And the Lord said to the Adversary, “Have you
considered My servant Job, that there is none like him on the earth, a blameless
and an upright man, who fears God, and avoids evil?”
Job 1:8, Modern English Version (MEV)
Again, I feel it necessary to remind us that the author is setting up a ridiculous and impossible situation in order to be able to use it to teach us something. While this scene may be the perfect scenario for a movie, we are definitely not being asked to take it literally. To take this literally would be the same as proclaiming that God is a cruel and capricious god.
John Gill, in his Exposition on the Bible, explains it in this manner:
And the Lord said unto Satan, hast thou considered my
servant Job,.... Or, "hast thou put thine heart on my servant" (p);
not in a way of love and affection to him, to do him any good or service, there
being an original and implacable enmity in this old serpent to the seed of the
woman; but rather his heart was set upon him in a way of desire to have him in
his hands, to do him all the mischief he could, as the desire of his heart was
toward Peter, Luk_22:31 but the sense of the question is, since thou sayest
thou hast been walking up and down in the earth, hast thou not taken notice of
Job, and cast an eye upon him, and wished in thine heart to have him in thine
hands to do him hurt? I know that thou hast; hast thou not contrived in thine
heart how to attack him, tempt him, and draw him from my service, and into sins
and snares, in order to reproach and accuse him? thou hast, but all in vain;
and so it is a sarcasm upon Satan, as well as an expression of indignation at
him for such an attempt upon him, and as anticipating his accusation of Job;
for it is as if he should further say, I know he is in thine eye, and upon
thine heart, now thou art come with a full intent to accuse and charge him; so
Jarchi, "lest thou set thine heart", &c. so as "to have a
good will to accuse him" he had, but the Lord prevents him, by giving a
high character of him, in these and the following words: here he calls him
"my servant"; not a servant of men, living according to the lusts and
will of men, and their customs and forays of worship, superstition, and
idolatry; nor a servant of sin and the lusts of the flesh; nor of Satan, who
boasted of the whole earth being his; but the Lord's servant, not only by
creation, but by special choice, by redemption, by efficacious grace, and the
voluntary surrender of himself to the Lord under the influence of it; and by
his cheerful and constant obedience he answered this character; and the Lord
here claims his property in him, acknowledges him as his servant, calls him by
name, and gives an high and honourable account of him:
that there is none like him in the earth; or "in the
land"; in the land of Uz, so Obadiah Sephorno; whatever there were in
other countries, there were none in this, being in general idolaters; or in the
land of the people of the Heathen nations, as the Targum; or rather in the
whole earth, where Satan had been walking: and, very probably, Abraham, Isaac,
and Jacob, were now dead; Job being, as it should seem, between them and the
times of Moses; and though there might be many godly persons then living, who were
like to him in quality, being partakers of the same divine nature, having the
same image of God upon them, and the same graces in them, and a similar
experience of divine things, yet not upon an equality with him; he exceeded
them all in grace and holiness; and particularly, none came up to him for his
patience in suffering affliction, though this was often tried; as Moses
excelled others in meekness, and Solomon in wisdom; Job was an eminent saint
and servant of the Lord, a father in his family, a pillar in his house, like
Saul among the people, taller in grace and the exercise of it; and this is a
reason why he could not but be taken notice of by Satan, who has his eye more
especially on the most eminent saints, and envies them, and strikes at them;
and so the words are by some rendered, "for there is none like him"
(q); or rather they may be rendered, "but there is none like him"
(r): and so are opposed to the accusations and charges Satan was come with
against him:
a perfect and an upright man, one that feareth God, and
escheweth evil? See Gill on Job_1:1. Here the character there given is
confirmed by the Lord in the express words of it.
Job 1:8, Modern English Version (MEV)
Again, I feel it necessary to remind us that the author is setting up a ridiculous and impossible situation in order to be able to use it to teach us something. While this scene may be the perfect scenario for a movie, we are definitely not being asked to take it literally. To take this literally would be the same as proclaiming that God is a cruel and capricious god.
John Gill, in his Exposition on the Bible, explains it in this manner:
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