But stretch out your hand and touch his bone and his flesh, and he will curse you to your face.”

And the Lord said to Satan, “Behold, he is in your hand; only spare his life.”

So Satan went out from the presence of the Lord and struck Job with loathsome sores from the sole of his foot to the crown of his head.

And he took a piece of broken pottery with which to scrape himself while he sat in the ashes.

Then his wife said to him, “Do you still hold fast your integrity? Curse God and die.”

But he said to her, “You speak as one of the foolish women would speak. Shall we receive good from God, and shall we not receive evil?” In all this Job did not sin with his lips.

Job's Three Friends

Now when Job's three friends heard of all this evil that had come upon him, they came each from his own place, Eliphaz the Temanite, Bildad the Shuhite, and Zophar the Naamathite. They made an appointment together to come to show him sympathy and comfort him.

And when they saw him from a distance, they did not recognize him. And they raised their voices and wept, and they tore their robes and sprinkled dust on their heads toward heaven.

And they sat with him on the ground seven days and seven nights, and no one spoke a word to him, for they saw that his suffering was very great.

And Job said:

“Let the day perish on which I was born, and the night that said, ‘A man is conceived.’

Let that day be darkness! May God above not seek it, nor light shine upon it.

That night—let thick darkness seize it! Let it not rejoice among the days of the year; let it not come into the number of the months.

Let the stars of its dawn be dark; let it hope for light, but have none, nor see the eyelids of the morning,

because it did not shut the doors of my mother's womb, nor hide trouble from my eyes.

Why did the knees receive me? Or why the breasts, that I should nurse?

For then I would have lain down and been quiet; I would have slept; then I would have been at rest,

or with princes who had gold, who filled their houses with silver.

Or why was I not as a hidden stillborn child, as infants who never see the light?

The small and the great are there, and the slave is free from his master.

“Why is light given to him who is in misery, and life to the bitter in soul,

For my sighing comes instead of my bread, and my groanings are poured out like water.

Eliphaz Speaks: The Innocent Prosper

Then Eliphaz the Temanite answered and said:

“If one ventures a word with you, will you be impatient? Yet who can keep from speaking?

Behold, you have instructed many, and you have strengthened the weak hands.