Job Is Tested

Job Is Tested

Q: Job, a righteous man, lived in the land of

• a. Uz.
• b. Oz.
• c. Nod.

An earthquake devastates a country. Families lose their homes after a flood. Children have nothing to eat because of a drought. Bad things happen in our world—and sometimes they don’t make sense to those reading about or experiencing them. That was true for Job, an Old Testament follower of God. Job lived at the time of Abraham, even though the book of Job comes much later in the Bible.

Job was both righteous and wealthy. Satan went to God and told him Job was only faithful because God had always protected and blessed him. So God allowed Satan to test Job by taking his worldly goods—his donkeys, oxen, sheep, servants, camels, and even his children—through a series of disasters. Satan must have been very disappointed when Job said, “I came naked from my mother’s womb, and I will be naked when I leave. The LORD gave me what I had, and the LORD has taken it away. Praise the name of the LORD!”

After that God allowed Satan to test Job further by afflicting him with sores from head to toe. Job was so miserable that he took a piece of pottery and scraped himself with it. He must have wondered what he’d done wrong to cause him to lose everything and be covered in sores.

Job’s wife said, “Are you still trying to maintain your integrity? Curse God and die.”

But Job told her, “You talk like a foolish woman. Should we accept only good things from the hand of God and never anything bad?”

Even in the face of everything that had happened, Job’s faith was steadfast. Even though he didn’t understand why everything was happening to him, he accepted it.

For You

An often-asked question is, “Why do bad things happen to good people?” Unfortunately, we won’t have a satisfactory answer to that this side of heaven. For now we can only say, like Job, “Should we accept only good things from the hand of God and never anything bad?”

Answer: a

There once was a man named Job who lived in the land of Uz. He was blameless—a man of complete integrity. He feared God and stayed away from evil.   Job 1:1

(The Whole Story: Job 1–2)