GET BEHIND ME, SATAN

“How long will you torment me  and crush me with words? Ten times now you have reproached me;  shamelessly you attack me.” (19:2-3)

If we think of Job as a temptation story prefiguring the temptation of Christ, where do Job’s friends fit in? What part do they play? The answer to this question is linked to the curious fact that after the Prologue the figure of Satan seems to disappear completely from the story. What becomes of him we do not know, but we do know this: Job’s friends are there to rush in and take his place. Just as Satan will not believe in the purity of Job’s faith, neither will Job’s friends, and they too become bent on discrediting him. Herein lies the great, terrible, beautiful secret of the book’s unity, as we see Satan attacking Job not only through disaster and disease and depression, but through the faithlessness of his friends. We need not go so far as to class these men as deliberate accomplices of Satan, but they are certainly his pawns, and for us the sobering lesson is that Christians are not above being used as instruments of the Devil. If the Devil himself were to appear on Job’s doorstep and attack him verbally, would his accusations be any more subtle and stinging than those of the friends? With friends like these, one is tempted to ask, who needs enemies?

Structurally the book of Job is built upon the paralleling of these two major conflicts: first of all the clash between God and Satan that opens the story, and secondly the clash between Job and his friends that monopolizes the balance of the book. The latter conflict mirrors the former one; the earthly mirrors the celestial. Since there is not a lot that we as humans can know about God’s dealings with Satan in the heavenlies, the book concentrates on the down-to-earth, visible dimension of this war, which is the battle between people with conflicting theologies. So Satan does not really disappear following the Prologue; he just goes underground.

Most wars, after all, are not won primarily by troops and tanks and bombs, but by propaganda and espionage. There must be infiltration behind enemy lines, and the successful spy must learn to speak the enemy’s language without a trace of accent and to melt into the alien culture like butter on toast. This was the essence of Satan’s tactics with Christ in the wilderness. He sought to camouflage his voice as the voice of God, quoting Scripture as though it were his native tongue, and even going so far as to solicit personal worship. In Job we see a similar strategy at work, only this time administered through Job’s friends. As the two sides in the dialogue trade perfectly plausible theological arguments, it is almost as though the Devil were whispering, “It is written . . .” while Job vehemently responds, “It is also written . . .”

Theology, it turns out, is Satan’s favorite game. Material destruction, sickness, death—these are child’s play to him. But if he can insinuate himself into our thoughts and feelings, if he can worm his way into our very soul, if he can (even as God Himself seeks to do) fill us with his spirit—this is exactly what the Devil most longs to do. And who is better qualified to invade the heart of a righteous believer than a friend? A friend can go where the Devil cannot. And so there is nothing Satan wants more than to poison friendships, deploying friends against one another to accomplish his ends.

In the Gospels, just as in Job, after the initial temptation scene we never again catch a glimpse of Satan personally harassing Jesus. Instead the Lord’s subsequent trials all tend to come through human agents—and not only through the Pharisees, but through Jesus’ own friends and family. Perhaps Job’s friends could be likened to the disciple Peter on the occasion when the Lord rebuked him with the words, “Get behind me, Satan!” (Matt. 16:23). At that moment, was not Peter engaged in an activity identical to that of Job’s comforters? He was negating the spiritual worth of suffering. He was trying to persuade his friend to take the triumphalist highway rather than the narrow path of the cross.

Mason, M. (2002). The Gospel According to Job: An Honest Look at Pain and Doubt from the Life of One Who Lost Everything. Crossway.
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