Job’s Second Test (2:1–10)

[The] Satan also came … to present himself (2:1). Again we meet the divine council with “the satan” among the “sons of God” (NIV “angels”; see comments on 1:6).

Painful sores (2:7). Job suffers from a skin disease,45 but it is not exactly certain what kind.46 Leprosy has been proposed because of the resemblance with the description of skin diseases in Leviticus 13, but in Hebrew leprosy is indicated by a different word than the one used here. The same verb is used in the Ugaritic texts of the god Baal, who grew hot or feverish;47 it is also used in the Aramaic prayer of Nabonidus from Qumran, where it is said that the king was stricken with an inflammation.48 In Ishtar in the Underworld, the Mesopotamian goddess is struck with various diseases that affect her whole body.49

Job’s Illness and Health Care in the Ancient Near EastA-2

Job was inflicted with painful sores (2:7). Other texts describe him as suffering from sleeplessness (7:4), with scabs and worms in his skin (7:3–5), nightmares (7:14), emaciation (19:20), aching bones (30:17), his skin growing black and peeling (30:30), and fever (30:30).

In 5:18 God injures, but also heals. According to the Greek historian Herodotus, Egypt was full of physicians, but there were none in Babylonia.A-3 However, this profession is well known, although it should not be forgotten that in the ancient Near East medicine was closely intertwined with magic and religion. Incantations played just as important a role as treatment with herbs and drugs. Mesopotamian priests are depicted with a sick person on a Lamashtu amulet.A-4

Lamashtu amulet portrays the demon as the large figure at the bottom while the sick person is just above his head flanked by physicians (in fish garb). The symbols of the great gods are featured in the top register and the seven sebetti in the next. Pazazu looks over the whole scene from the top.

Rama/Wikimedia Commons, courtesy of the Louvre

Scraped himself with it as he sat among the ashes (2:8). Job sat among the “ashes” (ʾēper, which is close to Heb. ʿāpār, “dust”; on dust and mourning/death cf. 2:12; 17:16) and scraped his skin with a piece of broken pottery. This may have been to scratch his itching wounds, but perhaps it is a gesture of mourning, at least a form of self-mutilation to express his grief, as was done by the Ugaritic god El (see sidebar on “Mourning” at 2:12).50

Ancient Near Eastern treaties refer to a curse of gleaning barley from a refuse pit as in the Aramaic-Akkadian text from Tell Fekheriyeh.51 In Akkadian the term “place/mound of potsherds” can designate the world of the dead.52 It may be that Job counts himself already as one dead, as do his friends in v. 12 when they sprinkle dust on their heads, which is connected with death (cf. 17:16!).