Job 2:4 - Joseph Benson’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments

Skin for skin, &c. The design of these words is plain, which was to detract from Job, and to diminish that honour and praise which God gave him, by pretending that he had done no more than the meanest men commonly do by the law of self-preservation. And it is equally clear that this was a proverbial speech then in use, to denote the great value in which life is held, insomuch that, to preserve it, a man would suffer even his skin to be torn off. It may signify also that a man, in order to save his life, would willingly suffer himself to be stripped of all his property. But the words בעד נפשׁו begnad naphsho, rendered here, for his life, ought rather to be rendered, for his person. For the question was not about his life, which Satan had not the impudence to desire; nor indeed could the trial be made, by taking away his life, whether he would hold fast his integrity; but rather by smiting him in his bone, and in his flesh. And Satan, in these words, insinuates that severe bodily pain was much more grievous to the human nature, and would be less patiently borne by Job, than any outward calamities which did not affect his own person. It is as if he had said, How dear soever a man's goods, or servants, or children, may be to him, yet still his own person is dearer; and seeing that Job is still under no pain of body, and in no danger of losing his life, his constancy is not to be boasted of: nor is his holding fast his integrity amidst his losses, nor his patience under them, an evidence of his sincere and generous piety, but these things are rather effects of mere self-love: he is content with the loss of his estate, and even of his children too, so long as he sleeps in a whole skin; and is well pleased that thou wilt accept of these as a ransom in his stead. And it is not true patience which makes him seem to bear his troubles so submissively, but rather policy, that he may in this way appease thy wrath against him, and prevent those further plagues, which, for his hypocrisy, he fears thou wouldst otherwise bring upon his body.