Job 2:3 - Coke's Commentary on the Holy Bible

To destroy him without cause— The most that can be meant by this expression is, without his desert, (according to the usual way of speaking, for, strictly speaking, we all deserve hell;) or without any signal guilt to draw upon him so signal a calamity: not but that there might be other very weighty causes for it; for the divine wisdom, we may be sure, neither does nor suffers any thing without cause, i.e. without a sufficient reason. That good men are sometimes extremely afflicted, and that not only in their outward estate, but in their persons, as Job was, is a fact too obvious to be denied; (see John 9:3.) and whether God permits wicked spirits or wicked men, or any thing else, to be the immediate instrument of a good man's sufferings, it makes no alteration in the thing itself. To all this it may be added, that the words will bear a different construction. They are translated by Junius and Tremellius, Hast thou considered my servant Job, that he still retains his integrity? and in vain hast thou excited me to destroy him: and by Houbigant, He still retains his integrity, after thou hast excited me against him, that I might trouble him in vain. See Peters.