The story of Job is one of the longest in the Bible. His three friends and his wife take us through forty-two chapters of questions and answers. We learn much from this dialog, but the basis of the story, the subject of all the discussion is the series of events of the first few chapters.
Satan is given limited reign in the life of Job, and he takes away from Job everything that has any value in Job’s life; his family, his possessions and his emotional health. But, the one thing that Satan cannot take from Job is his faith in the living God.
Everything else is stripped from Job. We might say that everything is ‘cut off’ or ‘taken away’ from him, and that is the wording we find in the following verses from the eighteenth chapter of Isaiah.
“For afore the harvest, when the bud is perfect, and the sour grape is ripening in the flower, he shall both cut off the sprigs with pruning hooks, and take away and cut down the branches. They shall be left together unto the fowls of the mountains, and to the beasts of the earth: and the fowls shall summer upon them, and all the beasts of the earth shall winter upon them.” (Isaiah 18:5-6)
It is also interesting to note here that Isaiah does not say (speaking for God); “I will cut off the sprigs with pruning hooks” nor; “I will take away and cut down the branches.” The pronoun used in these verses is “he”, i.e. someone other than God. That is consistent with the fact that Satan is the one who did the cutting down and taking away in the case of Job.
This is the eighteenth chapter of Isaiah, and Job is the eighteenth book in the Bible. They are connected.
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