Job 1:8 — meaning, Hebrew and Greek word study, commentary
Job 1:8
And the LORD said unto Satan, Hast thou considered my servant Job, that there is none like him in the earth, a perfect and an upright man, one that feareth God, and escheweth evil?
a man as an individual or a male person · noun, common masculine singular absolute
feareth
יְרֵ֥אye.Re'
H3373
fearing · adjective, masculine singular construct
God
אֱלֹהִ֖ים'E.lo.Him
H430
gods in the ordinary sense · noun, common masculine plural absolute
escheweth
וְסָ֥רve.Sar
H5493
to turn off (literal or figurative) · conjunction + verb, qal active participle, masculine singular absolute
evil
מֵרָֽעme.Ra'
H7451
bad or (as noun) evil (natural or moral) · preposition + adjective, masculine singular absolute
Strong's Exhaustive Concordance (James Strong, 1890/1894), public domain; digitized by Open Scriptures (CC BY-SA). KJV word tagging: eBible.org (public domain). Original-language text, parsing and brief lexicon: STEPBible.org data from Tyndale House, Cambridge (CC BY 4.0).
Cross-references
Job 2:3 And the LORD said unto Satan, Hast thou considered my servant Job, that there is none like him in the earth, a perfect and an upright man, o…
Job 1:1 There was a man in the land of Uz, whose name was Job; and that man was perfect and upright, and one that feared God, and eschewed evil.
Numbers 12:7-8 My servant Moses is not so, who is faithful in all mine house.
Proverbs 8:13 The fear of the LORD is to hate evil: pride, and arrogancy, and the evil way, and the froward mouth, do I hate.
2 Kings 23:25 And like unto him was there no king before him, that turned to the LORD with all his heart, and with all his soul, and with all his might, a…
Job 8:20 Behold, God will not cast away a perfect man, neither will he help the evil doers:
Isaiah 1:16 Wash you, make you clean; put away the evil of your doings from before mine eyes; cease to do evil;
Numbers 12:3 (Now the man Moses was very meek, above all the men which were upon the face of the earth.)
Cross-references from OpenBible.info (CC BY), in the lineage of the Treasury of Scripture Knowledge (public domain).
Commentary
Matthew Henry on Job 1:6-12
Job was not only so rich and great, but withal so wise and good, and had such an interest both in heaven and earth, that one would think the mountain of his prosperity stood so strong that it could not be moved; but here we have a thick cloud gathering over his head, pregnant with a horrible tempest. We must never think ourselves secure from storms while we are in this lower region. Before we are told how his troubles surprised and seized him here in this visible world, we are here told how they were concerted in the world of spirits, that the devil, having a great enmity to Job for his eminent piety, begged and obtained leave to torment him. It does not at all derogate from the credibility…
considered--Margin, "set thine heart on"; that is, considered attentively. No true servant of God escapes the eye of the adversary of God.
John Gill on Job 1:8
And the Lord said unto Satan, hast thou considered my servant Job,.... Or, "hast thou put thine heart on my servant" (p); not in a way of love and affection to him, to do him any good or service, there being an original and implacable enmity in this old serpent to the seed of the woman; but rather his heart was set upon him in a way of desire to have him in his hands, to do him all the mischief he could, as the desire of his heart was toward Peter, Luke 22:31 but the sense of the question is, since thou sayest thou hast been walking up and down in the earth, hast thou not taken notice of Job, and cast an eye upon him, and wished in thine heart to have him in thine hands to do him hurt? I kno…
8 Then said Jehovah to Satan, Hast thou considered my servant Job? for there is none like him in the earth, a perfect and an upright man, one that feareth God and escheweth evil.
By כּי Jehovah gives the reason of His inquiry. Had Satan been observant of Job, even he must have confessed that there was on the earth real genuine piety. לב שׂים, animum advertere (for לב is animus, נפשׁ anima), is construed with על, of the object on which the attention falls, and on which it fixes itself, or אל, of the object towards which it is directed (Job 2:3). The repetition of the four predicates used of Job (Job 1:1) in the mouth of Jehovah (though without the waw combining both pairs there) is a skilful…
The Church Fathers
MORAL INTERPRETATION To him, whom Divine Inspiration makes strong to meet the enemy, God gives praise as it were in the ears of Satan; for His giving him praise is the first vouchsafing virtues, and afterwards preserving them when vouchsafed. But the old enemy is the more enraged against the righteous, the more he perceives that they are hedged around by the favour of God's protection.
ALLEGORICAL INTERPRETATION That Job means by interpretation, 'Grieving,' we have already said a little above. And He is truly called 'Grieving' in figure, Who is declared by the testimony of the Prophet 'to bear our griefs.' Who has not His like on the earth; for every man is only man, but He is both God and Man. He has not His like on earth, because though every son by adoption attains to the receiving of the Divine nature, yet none ever receives so much, as to be, by nature, God. He was even rightly styled a servant, because He did not disdain to take the form of a servant. Nor did His taking the humility of the flesh injure His sovereignty, for in order that He might both take upon Him that which He was to save, yet not undergo alteration in that which He had, He neither lessened the Divine by the Human, nor swallowed up the Human in the Divine; for although Paul hath it, Who being in the form of God thought it not robbery to be equal with God; but emptied Himself, and took upon Him the form of a servant; yet to Him it is 'emptying Himself,' of the greatness of His Invisible Being to manifest Himself as Visible; so that the form of a servant should be the covering of That Which without limitation enters into all things by virtue of Godhead. Again, God's saying to Satan in figure, Hast Thou considered My servant Job, is His exhibiting in his despite the Only-Begotten Son as an object of wonder in the form of a servant. For in that He made Him known in the flesh as of so great virtue, He as it were pointed out to the adversary in his pride what it would grieve him to contemplate; but now that He had brought before him a perfect object for him to admire, it remains that in order to strike down his pride he should further go on to enumerate its excellencies. For there came among men the Mediator between God and Man, the Man Christ Jesus, for the giving an example of living, perfect; in respect of His rigour towards the evil spirits, upright; for the exterminating pride, fearing God; and for the wiping off impurity of life in His Elect, departing from evil. For it is said of Him by Isaiah in a special manner, And shall make him of quick understanding in the fear of the Lord. And He did in a special manner depart from evil, who refused to imitate the actions which He found among men, since, as Peter bears witness, He did no sin, neither was guile found in His…
Dictionary and topics
Eschew — From old French eschever, “to flee from” (Job 1:1, 8; 2:3; 1 Pet. 3:11).
Satan — Adversary; accuser. When used as a proper name, the Hebrew word so rendered has the article “the adversary” (Job 1:6-12; 2:1-7). In the New Testament it is used as interchangeable with Diabolos, or…
Decision · 1:10,11;3:17,18; — 1:10,11;3:17,18;
Depravity Of Man · 1:18;2:9,25; — 1:18;2:9,25;
Doctrines · 13:9; — 13:9;
Fear, Godly · Exemplified: Job — Exemplified: Job
Hospitality · General scriptures concerning — General scriptures concerning
Job · .Righteousness of — .Righteousness of
Obedience · 10:7; — 10:7;
Sinlessness · 1:9-11; — 1:9-11;
Watchfulness · 4:2,17; — 4:2,17;
Dictionary: Easton's (1897) and Smith's (1863), public domain. Topics: Nave's Topical Bible (1896) and Torrey's Topical Textbook (1897), public domain. Both as parsed by NEUU (CC BY 4.0).
my servant: This title was used for the patriarchs (Gen 26:24; Exod 32:13), the prophets (2 Kgs 17:13; Jer 7:25; Zech 1:6), and David (e.g., 2 Sam 7:1-29; Pss 18:1; 36:1).
Rashi on Job 1:8
Have you paid attention to My servant Job that you should desire to denounce him?
“Have you paid, etc.” An expression of a wonder.
sincere and upright Perfect in his deeds.
HISTORICAL INTERPRETATION This point, viz, that blessed Job is by the voice of God called a perfect and an upright man, one that feareth God, and escheweth evil, having explained above minutely and particularly, we forbear to rehearse what we have said, lest while we go over points that have been already examined, we should be slow in coming to those which have not. This then requires our discreet consideration, how it is either that the Lord is said to speak to Satan, or that Satan is said to answer the Lord, for we must make out what this speaking means. For neither by the Lord Who is the supreme and unbounded Spirit, nor by Satan, who is invested with no fleshly nature, is the breath of air inhaled by the bellows of the lungs, after the manner of human beings, so that by the organ of the throat it should be given back in the articulation of the voice; but when the Incomprehensible Nature speaks to an invisible nature, it behoves that our imagination rising above the properties of our corporeal speech should be lifted to the sublime and unknown methods of interior speech. For we, that we may express outwardly the things which we are inwardly sensible of, deliver these through the organ of the throat, by the sounds of the voice, since to the eyes of others we stand as it were behind the partition of the body, within the secret dwelling place of the mind; but when we desire to make ourselves manifest, we go forth as though through the door of the tongue, that we may shew what kind of persons we are within. But it is not so with a spiritual nature, which is not a twofold compound of mind and body. But again we must understand that even when incorporeal nature itself is said to speak, its speech is by no means characterized by one and the same form. For it is after one method that God speaks to the Angels, and after another that the Angels speak to God; in one manner that God speaks to the souls of Saints, in another that the souls of Saints speak to God; in one way God speaks to the devil, ill another the devil speaks to God. For because no corporeal obstacle is in the way of a spiritual being, God speaks to the holy Angels in the very act of His revealing to their hearts His inscrutable secrets, that whatsoever they ought to do they may read it in the simple contemplation of truth, and that the very delights of contemplation should be like a kind of vocal…
The Church Fathers: public-domain translations (Ante-Nicene and Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers), verse-indexed by SermonIndex (CC BY 4.0).
