Job 2:11-13

Job's Three Friends Come to Condole with him. The friends are Eastern princes like himself (LXX kings), hence live at a distance. They knew him not, because he was so disfigured. They threw dust upon their heads, symbolising that Job s fortune and they themselves along with it are ruined by heaven-sent calamities, as a fertile land might be by dust-showers. They are so overwhelmed, that they sit seven days and seven nights, mourning for Job as if he were dead. Seven days are the days of mourning for the dead (Sir_22:12). Thus we come to the end of the prologue, between which and the epilogue (Job 42:7) in the old Volksbuch must have been an account of the debate between Job and his friends, very different from the poem which we now possess. The friends evidently tried to comfort him, but what they said, we can now only infer. They certainly did not speak to him like his wife, but yet they spoke so wrongly of God, that He would have taken vengeance on them, had it not been for Job's intercession (Job 42:7).