So went Satan forth from the presence of the LORD, and smote Job with sore boils from the sole of his foot unto his crown.
Ver. 7. So went Satan forth from the presence of the Lord] The like is said of Cain, when he meditated the murder of his innocent brother, and went to put it in practice. Malefactors amongst us, we know, are indicted in this form: For that thou, not having God before thine eyes, but moved by the instigation of the devil, didst -
And smote Job] He pretended to touch him only, Job 2:5, but let every good man bless himself out of Satan's bloody fingers; his iron entered into Joseph's soul, his stroke was very vehement upon Job's body, making return pro vulnere corpus: for to wound his body, for he smote Job
With sore boils] Hot boiling boils, such as the sorcerers of Egypt were smitten with, Exodus 9:10, and afterwards the limbs of Antichrist, Revelation 16:2. The Indian scab some say it was, or the French disease. A most filthy and odious ulcer it appeareth to have been, sore and mattory (why else should he so scrape himself with a potsherd, as Job 2:8), such as whose sharp and pricking humour penetrated the very bone, and put him to exquisite pain, being worse to him than Augustus's tres vomicae tria carcinomata, above mentioned, or Philip II of Spain's loathsome and lousy disease, whereof he died A.D. 1598. Carolus Scribanius thus describeth it (Instit. Princip. cap. 20), This potent prince for a long time endured ulcerum magnitudinem, multitudinem, acerbitatem, faetorem, &c., i.e. many great, sharp, and stinking ulcers, which fastened him to his bed, as to a cross, for a whole year before his death; besides six years torture by the gout, a hectic fever, with a double tertian for two years feeding upon his bowels and the very marrow of his bones; besides a most grievous flux for twenty two days, a continual nauseousness of his stomach, an unsatisfiable thirst, a continual pain of his head and eyes, abundance of matter working out of his ulcers, quae binas in dies scutellas divite paedore impleret, which in two short days, he spent is wealth, besides a most loathsome stench that took away his sleep, &c,: thus he. Think the same and worse of Job, the object of Satan's utmost malice, and that for a whole year, say the Hebrews; for seven whole years, saith Suidas. Chrysostom compareth him with Lazarus, and maketh him to be in a far worse condition. Pineda showeth that his sufferings were a great deal worse than those of the wicked Egyptians under all their ten plagues; this was a boil, an evil boil, saith the text, one of the worst sort, the most painful and malignant that might be, and this all over his body.
From the sole of his foot unto his crown] It was all but one continued sore, universal as the leprosy, and therefore incurable; threatened as an utmost plague, an evil, an only evil, Deuteronomy 28:35. If any part were left untouched, it was his tongue and mouth, that it might be free to blaspheme God; and that herein he was not smitten by Satan, some have observed from Job 19:20, I am escaped with the skin of my teeth, having no sores there, as I have all the rest of my body over.