The Responses of those near Job. You will always hear advice from people when you go through a trial. Your spouse. Your friends, whether close or not so close. The man of God will weigh in. Then God Himself will find a way to explain to you what’s going on. Each round of the advisors will make more and more sense. Some of it you will see as faulty right away. Some of it may confuse you. Some of it will convict you. But then the final advice will inform you and even give you peace and joy and true repentance.

9Then his wife said to him, “Do you still hold firm your integrity? Curse God and die!”

In 1:11 and 2:5 the devil stated unequivocally to God that if God allowed these devastations to come into Job’s life, Job would curse God to His face. Never happened. There was challenge and frustration, and complaining and maybe he went a little too far in justifying himself. But he did not curse God.

Mrs. Job seems to have been in touch with this heavenly conversation. Either through common knowledge or some revelation of what was going on in the spirit world, she teamed up with the enemy here and urged her husband to take a chance. No need to keep suffering like this. We’ve lost everything. We’ve lost our children. Now you have this loathsome disease and I have to take care of you every day. Get wise, husband. You’re too religious. Let go of your religiosity and let God take you out of this misery. How much she knew about the afterlife, we don’t know.

Job’s not buying…

10But he said to her, “You are speaking as one of the foolish women speaks. Shall we actually accept good from God but not accept adversity?”

He definitely starts out with a great attitude. I think many of us have been schooled enough in the things of God that when trouble comes we are able to be positive and encouraging. But how long does that last? Days? Weeks?

Despite all this, Job did not sin with his lips. At first.

11Now when Job’s three friends heard about all this adversity that had come upon him, they came, each one from his own place—Eliphaz the Temanite, Bildad the Shuhite, and Zophar the Naamathite; we’ll talk about these men’s origin when we come to them individually. But note here how great this man Job was to have friends from different, maybe distant, places.

and they made an appointment together to come to sympathize with him and comfort him.

As Job’s attitude was good at the beginning, so the motivation of these men. All they knew was that their respected friend was going through it and they wanted to do something. Then they heard Job speak and changed their mind

12When they [f]looked from a distance and did not recognize him, they raised their voices and wept. And each of them tore his robe, and they threw dust over their heads toward the sky. 13Then they sat down on the ground with him for seven days and seven nights, with no one speaking a word to him, for they saw that his pain was very great.

People have criticized the men for just sitting there for a week, but in fact the Scripture is clear that they were doing a good thing, not knowing how to speak. Would that they had stayed silent. Job would have been spared lots of pain.

But then we would not have known the depth of the problem that God was dealing with in Job, and the one he is dealing with in us.

Do you have friends that start out well-meaning in your painful time, but do more damage than good? Have you been a friend like this. Wanting to help but not informed enough to help with the proper help and thus piling on more pain?