So went Satan forth from the presence of the Lord
With leave and license, with power and authority, as the Targum; having got his commission enlarged, on a fresh grant, to do more mischief to Job, he departed directly and immediately, being eager to put in execution what he had a permission to do; (See Gill on Job 1:12);
and smote Job with sore boils, from the sole of his foot unto his
crown:
with hot and burning ulcers, such as were inflicted on the Egyptians in the plague of the boils and blains, called the botch of Egypt, see ( Exodus 9:10 Exodus 9:11 ) ( Deuteronomy 28:27 ) ; it is in the original text "with a bad boil", or "the worst" F1; it was as it were but one boil; they stood so thick and close together, that they were as one, reaching from head to foot, and spreading all over his body, so that there was no part free; he was full of sores; as Lazarus, and to him may be applied what is said in a figurative sense of the Jews, ( Isaiah 1:6 ) ; and this boil or boils were of the worst sort, and most hot and angry, and gave the most exquisite pain, and what Job was "smitten" with at once; they did not rise up in pimples and pustules at the first, and gradually gathered and came to an head, but he was at once covered with burning ulcers at their height, and with running sores; this was done by Satan, through divine permission; who, when he has leave, can inflict diseases on the bodies of men, as he did in the days of Christ on earth, see ( Matthew 17:15 Matthew 17:18 ) ( Luke 13:16 ) ; some Jewish writers, as R. Simeon, say, that the devil heated the air, and thereby caused inflammation in Job's blood, which broke out in boils; but then this would have affected others besides him: many are the conjectures of learned men F2 about this disease of Job's, some taking it to be the leprosy F3, others the scurvy, others an erysipelas Bolducius reckons up no less than fourteen diseases that are attributed to him, collected from his own words, ( Job 7:5 ) ( Job 16:13 Job 16:15 Job 16:16 ) ( 19:20 ) ( 30:16-19 ) ; a late learned writer
F1 (er Nyxvb) "nicere malo", Pagninus, Montanus, Piscator, Schmidt; "maligno", Cocceius, Michaelis, "pessimo", Junius & Tremellius, Schultens.
F2 Vid. Reiskii dissert. de Morbo Jobi, in Thesaur. Dissert. Philolog. par. 1. p. 556.
F3 Origen contr. Cels. l. 6. p. 305. So Michaelis in Lowth. Praelect. de Sacr. Poes. Heb. p. 182, 201, 202.
F4 Delaney's Life of King David, vol. 2. p. 147.