Job cries out from the depths of the worst imaginable, the fulfilment of what he has dreaded most. He sits covered with ‘loathsome sores … from the sole of his foot to the crown of his head’ (2:7). He is bereaved of all his children; he has been deprived of all his possessions; he has lost all his social standing and dignity, and is an outcast despised and jeered at even by those who are themselves despised; his friends ‘comfort’ him in ways that rub salt into his wounds; his wife urges him: ‘Curse God, and die’ (2:9); he cannot find any meaning in his life or suffering; and he is convinced that God has turned against him and is an enemy responsible for all that has happened to him.