leave of Him in the heart while the lips say nothing. Job feared that his sons, surrounded by abundance, might have mentally waved God goodbye without even noticing. This is the subtlest form of sin, and only a father consumed with spiritual vigilance would have thought to guard against it.

“Thus did Job continually.” The Hebrew “kol-hayyamim” indicates unbroken habit. This was not an occasional burst of parental piety but the established rhythm of Job’s life. Every feast day, every rotation, every cycle – he rose early, he sanctified, he offered, he prayed. He was, as Matthew Henry observes, “a priest of his own family,” exercising the patriarchal priesthood that predated the Levitical system, offering sacrifices not because the law commanded them but because his conscience demanded them and his love for his children drove him to God. Beeke underscores the chronological implication: “The fact that Job, who was not of the tribe of Levi, offered burnt offerings indicates that this was before the time of the Levitical priesthood (Lev. 17:1-5)” (Reformation Heritage KJV Study Bible, p.39). Job operated under the patriarchal economy in which the head of the family served as both father and priest – the same economy under which Noah built an altar (Gen 8:20) and Abraham offered Isaac (Gen 22).

This detail is the final brushstroke in the portrait. We know Job is blameless, upright, God-fearing, and evil-avoiding. We know he is prosperous beyond measure. Now we learn he is a man who rises before dawn because he cannot rest while his children’s souls may be in jeopardy. He is the opposite of the careless father. He is the opposite of the comfortable religionist. He is a man on fire with holy anxiety for the people he loves most – and that fire burns not outward in anger but upward in sacrifice.

◆“The

Job was not content with outward prosperity and family harmony. He rose early to offer individual sacrifices for each of his children, fearing that in the ease of feasting they might have silently dismissed God in their hearts. His priestly intercession was habitual, continual, and driven by the deepest spiritual concern a father can possess.

The Heavenly Court (1:6-12)

Verse 6: The Assembly of the Sons of God

“Now there was a day when the sons of God came to present themselves before the LORD, and Satan came also among them.” – Job 1:6 (KJV)

The narrative shifts without warning from earth to heaven. No transition, no explanation, no apology. One moment we are watching Job rise at dawn to offer sacrifices; the next we are standing in the throne room of the Almighty, watching angelic beings file in for an audience with their Creator.

“The sons of God” (“bene) – This phrase designates angelic beings, as in Job 38:7 where “the sons of God shouted for joy” at the creation of the world. Godawa places this scene within the broader biblical motif of the divine council: “The satan and most of the Watchers ‘present themselves’ before the heavenly court, along with ‘ten thousand times ten thousand of God’s holy ones,’ the divine council. God is seated on his chariot throne above the Cherubim and beneath the Seraphim” (When Giants Were Upon the Earth, p.77). This cosmic courtroom imagery is “organically derived from the Bible itself,” Godawa notes, drawn from the ancient suzerain-vassal legal framework embedded in Israel’s covenant tradition. The sons of God are called “sons” not by redemption or adoption but by creation – beings made in the likeness of God, existing before the material universe, standing as His immediate attendants and agents. They have come “to present themselves before the LORD” (“lehityatsev) – the language of a royal court, where servants report for duty and receive their commissions. The imagery echoes 1 Kings 22:19, where Micaiah sees the LORD sitting on His throne with all the host of heaven standing by Him, and also the visions of Isaiah 6 and Daniel 7. God governs the cosmos not by arbitrary decree alone but through a council of spiritual beings who execute His will.

“And Satan came also among them.” The Hebrew “hasatan” has the definite article – the Satan, not merely “a satan.” This is not a generic opponent but a specific being with a specific role and a specific malice. The word itself derives from the verb “satan”, and designates the prosecuting attorney of the heavenly court, the one whose function is accusation. The Theological Dictionary of the Old Testament surveys the range of scholarly opinion on this figure: “Just as the ancient Near Eastern kings had their own subjects watched, so also Yahweh has Satan – as ‘God’s eyes’ – about in the world checking on people’s loyalty.” Von Rad, the TDOT notes, “understands hasatan clearly as an accuser before a court, and more specifically as the heavenly public prosecutor” (TDOT vol. 14, p.97).

This is not the cartoonish devil of medieval art, complete with horns and pitchfork. Neither is he the benign “angel of testing” that some liberal commentators have tried to domesticate. The Dictionary of Biblical Imagery captures the tension precisely: “Satan is not presented as the evil spiritual being we come to know in the NT but as one who plays a legal role in the heavenly court as ‘the accuser.’ Even though he is not loyal to God, Satan, by virtue of his rank as a divine being, is permitted to appear at meetings of the council on a day when ‘the sons of God’ come to present themselves before the Lord (Job 1:6; 2:1). Satan’s role as ‘accuser’ requires this (Zech 3:1; Rev 12:10)” (Dictionary of Biblical Imagery, Ryken, p.81). David Clines, in the Word Biblical Commentary, draws a remarkable analogy: Satan “is remarkably analogous to the functionary in Christendom known as advocatus diaboli whose task is to raise objections to the canonization of a saint; his office and his appointment owe their existence to the body that actively supports the canonization, and his role is to ensure that no potential criticism of the candidate remains unheard and unanswered” (WBC Job 1-20, Clines, p.127). He is a real spiritual being, fallen from his original glory, burning with enmity toward God and God’s people, who retains access to the divine court – not because he belongs there, but because God has not yet finally expelled him. As Revelation 12:10 reveals, he is “the accuser of the brethren, who accuses them before our God day and night.” His accusation will cease only when Christ’s victory is fully consummated. Until then, he prowls (1 Pet 5:8), he accuses, he destroys – and he does so under the sovereign governance of the God he hates.

That Satan appears among the sons of God does not mean he is one of them, any more than a spy sitting in a parliament is a member of it. He is an intruder – tolerated for a season, permitted to speak, but never trusted, never affirmed, never endorsed. His presence in the heavenly assembly is one of the great mysteries of Scripture, and it reveals a truth that most systematic theologies struggle to accommodate: evil operates within the sphere of divine sovereignty, not outside it. God does not create evil, but He governs it. He does not author sin, but He permits, directs, and overrules it for purposes that transcend human comprehension.

Verse 7: The Restless Prowler

“And the LORD said unto Satan, Whence comest thou? Then Satan answered the LORD, and said, From going to and fro in the earth, and from walking up and down in it.” – Job 1:7 (KJV)

God’s question is not one of ignorance. The Omniscient does not need intelligence briefings. The question functions as a sovereign demand for an account – the King requiring His subordinate to explain himself. It is the same pattern as Genesis 3:9, where God asks Adam, “Where are you?” – not because He does not know, but because He will make the guilty party speak.

Satan’s answer drips with insolence and restlessness. “From going to and fro” (“mishshut”) and “walking up and down” (“mehithallekh”) paint the picture of a being who cannot rest. There is a nomadic, predatory quality to this description that Peter captures perfectly: “Your adversary the devil, as a roaring lion, walketh about, seeking whom he may devour” (1 Pet 5:8). Satan has no home, no peace, no Sabbath. He is a fugitive in spirit – ceaselessly roaming, ceaselessly hunting, ceaselessly looking for someone to ruin.

The answer is also evasive. He does not say what he has been doing. He does not report on his activities. He merely describes his movement. Matthew Henry observes three possible readings of the statement: “Perhaps it is spoken proudly, as if he were indeed the prince of this world. Perhaps it is spoken fretfully, and with discontent – he could not abide long in a place, moving to and fro, seeking rest but finding none. Perhaps it is spoken carefully – ‘I have been hard at work, going to and fro,’ searching about in the earth, really in quest of an opportunity to do mischief.” All three readings capture something true about the adversary. He is arrogant, restless, and industrious – a terrible combination in a being whose industry is devoted entirely to destruction.

Delitzsch notes the implied swagger: Satan speaks “as if he were indeed the prince of this world,” conducting an inspection tour of territories he considers his own. But he owns nothing. He governs nothing. He is a trespasser in God’s world, and every step he takes is within the boundaries God has set. The Tyndale study notes observe that Satan “was not patrolling to implement God’s judgments but to oppose God’s purposes” (cf. 2 Tim 2:26; 1 Pet 5:8). His roaming is not service but sabotage. He searches the earth not to bless but to devour, not to build but to tear down. And yet even his destructive wandering is known to God, accounted for by God, and ultimately overruled by God.

Verse 8: God Raises the Stakes

“And the LORD said unto Satan, Hast thou considered my servant Job, that there is none like him in the earth, a perfect and an upright man, one that feareth God, and escheweth evil?” – Job 1:8 (KJV)

This is one of the most astonishing verses in all of Scripture. Note carefully who initiates the conversation about Job. It is not Satan who raises Job’s name. It is God.

“Hast thou considered my servant Job?” – The Hebrew “hassamta means “have you directed your attention, have you fixed your mind upon.” God is not asking an idle question. He is pointing Satan toward Job and, in effect, issuing a challenge. “You have been roaming the earth looking for someone to accuse. Well, look at this man. I dare you to find fault with him.”

“My servant Job” – The title “my servant” (“avdi”) is one of the highest honors in the Old Testament. It is given to Abraham (Gen 26:24), Moses (Num 12:7), David (2 Sam 7:5), and later to the Suffering Servant of Isaiah (Isa 42:1; 52:13). God claims Job as His own. He is not embarrassed by Job; He boasts about him. He holds Job up as Exhibit A in the case that genuine piety exists on the earth.

God then repeats – word for word – the fourfold character description from verse 1. This is the divine confirmation of the narrator’s assessment. Perfect, upright, God-fearing, evil-avoiding. And God adds: “There is none like him in the earth.” In the entire world, among all the peoples and nations, there is no one who matches this man. This is not flattery; it is divine evaluation, and it is meant to goad Satan into the open.

Matthew Henry captures the force of this: “He is my servant. Good men are God’s servants, and he is pleased to reckon himself honoured in their services. ‘Yonder is my servant Job; there is none like him, none I value like him, of all the princes and potentates of the earth; one such saint as he is worth them all.’”

Verses 9-10: The Most Important Question Ever Asked

“Then Satan answered the LORD, and said, Doth Job fear God for nought? Hast not thou made an hedge about him, and about his house, and about all that he hath on every side? thou hast blessed the work of his hands, and his substance is increased in the land.” – Job 1:9-10 (KJV)

“Doth Job fear God for nought?” – In seven Hebrew words, Satan poses the question that lies at the foundation of all theology, all worship, all human relationship with the divine. The word “chinnam” is an adverb derived from “chen”. Satan is asking whether Job’s piety is gratuitous – whether it exists without a transactional motive. Is Job’s worship free, or is it purchased?

The question is devastating because it strikes at the root of every religious act. Does anyone love God for who He is, or only for what He gives? Is all worship ultimately a marketplace transaction – devotion exchanged for protection, praise bartered for prosperity? Clines captures what is at stake for the entire theology of faith: “In a culture where a dogma of divine retribution is pervasive and where material prosperity has long been regarded as the most obvious sign of divine approval,” the question of whether piety can exist without reward becomes the central problem not only of Job but of all biblical religion (Job 1-20, Word Biblical Commentary, p.33). If Satan can prove that Job’s faith collapses the moment the benefits are withdrawn, then he has proved something far worse than one man’s hypocrisy. He has proved that disinterested love for God is impossible – that there is no such thing as genuine piety, only enlightened self-interest dressed in liturgical clothing.

The word chinnam carries an additional layer of irony that becomes visible only in the sequel. MacArthur observes that in Job 2:3, when God declares that Satan “moved me against him, to destroy him without cause,” He uses the same Hebrew word – chinnam – that Satan used in 1:9. “God uses the same expression the adversary used in Job 1: ‘for nothing’ (1:9)…‘without cause’ (2:3). The message behind God’s turn of words is that the adversary is the guilty party in this case, not Job who had suffered all the disaster without any personal cause” (MacArthur Study Bible, NKJV, p.3400). Satan asked whether Job feared God for nothing; God answers that Satan destroyed Job for nothing. The accuser’s own vocabulary is turned against him.

Delitzsch understands the cosmic stakes: “If Satan can prove Job a hypocrite, it will follow that God has not one faithful servant among men, and that there is no such thing as true and sincere piety in the world, but that religion is all a sham, and Satan is king de facto over all mankind.” The wager is not merely about one man. It is about whether the entire project of human faith has any reality at all.

Satan then lays out his evidence (v. 10). God has surrounded Job with a “sakta” – a hedge around his person, his family, and everything he owns. Delitzsch observes that Satan speaks as if he has “walked the hedge round, to see if he could spy a single gap in it, for him to enter in at, to do him a mischief; but he was disappointed: it was a complete hedge.” God has blessed the work of his hands. His substance has “broken forth” (“parats”) in the land – the same verb used of Israel multiplying in Egypt (Exod 1:12). Job is prosperous because God has actively, deliberately, comprehensively blessed him.

John Gill notes the venom in Satan’s observation: “So thick was the hedge, so strong the fence, that Satan could not find the least gap to get in at, to do him any injury to his body or mind, without the divine permission; which he envied and was vexed at.” The accuser is not merely presenting evidence. He is seething with frustration. He has tried to reach Job and has been thwarted at every turn. The hedge of divine protection has held, and Satan is reduced to complaining about it to the very God who erected it.

The theological implications are immense. Satan’s argument, stripped to its core, is a denial of the power of grace. He insists that human nature is incapable of genuine love for God – that every act of worship is, at bottom, an act of self-interest. This is a projection of his own character onto the entire human race. Satan fell because he loved himself more than God. He cannot conceive of a creature who does otherwise. He is, as Delitzsch says, the one who “has lost all faith in the power of good, and is indeed become himself the self-deceived father of lies.”

And Satan’s point is simple: remove the blessings, and you remove the worship. The logic is airtight – if the premise is true. But the premise is a lie. And the rest of the chapter will prove it.

Verse 11: The Wager

“But put forth thine hand now, and touch all that he hath, and he will curse thee to thy face.” – Job 1:11 (KJV)

Satan demands that God strike Job Himself: “Put forth thine hand” (“shelach-na). The na is entreaty – almost a dare. Strip the blessings. Remove the hedge. Take away the children, the livestock, the servants, the prosperity. And then watch.

“He will curse thee to thy face” – The Hebrew again uses “barak” as a euphemism for cursing. Satan’s claim is not merely that Job will quietly lose his faith but that he will brazenly, publicly, to God’s very face, renounce Him. The phrase “al-panekha” implies shameless, open defiance – a man who, stripped of his comforts, will look the Almighty in the eye and spit.

John Gill expands the imprecation: Satan “is wishing the worst of evils to himself, if Job, in such circumstances, did not curse God to his face; signifying that he would fly in his face, like a man passionate, furious, and enraged.” The Hebrew construction “im-lo” functions as a shortened oath formula – “May such and such happen to me if he does not curse you.” Satan staked his entire credibility on this prediction. If Job worships, the accuser is exposed as a liar. If Job curses, the accuser is vindicated. There is no middle ground.

This is the wager. Not a gamble – God does not gamble – but a test. Satan is certain he is right. God knows he is wrong. And Job, who knows nothing of any of this, is about to become the proving ground for both claims. The most important spiritual battle in the history of the ancient world is about to be fought, and the combatant does not know he is on the battlefield.

Verse 12: Permission with Limits

“And the LORD said unto Satan, Behold, all that he hath is in thy power; only upon himself put not forth thine hand. So Satan went forth from the presence of the LORD.” – Job 1:12 (KJV)

“All that he hath is in thy power” – literally, “in your hand” (“beyadekha”). God grants the permission. Every sheep, every camel, every ox, every servant, every son and daughter – all of it is delivered over to the Adversary. The scope is total. The one restriction is Job’s person: “Only upon himself put not forth thine hand.” God draws a line that Satan cannot cross. The accuser operates on a leash.

Several truths emerge from this extraordinary exchange:

First, God’s permission is not God’s approval. He allows the destruction not because He delights in Job’s pain but because He intends to vindicate Job’s faith, demonstrate the reality of disinterested worship, and ultimately bring Job to a deeper knowledge of Himself.

Second, Satan can do nothing without divine authorization. He could not touch Job’s hedge, let alone breach it, without explicit permission. This is the doctrine of divine sovereignty applied to the problem of evil. Satan is real, his malice is genuine, his power is formidable – but he is a creature, and creatures do not set the boundaries of their own operations. God does.

Third, the permission is purposeful. As Delitzsch observes, “The divine arrangement has not its foundation in the sin which still clings to Job,” nor is it punitive. It is probative. It is designed to prove what God already knows: that Job’s faith is real. God does not test Job to discover whether he will stand. He tests Job to demonstrate to the heavenly court, to Satan, and to every subsequent generation of believers that grace-wrought faith endures.

“So Satan went forth from the presence of the LORD.” No delay. No hesitation. He had his permission, and he was eager to use it. John Gill notes that Satan “went forth glad at heart he had so far succeeded, and eager upon doing all the mischief he could to a man that was the butt of his malice.” Matthew Henry adds: “He went forth, resolved to lose no time, but speedily to put his project in execution. He went forth now, not to go to and fro, rambling through the earth, but with a direct course, to fall upon poor Job, who is carefully going on in the way of his duty, and knows nothing of the matter.”

There is a profound asymmetry here that should not escape the reader. Satan knows everything about the wager. Job knows nothing. Satan has a strategy; Job has only his faith. Satan has rehearsed his plan; Job will be ambushed. Yet it is Job who will triumph, because his resources are not informational but spiritual. He does not need to know what is happening in heaven. He needs only to know who God is. And that knowledge – hammered into his soul through years of habitual worship, early-morning sacrifice, and the fear of God – will prove sufficient for the worst day of his life.

Delitzsch makes a crucial observation about the nature of the permission: “The divine permission appears at the same time as a divine command, for in general there is not a permission by which God remains purely passive.” God does not merely step back and let Satan loose. He actively governs the test, setting its parameters, limiting its scope, and directing its outcome – even as He genuinely permits Satan to act within those boundaries. This is the mystery of concurrence: God permits what He does not approve, governs what He does not author, and brings good out of what is genuinely evil.

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God Himself raises Job’s name before Satan, boasting of His servant’s integrity. Satan responds with the most fundamental challenge to faith ever articulated: Does Job fear God for nothing? God permits Satan to destroy everything Job has – except his life. The test is not punitive but probative, designed to demonstrate that genuine, disinterested love for God is possible. Satan is permitted to act, but only within divinely appointed boundaries.

The Four Catastrophes (1:13-19)

Verse 13: The Timing of Devastation

“And there was a day when his sons and his daughters were eating and drinking wine in their eldest brother’s house.” – Job 1:13 (KJV)

Satan chooses his moment with terrible precision. The day of attack is the day Job’s children are feasting together in the house of the firstborn – the beginning of a new rotation, the day when the entire family is gathered under one roof. Job has recently completed his priestly intercession for them. He has offered the sacrifices. He has sanctified them. He has done everything within his power to secure their spiritual welfare. And it is precisely at this moment – when his conscience is clean, his duty discharged, and his children are celebrating the blessings of God – that the hammer falls.

Matthew Henry captures the cruelty: “The night of my pleasure has he turned into fear” (Isa 21:4). Satan chose the moment when Job’s happiness was at its peak, so that the contrast between bliss and devastation would be as sharp and disorienting as possible.

Verses 14-15: The Sabeans – First Blow

“And there came a messenger unto Job, and said, The oxen were ploughing, and the asses feeding beside them: And the Sabeans fell upon them, and took them away; yea, they have slain the servants with the edge of the sword; and I only am escaped alone to tell thee.” – Job 1:14-15 (KJV)

The first catastrophe is human agency. The Sabeans (“Sheva”) – nomadic raiders from the Arabian desert, descendants of Abraham through Keturah (Gen 25:3) – descend on Job’s agricultural operation. Walton notes that “there are three groups of Sabeans in Scripture,” including those from modern Yemen, Ethiopia, and north Arabia. “In Job 6:19 the Sabeans are equated with Tema in north Arabia, and are probably identified with the Saba of the Assyrian inscriptions of Tiglath-Pileser III and Sargon II in the late eighth century B.C. These Sabeans are most likely the ones mentioned here in Job 1” (IVP Bible Background Commentary, p.508). The oxen were plowing; the asses were feeding beside them. Everything was in order, in its proper place, under the servants’ care. The attack was sudden, overwhelming, and total. The livestock was seized; the servants were slaughtered.

Matthew Henry notes the carefully described scene: “The oxen were ploughing, not playing, and the asses not suffered to stray and so taken up as waifs, but feeding beside them, under the servants’ eye, each in their place.” The disaster was not the result of negligence. The servants were diligent, the animals in their proper stations, the operation running exactly as it should. And still destruction came. This is one of the most painful truths about suffering in a fallen world: prudence does not immunize us from catastrophe. “Except the Lord keep the city, the watchman, though ever so wakeful, wakes but in vain” (Ps 127:1). Yet, as Henry adds, “it is some comfort under a trouble if it found us in the way of our duty.”

“And I only am escaped alone to tell thee.” This refrain – repeated by each messenger – is one of the structural pillars of the passage. Each catastrophe produces a single survivor, and each survivor exists for one purpose: to deliver the news. Clines identifies this as a deliberate literary technique: “Only one survivor is left from each of the four disasters; his escape is also dramatically required. This stock narrative feature is turned to good effect here in concentrating the attention upon Job rather than upon the scenes of disaster” (for the stock element “one alone left,” cf. Gen 44:20; 1 Kgs 18:22; for “the survivor bringing news,” cf. Gen 14:13; 1 Sam 22:20; 2 Sam 1:3) (Job 1-20, Word Biblical Commentary, p.133). The Hebrew “va’immaltah” uses the paragogic ah form, adding intensity – “I escaped with the greatest difficulty, by the narrowest margin.” Whether this solitary survival was God’s providence (to give Job accurate information) or Satan’s design (to maximize the psychological impact by ensuring each blow is personally reported) is debated. Most likely it is both – Satan’s cruelty exploited by God’s sovereignty. The clause “lehagid is objective: the purpose of the escape was the telling. The lone survivor exists as a witness, and his testimony is the instrument by which the blow lands on Job’s heart.

Verse 16: The Fire of God – Second Blow

“While he was yet speaking, there came also another, and said, The fire of God is fallen from heaven, and hath burned up the sheep, and the servants, and consumed them; and I only am escaped alone to tell thee.” – Job 1:16 (KJV)

“While he was yet speaking” – The phrase that will echo three times, each time denying Job any breathing room, any moment to absorb, process, or pray. The catastrophes do not arrive one at a time with decent intervals between them. They crash upon him in waves, each messenger bursting in before the previous one has finished his report. The refrain is the literary equivalent of a sustained assault – no pause, no relief, no chance to regroup.

“The fire of God is fallen from heaven” – The devastating irony of this phrase should not be missed. The servant, reporting what he saw, uses the language of divine judgment. “The fire of God” (“esh) – whether lightning, wildfire, or a supernatural conflagration – bore the hallmarks of heaven’s wrath. Walton identifies this as lightning, noting that “during the contest between Yahweh and Baal in 1 Kings 18:38, the lightning is called the ‘fire of the LORD’ (also see 2 Kings 1:12; Job 20:26; Num 11:1-3)” (IVP Bible Background Commentary, p.508). The echo of Elijah’s contest on Carmel adds a bitter irony: fire from heaven was the very sign by which Yahweh proved Himself the true God. Now that same fire appears to fall upon His most faithful servant. To the observer, it appeared that God Himself had declared war on Job. Keil and Delitzsch note that this language was designed to tempt Job into believing “that God had turned to be his enemy and fought against him” – which was precisely Satan’s strategy. If Job concluded that God was actively punishing him, the step from grief to blasphemy would be short.

Seven thousand sheep – the entirety of his flock – consumed in a moment. These were the animals from which Job drew his sacrificial offerings. Matthew Henry perceives Satan’s strategy with remarkable clarity: “His sheep, with which especially he used to honour God in sacrifice, were all taken from him, as if God were angry at his offerings and would punish him in those very things which he had employed in his service. This would tempt Job to say, ‘It is in vain to serve God.’” John Gill concurs: “It is thought that Satan’s end in the destruction of these was, that Job might conclude from hence that his sacrifices were not acceptable to God, and therefore it was in vain to serve him.” The destruction of the sheep was not merely economic; it was spiritual warfare aimed at Job’s devotional life. If the very instruments of worship are consumed by fire from heaven, the implication is clear: God has rejected your offerings. Why continue?

Keil and Delitzsch observe that the fire “was not a suitable expression for the Samum” – the burning desert wind – but rather “rain of fire or brimstone, as with Sodom and Gomorrah, and as 1 Kings 18:38; 2 Kings 1:12.” Whether lightning or a supernatural conflagration, the event was unprecedented in Job’s experience and bore the unmistakable appearance of divine wrath directed at him personally.³

Verse 17: The Chaldeans – Third Blow

“While he was yet speaking, there came also another, and said, The Chaldeans made out three bands, and fell upon the camels, and have carried them away, yea, and slain the servants with the edge of the sword; and I only am escaped alone to tell thee.” – Job 1:17 (KJV)

The Chaldeans (“Kasdim”) – semi-nomadic peoples from the Mesopotamian region, traced by some to Chesed the son of Nahor (Gen 22:22) – attack in three coordinated bands (“rashim”), a military tactic designed to surround and overwhelm. Keil and Delitzsch note that dividing forces into multiple bands was “an ancient military stratagem,” citing parallels in Judges 7:16 and 1 Samuel 11:11. The Hebrew “pashtu” is the technical term for a sudden, violent incursion (cf. Judg 9:33) – a swift, overwhelming assault that leaves no time for defense.

The three thousand camels, the backbone of Job’s trading enterprise, are seized. More servants are killed. The pattern now becomes unmistakable: human attackers (Sabeans), divine fire, human attackers (Chaldeans) – and the final blow will be natural/divine once more. Job cannot isolate the cause. Is he being attacked by men or by God? Both, it seems. Henry’s observation is devastating: “If the fire of God, which fell upon Job’s honest servants who were in the way of their duty, had fallen upon the Sabean and Chaldean robbers who were doing mischief, God’s judgments therein would have been like the great mountains, evident and conspicuous; but when the way of the wicked prospers, and they carry off their booty, while just and good men are suddenly cut off, God’s righteousness is like the great deep, the bottom of which we cannot find.” The confusion is intentional, and it mirrors the deepest perplexity of the believing heart: Why do the wicked prosper while the righteous are destroyed?

Verses 18-19: The Wind and the Children – Final Blow

“While he was yet speaking, there came also another, and said, Thy sons and thy daughters were eating and drinking wine in their eldest brother’s house: And, behold, there came a great wind from the wilderness, and smote the four corners of the house, and it fell upon the young men, and they are dead; and I only am escaped alone to tell thee.” – Job 1:18-19 (KJV)

Satan saves the worst for last.

The fourth messenger brings news not of livestock but of children. The “great wind from the wilderness” (“ruach) – a supernatural storm, raised by the prince of the power of the air (Eph 2:2) with divine permission – strikes “the four corners of the house” simultaneously. This was no ordinary windstorm. A natural wind blows from one direction; this wind hit all four walls at once. The house collapsed, and all ten of Job’s children died in the ruins.

The Hebrew “hanne’arim” is epicene – it includes both sons and daughters. All ten. In a single moment. Not from disease, which would have given warning. Not from old age, which would have given closure. Not while they were praying, which would have given comfort. They died while feasting, in the prime of their lives, with no preparation, no farewell, no final blessing from their father.

Matthew Henry’s reflections on this final blow deserve extended quotation, for they capture its weight with pastoral precision: “This was the greatest of Job’s losses, and which could not but go nearest him; and therefore the devil reserved it for the last, that, if the other provocations failed, this might make him curse God. Our children are pieces of ourselves; it is very hard to part with them, and touches a good man in as tender a part as any. But to part with them all at once, and for them to be all cut off in a moment, who had been so many years his cares and hopes, went to the quick indeed.” Henry then observes the additional cruelties layered into the timing: “They died when they were feasting and making merry. Had they died suddenly when they were praying, he might the better have borne it. He would have hoped that death had found them in a good frame.” This is the specific agony that Job’s intercessory prayers in verse 5 had been designed to prevent – the possibility that his children might die in a state of spiritual carelessness. Whether they did or not, Job cannot know. And that uncertainty is itself a torment.

Keil and Delitzsch analyze the supernatural character of the wind: Satan, who is “the prince of the power of the air” (Eph 2:2), took advantage of the natural forces at his disposal. “Satan has no creative power. Fire and storm, by means of which he works, are of God; but he is allowed to excite these forces to hostility against man.” The wind itself was God’s creation; Satan merely weaponized it. This distinction matters: the instruments of destruction are not inherently evil. They are part of the created order, subject to both divine and demonic manipulation, and the line between natural disaster and supernatural attack is far thinner than modern rationalism imagines.

John Gill makes the additional observation that among all Job’s losses, “he did not lose anything of a spiritual nature, not one spiritual blessing; though he lost all his outward mercies, yet not the God of his mercies; not his covenant interest in him, nor his share in his love, favour, and acceptance. He did not lose his interest in a living Redeemer; his children were all dead, but his Redeemer lived, and he knew it.” This is the deepest consolation the chapter offers: everything that can be taken was taken, but the one thing that cannot be taken – the soul’s union with God – remained unbroken.

The literary structure of the four catastrophes is masterful and deliberate. Bruce Waltke observes that “the calamities fall on the feast day of the firstborn, the quintessential symbol of God’s blessing of life. Satan has power over both politics and nature. Job’s enemies are alternatively from earth (Sabeans [Job 1:13-15] and Chaldeans [v. 17]) and heaven (fire from heaven [v. 16], mighty wind from the desert [v. 19])” (An Old Testament Theology, p.533). The New Bible Commentary adds a geographical dimension: the four disasters “strike from all directions: the Sabeans come from the south (Sheba); the Chaldeans from the north; the lightning (fire from God) is from the storms that sweep in from the Mediterranean in the west; and the mighty wind comes from the desert in the east” (New Bible Commentary, Wenham/Motyer, p.550). Job is surrounded. There is no direction he can flee:

Sabeans from the south (human agents) take oxen and asses
Fire of God from the west (natural/divine agent) destroys sheep
Chaldeans from the north (human agents) take camels
Great wind from the east (natural/divine agent) kills children

The alternation between human attackers and what appear to be acts of God prevents Job from reaching any simple conclusion. If only men had attacked, he could blame human wickedness. If only fire and wind had struck, he could attribute everything to divine judgment. But the interweaving of both makes the cause impenetrably mysterious – which is precisely the experience of suffering in a fallen world. We cannot neatly separate the natural from the supernatural, the human from the divine, the secondary cause from the primary. It is all tangled together, and the sufferer is left standing in the wreckage trying to make sense of the incomprehensible.

The “while he was yet speaking” refrain (appearing in vv. 16, 17, 18) is perhaps the cruelest detail. There is no pause between catastrophes. Job is not given time to grieve the first loss before the second arrives, nor the second before the third, nor the third before the blow that breaks the world in half. The effect is cumulative, relentless, suffocating. It is the experience of the man in the depths of Psalm 42: “Deep calls to deep at the noise of your waterfalls; all your waves and your billows have gone over me.”

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Satan orchestrates four blows in rapid succession, alternating human agents (Sabeans, Chaldeans) with natural/divine agents (fire from heaven, wind from the wilderness). Each catastrophe is reported before the previous messenger finishes speaking, denying Job any time to process or pray. The climactic blow – the death of all ten children – is saved for last. The structure is designed to overwhelm, confuse, and crush.

The Response That Silenced Heaven (1:20-22)

Verse 20: Grief That Does Not Cancel Worship

“Then Job arose, and rent his mantle, and shaved his head, and fell down upon the ground, and worshipped.” – Job 1:20 (KJV)

“Then Job arose” – He had sat through the first three reports. But at the news of his children’s death, he stood. Rising here is not panic; it is resolve. He stands like a man entering a battle, not like a man fleeing from one. The Hebrew suggests composure, not collapse – a man summoning his strength to face the worst that earth and hell can deliver.

“And rent his mantle” – The “me’il” was the cloak of dignity, the garment of a man of standing. Tearing it was the conventional expression of extreme grief in the ancient Near East, signifying a heart torn open by sorrow. It was not weakness; it was humanity. Job did not pretend the pain was not real.

“And shaved his head” – Another mourning ritual, stripping away the natural covering as a sign of desolation and loss. Some commentators suggest Job cut his hair rather than tearing it, indicating the deliberateness of his grief. He was not thrashing about in hysterics. He was performing the rites of mourning with the steady hands of a man who knew exactly what he was doing and why.

“And fell down upon the ground, and worshipped.” – Here is the pivot of the entire chapter. The same man who tore his robe and shaved his head now prostrates himself – not in despair, but in adoration. The Hebrew “vayyishtachu” is the standard term for religious worship, for bowing before the presence of God with reverence and submission.

This is the moment Satan was waiting for. This is the moment the heavenly court held its breath. What would the man do? Would he curse? Would he blaspheme? Would he shake his fist at heaven and prove the accuser right?

He worshipped.

Clines, writing as a critical scholar, nonetheless recognizes the theological weight of this moment: “The portraiture of Job contains the answer the narrative seeks to convey: in mourning for his loss Job blesses the Lord who gave and who has taken away, never sinning in his speech or speaking irreverently of God” (Job 1-20, Word Biblical Commentary, p.166). This is not the only answer the book of Job gives to the problem of suffering, Clines notes, for in chapter 3 we will encounter a very different Job – but here, at the first impact, the narrative’s verdict is unambiguous. Delitzsch captures the sequence with theological exactness: “The intensity of his feeling is indicated by rising up; his torn heart, by the rending of his mantle; the conscious loss of his dearest ones, by cutting off the hair of his head. He does not, however, act like one in despair, but, humbling himself under the mighty hand of God, falls to the ground and prostrates himself – worshipping God, so that his face touches the earth.” The movement is from grief to adoration, from human anguish to divine submission, without any gap, any transition, any moment of deliberation. The worship is as instinctive as the grief. It rises from the same place in his soul.

Grief is human. Worship is divine. And Job did both, without contradiction, in the same breath. He did not suppress his sorrow with a stiff upper lip. He did not pretend the losses were trivial. He wept, he mourned, he tore his clothing and shaved his head – and then he fell on the ground and worshipped the God who had permitted every ounce of it. This is not stoicism. This is not denial. This is faith of the highest order – the faith that says, “I do not understand, but I will not let go.”

Verse 21: The Greatest Statement of Faith Under Fire

“And said, Naked came I out of my mother’s womb, and naked shall I return thither: the LORD gave, and the LORD hath taken away; blessed be the name of the LORD.” – Job 1:21 (KJV)

This verse is the summit of Old Testament faith. It is perhaps the single greatest expression of creaturely trust in God ever uttered by a human tongue. Every clause deserves examination.

“Naked came I out of my mother’s womb” – Job begins not with his losses but with his origin. He came into the world with nothing. No sheep, no camels, no oxen, no servants, no children. He arrived naked, helpless, dependent on the mercy of others for his first breath and his first garment. Everything between his birth and this moment was gift – pure, unmerited, undeserved gift.

“And naked shall I return thither” – The word “shammah” is striking. Where is “thither”? The most likely interpretation, supported by Delitzsch and most commentators, is that Job refers to the earth – the womb of mother earth, from which Adam was formed and to which all flesh returns. “Dust you are, and to dust you shall return” (Gen 3:19). The grave is the second womb, and we enter it as naked as we entered the first. Ecclesiastes 5:15 echoes the same thought: “As he came forth of his mother’s womb, naked shall he return to go as he came, and shall take nothing of his labour, which he may carry away in his hand.”

The logic is simple and devastating: If I brought nothing into the world, then everything I had was on loan. And if everything was on loan, then the Lender has the right to recall the loan at any time, for any reason, without explanation. Paul echoes this reasoning in 1 Timothy 6:7: “We brought nothing into this world, and it is certain we can carry nothing out.” But Paul wrote those words from the safety of theological reflection. Job spoke them from the floor, covered in torn clothing, with the smell of ashes in the air and the sound of the last messenger’s voice still ringing in his ears. The theology is the same; the cost of speaking it is incalculable.

Delitzsch observes that the word shammah – “thither” – is “remarkable, and may have given rise to the question of Nicodemus (John 3:4): ‘Can a man enter a second time into his mother’s womb?’” The Preacher of Ecclesiastes (5:14) omitted the difficult word entirely, preferring the simpler “as he came forth, so shall he return.” But Job kept it, and the strangeness of the expression enriches the meaning. There is a circularity to human existence – we come from hiddenness and return to hiddenness, we emerge from the dark and sink back into it – and in that circle, every possession, every relationship, every blessing is a temporary loan from the God who owns it all.

“The LORD gave, and the LORD hath taken away” – Notice the theological precision. Job does not say, “The Lord gave, and the Sabeans took away.” He does not say, “The Lord gave, and the fire destroyed.” He does not say, “The Lord gave, and the wind killed my children.” He looks past every secondary cause – past the raiders, past the lightning, past the storm – and fixes his gaze on the primary cause: the LORD. “YHWH” – the covenant name of God, the name of the One who is and was and always will be.

This is not fatalism. Fatalism says, “Whatever happens, happens.” Faith says, “Whatever happens, God is behind it, and God is good.” Job does not attribute his losses to blind chance or impersonal fate. He attributes them to a Person – the Person who gave everything in the first place. And because it is a Person, not a force, there is someone to trust, someone to worship, someone to bless even when that Person’s ways are incomprehensible.

“Blessed be the name of the LORD.” – The name of the LORD (“shem) represents God’s revealed character – His nature, His attributes, His ways. And Job blesses that name. Not grudgingly, not through gritted teeth, but with deliberate, willful, faith-driven praise. He blesses the name that represents the God who just permitted the death of all his children. He blesses the name that stands behind every catastrophe he has endured. He blesses the name because the name is still the same – still holy, still good, still worthy – regardless of what has happened to him.

Matthew Henry draws the application: “He acknowledged the hand of God both in the mercies he had formerly enjoyed and in the afflictions he was now exercised with. See how Job looks above instruments, and keeps his eye upon the first Cause. He does not say, ‘The Lord gave, and the Sabeans and Chaldeans have taken away; God made me rich, and the devil has made me poor’; but, ‘He that gave has taken.’ And for that reason he is dumb, and has nothing to say, because God did it.”

Satan had predicted that Job would curse God to His face. Instead, Job blessed God to His face. The accuser is silenced – for now. The question has been answered: Yes, it is possible to love God for nothing. Yes, there is such a thing as disinterested faith. Yes, a man can lose everything and still worship.

Verse 22: The Narrator’s Verdict

“In all this Job sinned not, nor charged God foolishly.” – Job 1:22 (KJV)

The Holy Spirit, speaking through the narrator, renders the final verdict on Job’s response. Two negatives, both emphatic:

“Job sinned not” – In everything he said and did – the tearing of his robe, the shaving of his head, the prostration, the words of worship – there was no sin. He grieved without sinning. He mourned without blaspheming. He experienced the full weight of human anguish without crossing the line into rebellion against God.

“Nor charged God foolishly” – The Hebrew “tiphlah” signifies that which is tasteless, insipid, devoid of meaning. Job did not attribute folly to God. He did not accuse God of acting without wisdom or purpose. He did not arraign divine justice or question divine competence. He submitted to what he could not understand, without insisting that the incomprehensible was therefore unjust.

Delitzsch provides the precise linguistic analysis: “The word tiphlah signifies, according to Job 24:12 and Job 6:6, saltlessness and tastelessness – dealing devoid of meaning and purpose.” Job did not utter anything tasteless, unseemly, or devoid of divine reverence. He did not assign to God the kind of arbitrary, meaningless cruelty that would characterize a pagan deity or an indifferent universe. He treated God as God – sovereign, wise, purposeful – even when every visible circumstance screamed otherwise. Clines, reflecting on the broader arc of the book, observes that Job in the prologue is “a model for sufferers” who is “neither so preoccupied with present grief as to ignore past blessing” nor “escaping into the past” to avoid the reality of pain. “What makes this protesting Job a model for other sufferers is that he directs himself constantly toward God, whom he regards as the one who is responsible” (Job 1-20, Word Biblical Commentary, p.19).

John Gill extends the point: “He did not ascribe folly to God, did not arraign his wisdom, nor charge him with folly; though there might be some things he could not account for, or see into the reasons of them, he knew the Lord could; he considered that he was a God of knowledge, the only and all wise God, and did all things after the counsel of his will.”

This is not to say that Job will never struggle. The chapters that follow will show a man in agony, a man who curses the day of his birth, a man who demands an audience with God and accuses Him of unfairness. The narrator himself hints at what is to come: the phrase “in all this” (“bekhol-zot”) carries the subtle implication that there will be a later “this” in which Job’s words are less perfectly measured. Delitzsch makes this explicit: “The writer hints that, later on, Job committed himself by some unwise thoughts of the government of God.” But here, at the first impact, at the point of maximum shock and grief, Job passes the test with a perfection that vindicates God’s boast and destroys Satan’s slander.

The test is not over. Satan will return in chapter 2 with a fiercer demand and a more personal assault. But the first round has been decisive. The question has been asked and answered. Does Job fear God for nothing? He does. He fears God not for sheep, not for camels, not for children, not for prosperity, not for the hedge. He fears God because God is God – and that is enough.

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Job grieves with full human emotion – tearing his robe, shaving his head – but he does not allow grief to cancel worship. His declaration – “The LORD gave, and the LORD hath taken away; blessed be the name of the LORD” – is the greatest statement of faith under fire in the Bible. The narrator’s verdict: in all this, Job did not sin or charge God with folly. Satan is silenced. The question is answered: disinterested love for God is possible.

Conclusion: What Job 1 Teaches the Church

Job 1 is a chapter that humbles everyone who reads it – the theologian who thinks he has God figured out, the suffering saint who thinks God has abandoned her, and the comfortable Christian who has never considered what his faith would look like if everything were taken away. It is also a chapter that rebukes every superficial theology of prosperity, every glib assurance that faith guarantees comfort, and every system that reduces the God of the universe to a cosmic vending machine dispensing blessings in exchange for devotion. As the New Bible Commentary puts it, the essential problem of suffering addressed by Job is not “What have I done to deserve this?” but something far more personal: “How can I suffer? What am I to do when I am suffering? In what spirit can I go on suffering? By comparison with this question, the others fade in significance” (New Bible Commentary, Wenham/Motyer, p.544). Job 1 gives us the first and most important answer to that question: worship.

The entire chapter operates on the principle of concealment. Job does not know about the heavenly council. He does not know that God raised his name. He does not know that Satan challenged his integrity. He does not know that his suffering is probative rather than punitive. He knows nothing – and that is precisely the point. MacArthur enumerates the truths embedded in Job’s ordeal: “There are matters going on in heaven with God that believers know nothing about; yet, they affect their lives…Even the best effort at explaining the issues of life can be useless…God’s people do suffer. Bad things happen all the time to good people, so one cannot judge a person’s spirituality by his painful circumstances or successes…Even though God seems far away, perseverance in faith is a most noble virtue since God is good and one can safely leave his life in His hands” (MacArthur Study Bible, NKJV, p.18). Faith, by definition, operates in the dark. If Job could see the heavenly courtroom, if he could read the transcript of the dialogue between God and Satan, his worship in verse 20 would be impressive but not heroic. It is heroic precisely because he cannot see. He worships blind. He blesses the name of a God whose purposes are invisible, whose reasons are withheld, and whose ways are past finding out. This is what the author of Hebrews will later call “the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen” (Heb 11:1). Job is the Old Testament’s supreme exemplar of that definition.

Five truths rise from the ashes of Job’s world:

First, the sovereignty of God is absolute. Satan cannot touch a sheep, a servant, or a child without divine permission. The accuser does not operate independently of God’s governance. He is, as Luther said, “God’s devil” – a creature whose malice is real but whose reach is limited, whose power is genuine but whose leash is held by the Almighty. Beeke summarizes the point with Reformed precision: “The Lord is the King of heaven who summons all the spirits of the invisible world to give an account (1:6-7). When He protects a man, no one can touch him (v. 10). Even Satan, the great enemy of the righteous, can do nothing apart from His will (v. 12; 2:6)” (Reformation Heritage KJV Study Bible, p.41). Nothing that happens in Job 1 catches God by surprise. Nothing exceeds the boundaries He has set. The God of Job 1 is not the helpless deity of open theism, wringing His hands while creation spirals out of control. He is the sovereign Lord of heaven and earth, who permits evil for purposes that transcend human comprehension and who will ultimately make all things right.

Second, the nature of true faith is disinterested. Satan’s question – “Does Job fear God for nothing?” – is the question every believer must eventually answer. Not with a creed, not with a sermon, not with a theological essay, but with a life. Do I serve God because He has given me good things, or because He is good? If the blessings stopped tomorrow – if the health failed, the marriage collapsed, the children turned away, the career disintegrated – would I still worship? The Anchor Bible Dictionary places this question within the larger framework of the book’s intellectual argument, noting that the friends will later affirm “the retribution principle” and insist that “suffering is the result of sin,” such that to “see a man suffering and you can be sure he has deserved it” (Anchor Bible Dictionary, p.8476). But Job 1 has already demolished this theology before the friends arrive to defend it. Job 1 says that genuine faith is not a transaction. It is a relationship. And relationships survive the loss of benefits because they are grounded in persons, not in perks.

Third, grief and worship are not incompatible. Job tore his robe and worshipped. He shaved his head and blessed the name of the LORD. The modern church has too often forced a choice between honest grief and faithful praise, as if tears were evidence of unbelief. Job demolishes that false dichotomy. He weeps and worships in the same breath. He mourns and magnifies in the same sentence. The strongest faith is not the faith that pretends the pain is not real. It is the faith that feels the full weight of the pain and still falls on its face before God.

Fourth, Satan is a defeated strategist. He predicted that Job would curse God to His face. Job blessed God to His face. The accuser staked his credibility on the impossibility of disinterested love, and he lost. Waltke summarizes the theological architecture of Job’s response: “The episode is drawn to conclusion with a wisdom poem by the grief-stricken Job and with the narrator’s evaluation. Repeating the divine name three times, Job attributes life, children” and all his earthly blessings to the sovereign hand of the LORD (An Old Testament Theology, p.533). MacArthur’s verdict on the book’s conclusion applies in embryo here: “Satan had been proven completely wrong in the charges he brought against Job and in thinking he could destroy true saving faith” (MacArthur Study Bible, NKJV, p.10). He will return in chapter 2 with a more vicious attack, but the first round belongs entirely to the servant of God. And the pattern established here – the pattern of the enemy overreaching, overconfident, ultimately undone by the very faith he sought to destroy – is the pattern that will reach its climax at the cross, where the prince of this world was cast out (John 12:31) and the Lamb of God answered Satan’s question with His own blood: Yes, it is possible to love God for nothing. Yes, it is possible to endure the worst that hell can deliver and still say, “Father, into your hands I commit my spirit.”

Fifth, the loss of temporal blessings does not mean the loss of spiritual blessings. John Gill made this observation with characteristic precision, and it deserves to be the final word on what Job 1 teaches: “Among all Job’s losses, he did not lose anything of a spiritual nature, not one spiritual blessing. Though he lost all his outward mercies, yet not the God of his mercies; not his covenant interest in him, nor his share in his love, favour, and acceptance. He did not lose his interest in a living Redeemer. He did not lose the principle of grace in him, the root of the matter was still with him; nor anyone particular grace, not his faith and confidence in God, nor his hope of eternal life, nor his love and affection to God, nor his patience and humility; nor his integrity, faithfulness, and honesty.” This is the rock on which every suffering believer stands: the things that can be taken are not the things that matter most. The sheep can be burned, the children can be killed, the house can collapse – but the soul’s union with God is inviolable, and no adversary, human or demonic, can sever it. “Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword?… Nay, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him that loved us” (Rom 8:35, 37).

Job did not know Romans 8. But he lived it. And the church, reading his story three thousand years later, finds in this ancient man from Uz a witness so powerful, so unshakeable, so radiantly human in his grief and so supernaturally stubborn in his worship, that his example still has the power to silence every accusation the enemy can bring against the people of God.

Job sits in the ashes, stripped of everything but his faith and his God. And in that stripping, he has become the richest man on earth – not because he has anything left, but because the One who gave it all and took it all away is still worthy of blessing. The name of the LORD has not changed. It is the same name it was before the Sabeans came, before the fire fell, before the wind blew, before the house collapsed. It is still holy. It is still good. It is still the name above every name.

And Job, naked and bereaved, bleeding from losses no human should have to bear, lifts his voice and says the only thing left to say:

Blessed be the name of the LORD.

Sources Cited

Beeke, Joel R. The Reformation Heritage KJV Study Bible. Grand Rapids: Reformation Heritage Books.
Clines, David J. A. Job 1-20. Word Biblical Commentary 17. Dallas: Word Books, 1989.
Clines, David J. A. and Ellen Van Wolde. A Critical Engagement: Essays on the Hebrew Bible in Honour of J. Cheryl Exum. Sheffield: Sheffield Phoenix Press, 2011.
Delitzsch, Franz. Commentary on Job. In C. F. Keil and F. Delitzsch, Biblical Commentary on the Old Testament. Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1866-91.
Freedman, David Noel, ed. The Anchor Bible Dictionary. 6 vols. New York: Doubleday, 1992.
Gill, John. Exposition of the Entire Bible. London, 1746-63.
Godawa, Brian. When Giants Were Upon the Earth: The Watchers, the Nephilim, and the Biblical Cosmic War of the Seed. Los Angeles: Embedded Pictures Publishing, 2014.
Henry, Matthew. Commentary on the Whole Bible. London, 1708-10.
Botterweck, G. Johannes, et al., eds. Theological Dictionary of the Old Testament (TDOT). 16 vols. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1974-2018.
MacArthur, John. The MacArthur Study Bible, NKJV. Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 1997.
MacArthur, John. The MacArthur Bible Handbook. Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 2003.
Ryken, Leland, James C. Wilhoit, and Tremper Longman III, eds. Dictionary of Biblical Imagery. Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1998.
Waltke, Bruce K. An Old Testament Theology: An Exegetical, Canonical, and Thematic Approach. Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2007.
Walton, John H. Ancient Israelite Literature in Its Cultural Context: A Survey of Parallels Between Biblical and Ancient Near Eastern Texts. Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1989.
Walton, John H., Victor H. Matthews, and Mark W. Chavalas. The IVP Bible Background Commentary: Old Testament. Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2000.
Wenham, Gordon J., J. Alec Motyer, et al. New Bible Commentary: 21st Century Edition. Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1994.

This article is part of the Job Deep Dive Series. For related studies, see: – Hebrew Words That Unlock Job 1 – Key terms the English hides – The World Behind Job 1 – The land of Uz, the patriarchal age, and the economy of the ancient East – Does Job Fear God for Nothing? The Theology of Job 1 – Sovereignty, suffering, and the question at the heart of all worship

Contents

Job 1 Commentary: The Day Heaven Held Its Breath

Introduction: Two Worlds, One Wager

The Man from Uz (1:1-5)

Verse 1: A Fourfold Portrait of Integrity

Verses 2-3: The Measure of a Man in the East

Verses 4-5: The Father Who Could Not Stop Praying

The Heavenly Court (1:6-12)

Verse 6: The Assembly of the Sons of God

Verse 7: The Restless Prowler

Verse 8: God Raises the Stakes

Verses 9-10: The Most Important Question Ever Asked

Verse 11: The Wager

Verse 12: Permission with Limits

The Four Catastrophes (1:13-19)

Verse 13: The Timing of Devastation

Verses 14-15: The Sabeans – First Blow

Verse 16: The Fire of God – Second Blow

Verse 17: The Chaldeans – Third Blow

Verses 18-19: The Wind and the Children – Final Blow

The Response That Silenced Heaven (1:20-22)

Verse 20: Grief That Does Not Cancel Worship

Verse 21: The Greatest Statement of Faith Under Fire

Verse 22: The Narrator’s Verdict

Conclusion: What Job 1 Teaches the Church

Sources Cited