Job 2:7, Was Job Unrighteous?

So Satan went out from the presence of the LORD and afflicted Job with painful sores from the soles of his feet to the top of his head.

//You know the story. God brags about his servant Job’s righteousness, and Satan (the accuser) sneers that if God took away all the things he gave to Job, Job wouldn’t be so darn righteous. So God gives Satan free reign to torture Job.

Satan takes everything away, and when that doesn’t do the trick, Satan smites Job with boils from toe to head.

The most fascinating thing about this story is that Job suffers precisely what Moses said would happen to the unrighteous.

Deuteronomy 28:35, The LORD will afflict your knees and legs with painful boils that cannot be cured, spreading from the soles of your feet to the top of your head.

This is unlikely to be coincidence; both passages use the same Hebrew word for “afflict” (nakah) and the description of the boils is nearly identical. Either Job’s affliction draws directly from the book of Deuteronomy, or else Deuteronomy draws from Job. I’m guessing the former, though scholars continue to disagree on when Job was written, and how it came to be integrated into the Hebrew Bible. If my guess is correct, then Job is directly contradicting Moses’ statement that such evils are God’s punishment for unrighteousness; Job insists that bad things happen even to good people, and suggests in story that perhaps the powers in heaven are playing games with us humans.