ob
sinned not with his lips, ne spake nothing follily against our Lord, but
took it all patiently.

After this it was so that on a certain day when the children of God
stood tofore our Lord, Satan came and stood among them, and God said to
him: Whence comest thou? To whom Satan answered: I have gone round the
earth, and walked through it. And God said to Satan, Hast thou not
considered my servant Job that there is no man like him in the earth, a
man simple, rightful, dreading God, and going from evil, and yet
retaining his innocency? Thou hast moved me against him that I should
put him to affliction without cause. To whom Satan said: Skin for skin,
and all that ever a man hath he shall give for his soul. Nevertheless,
stretch thine hand and touch his mouth and his flesh, and thou shalt see
that he shall not bless thee. Then said God to Satan: I will well that
his body be in thine hand, but save his soul and his life. Then Satan
departed from the face of our Lord and smote Job with the worst blotches
and blains from the plant of his foot, unto the top of his head, which
was made like a lazar [leper] and was cast out and sat on the dunghill.
Then came his wife to him and said: Yet thou abidest in thy simpleness,
forsake thy God and bless him no more, and go die. Then Job said to her:
Thou hast spoken like a foolish woman; if we have received and taken
good things of the hand of our Lord, why shall we not sustain and suffer
evil things? In all these things Job sinned not with his lips. Then
three men that were friends of Job, hearing what harm was happed and
come to Job, came ever each one from his place to him, that one was
named Eliphas the Temanite, another Bildad the Shuhite, and the third,
Zophar Naamathite. And when they saw him from far they knew him not, and
crying they wept. They came for to comfort him, and when they considered
his misery they tare their clothes and cast dust on their heads, and sat
by him seven days and seven nights, and no man spake to him a word,
seeing his sorrow. Then after that Job and they talked and spake
together of his sorrow and misery, of which S. Gregory hath made a great
book called: The morals of S. Gregory, which is a noble book and a great
work.

But I pass over all the matters and return unto the end, how God
restored Job again to prosperity. It was so that when these three
friends of Job had been long with Job, and had said many things each of
them to Job, and Job again to th