[Here we continue a reprint of a small portion of Joseph Caryl’s study in Job.  Mr. Caryl wrote twelve volumes on the book of Job.  His study is a great example of how deep one can dig into the truths of the Bible.] A Study by Joseph Caryl (1644) Job 1:11-12 (part 1) “Put Forth Thine Hand Now” 11 But put forth thine hand now, and touch all that he hath, and he will curse thee to thy face. 12 And the Lord said unto Satan, Behold, all that he hath is in thy power; only upon himself put not forth thine hand. So Satan went forth from the presence of the Lord. (KJV) In the previous two verses, we have had the answer which Satan makes to the Lord’s question, “Hast thou considered my servant Job?”  You see the slander that is in it, and how he advances the blessings of God upon Job, so that he might debase the services of Job toward God.  Now lest God should take him off presently with a denial, and tell him that all this is false—that Job is no such man as he represents him to be, that he has most presumptuously intruded into God’s peculiar knowledge, namely the secrets of the heart (for Satan had nothing to accuse him of that was in sight, only what he guessed at in his heart)—lest God, I say, should presently come and check him thus, for his boldness and impudence, both in contradicting his testimony and in charging Job with insincerity, Satan makes a motion in the next verse, “Put forth thine hand now, and touch all that he hath, and he will curse thee to thy face” (vs. 11).  It is as if Satan said, “Lord, if you be not satisfied that thus it is with your servant Job, if you will not take my word that he is a hypocrite, and that he serves you only for ends, do but stretch forth your hand, etc.  Do but take away that which you have given him, and you shall see presently he will take away that which he has given you; if you will withdraw his riches, he will quickly withdraw his service. The 11 th  verse contains Satan’s motion which he subjoins to his answer in verse 10:  “But put forth thine hand now.”  By his previous answer, Satan had wounded all the holy services of Job, and now he seeks to wound his estate and possessions.  His answer was full of malice, and his motion is as full of cruelty.  Whom before he had falsely accused, he (in these words) desires may be causelessly afflicted.  “Put forth thine hand now.”  It is as if he should have said, “There is great question concerning Job’s integrity, this one experiment will quickly decide and determine it, Touch all that he hath, etc.”  This motion is grounded (as was before noted) upon a feared denial of his answer in the former words.  For there, Satan had argued after this manner, “It is an unsound and an hypocritical profession which is grounded only upon outward benefits, but all the profession of Job is grounded only upon the outward benefits, therefore it is unsound. Doth Job serve God for naught?”  This is the strength of Satan’s argument.  Now, he perceiving the weakness or rather indeed the falseness, the extreme lie, that was in the minor, in the assumption (namely, that the profession and holiness of Job was grounded only upon outward things), he (I say perceiving that) seeks to confirm what he had affirmed by this motion.  If you doubt (said he) whether it be so, or no, with Job, let that come to the trial, touch all that he hath, and he will curse thee to thy face.  The strength of the reason that lies in the motion may be thus conceived.  That profession is grounded upon outward things which a man lays down, when outward things are removed and taken away; but if those outward things be removed and taken away from Job, he will quickly lay down his profession, yea he will take up blasphemy, he will curse thee to thy face;  therefore the profession of Job is grounded upon outward things.  This now is the logic or the reason, upon which Satan bottoms and infers this motion, that so he may bring Job upon a further trial. “Put forth thine hand now” – The Hebrew is, send forth thy hand.  To put forth the hand signifies sometimes to help, sometimes to hurt.  So in Psalm 144:7:  “Send forth thine hand and deliver me.”  There is a sending forth the hand in a way of mercy.  And so in Acts 4:30, there Peter prays that Christ would stretch forth his hand to heal.  So, that stretching forth, or sending forth, or putting forth the hand (for the words are all used in common to the same sense) signify to do a thing for our good and preservation, but usually this putting forth, or stretching forth of the hand, notes some affliction, some punishment.  A man that stands with his hand stretched out, is in a posture to strike.  And so God himself is often described by having his hand stretched forth, when he is about to punish, as in the prophecy of Isaiah diverse times, “Therefore is the anger of the Lord kindled against his people, and he hath stretched forth his hand against them, and hath smitten them” (Isa. 5:25); and in chapter 9, three times:  “For all this his anger is not turned away, but his is stretched out still” (Isa. 9:12); and so at the 17 th  verse, and at the 21 st  verse, “His anger is not turned away, but his hand is stretched out still,” that is, the Lord is still smiting and afflicting them.  In Esther 6:2, two men were found in the chronicle, who fought to lay (or put forth) their hands on the King Ahaseurus, they would have slain him.  So then, the meaning of Satan here is, stretch forth thine hand, let him feel the weight of thine hand, in smitings and sore afflictions. “Thy hand” – The hand of God in scripture signifies, 1. The purpose of God, as “They have done whatsoever thy hand and thy counsel determined before to be done” (Acts 4:28).  2. The hand of God signifies the Spirit of God, in the mighty actings and workings of it; so a Spirit of prophecy is called the hand of God; “The hand of the Lord was there upon me” (Ezek. 1:3); and “The hand of the Lord was upon me” (Ezek. 37:1), that is, the Spirit of the Lord, a mighty power of prophecy was upon me.  So likewise, a spirit of strength that is upon a man, is called the hand of God:  “The hand of the Lord was upon Elijah and he girt up his loins and ran before Ahab” (I Kings 18:46).  Here the hand of the Lord is put for the power of the Lord; put forth thy hand, that is, put forth thy power; and so the hand of the Lord is used often; “The hand of the Lord is not shortened” (Isa. 59:1), that is, the power of the Lord is not abated.  The Lord has a long hand, and his hand is always of the same length; so, stretch forth thine hand now, that is, do thou put forth thy mighty power.  This hand of the Lord’s power (to clear that a little further) is taken three ways in Scripture. First, for his protecting power.  There is a protecting hand, as in John 10:28:  “No man is able to pluck them out of my Father’s hand,” said Christ.  God has his sheep in his hand, and he will protect and safeguard them so that none shall be able to pluck them away.  This hand God put forth before, for Job. Again, it is put for his correcting power:  like in Ps. 32:4:  “His hand was heavy upon me, that is, the afflicting hand of God was heavy upon me.  Let us fall into the hand of God” (David chose that, see II Sam. 24:14), that is, into the afflicting hand of God, rather than into the hands of men. It is put thirdly for a revenging hand, for a wrathful hand, by which he destroys and breaks in pieces those who are his enemies.  “It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God” (Heb. 10:31).  David desires to fall into the hands of God, that is, into his correcting hand, because he knew there was mercy, but it is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of God, when he comes in wrath to take vengeance of those who contemptuously despise his mercy, as there it is expressed. Now here when Satan says, “Put forth thy hand,” that is, thine hand of power, Satan intends not that God should put forth the hand of his power to protect, nor barely to correct.  He desires more than barely a correcting or chastising hand upon Job.  He would have his revenging hand, his breaking, his destroying hand, as we shall see afterward. Further, Thy hand, that is, God’s own hand, as if he did desire that God himself would take Job into his own hand to chasten and punish him.  The hand of God, his correcting or chastising hand sometimes is an immediate, and sometimes a mediate hand.  Sometimes it is immediate, when God by himself chastens or punishes or afflicts, when no second cause appears or intervenes.  So it may seem Satan here means, when he says, put forth thine hand, that is, do it yourself, let no other have the handling of Job, but yourself.  God sends such immediate afflictions; a man is afflicted in his body, in his estate and many other ways, and he cannot find anything in the creature, whence it should come; it is an immediate stroke of God, he cannot see how or which way, or at what door this evil came in upon him.  Therefore, it is called a creating of evil in Isa. 45:7:  “I make peace and create evil.”  Now creation is out of nothing; there is nothing out of which it is wrought.  So many times God brings evil upon a people or person, when there is no appearance of second causes.  Sometimes, likewise, it is called God’s hands, when it is the hand of a creature:  it is God’s hand in a creature’s hand.  Such a situation is found in Ps. 17:14:  “Deliver my soul from the wicked which is thy sword” (you see a wicked man is God’s sword) “and from men which are thy hand.”  So, thy hand may be understood of an instrument; Satan himself is God’s hand to punish in that sense, as wicked men here are said to be God’s hand; “…from the men that are thy hand.”  Though there be other readings of that passage.  Some read it, deliver me from men by thy hand; and others, deliver me from men of thy hand;  but our translation  may very well carry the sense of the original in it, from men which are thy hand.  Such is the case of Nebuchadnezzar; that wicked king is called God’s servant:  “I will send and take Nebuchadnezzar my servant” (Jer. 43:10).  God speaks of him as his servant, or as his hand in the situation.  So then, put forth thine hand, it may be understood (I say) either immediately or mediately:  do it by thyself, or do it by instruments, or strike him thyself, or give me commission, or give others commission to strike.  There is one thing further in this expression, “Put forth thine hand now.”  Now.  Some read it, put forth thine hand a little;  and some read it, I pray thee put forth thy hand.  The original word is translated to all these senses; we translate it, referring to the present importunity and instancy of Satan, put  forth thine hand now; let not this business sleep; let it not be deferred a minute, a moment; let the commission go out speedily to afflict Job. “And touch all that he hath”:  To touch notes sometime a heavy and a sore affliction, and sometime a light and a small affliction.  In the scripture, we find it both ways used.  Sometime (I say) to touch, signifies the greatest and the forest affliction or punishment that can be; and so Job expresses all the afflictions that fell upon him at the last only by touching:  “Have pity upon me, have pity upon me, O ye my friends, for the hand of God hath touched me” (Job 19:21).  Whereas Job at that time lay under the forest and heaviest affliction that could be, all his estate was gone, and his body was full of diseases, and his soul was full of horror, and all this he expresses by this, the hand of the Lord hath touched me.  So also in Ps. 73:14, to be touched signifies the greatest affliction, “All the day long” (said David), “have I been plagued.”  That which we translate plagued, is the same original word which we translate touch, in the text; “All the day long have I been touched,” that is, I have been touched with the sorest plagues, heavy afflictions have been laid continually upon me.  So that to touch signifies sometimes the greatest or the sorest strokes of trouble. Sometimes again we shall find it signifies only a light affliction, as in Gen. 26 in two places of that chapter; in the 11th verse, “Abimelech charged all his people, saying, he that toucheth this man or his wife, shall surely be put to death;” that is, he that does them the least hurt or wrong.  So at the 19 th  verse, in that agreement between Abimelech and Isaac, they conclude thus, “Thus thou wilt do us no hurt, as we have not touched thee, and as we have done unto thee nothing but good”:  So that to touch notes the least ill or hurt that can be, we have not touched thee, that is, we have done nothing to thee but good; anything on this side of doing good to them had been touching of them.  We find a similar expression in Ps. 105:15, where the Psalmist speaking of God’s extraordinary care of his people:  “He suffered no man to do them wrong, he rebuked kings for their sakes, saying, touch not mine anointed, and do my prophets no harm.”  Touch not mine anointed people, that is the meaning of that place, though in many other places we know princes are called the anointed of God; yet here it is meant of the people of God in general, they are God’s anointed (as the context clearly carries it), for they have all received unction from God, an unction of grace, an unction of the spirit, and an unction of privilege.  Touch not mine anointed, that is, do them not the least hurt.  And the sense that these words may bear, Put forth thy hand now and touch all that he hath, might be carried, as if Satan here intended, only a touch in the latter sense.  Give him but the least stroke, lay but the lightest affliction upon him, do but touch him; you are so confident of your servant Job, that he is such a man, do but give him the least touch, and you shall see how he will discover himself.  So some expound it. He does not say, wound him, smite him, break him to pieces, but touch him only.  Neither said he, touch him, but his:  And if you give him but a touch with the top of thy little finger, you will presently find the rottenness of his heart.  In that sense, the word imports an extenuation of Job’s sincerity or heightening of Job’s hypocrisy, as if he had been so rotten in his profession that the least touch would overthrow him, and make him discover himself to be stark naught.  Like the apples growing about Sodom, which have fair outsides, but if you touch them, they moulder away into dust and ashes. Though the words have this sense in them, and Satan carries it cunningly, expressing himself in such ambiguous terms, yet certainly Satan had a further intent whatsoever his language may bear:  he had an intention that Job should be touched in the former sense, namely that he should have a touch to the quick, as we say, that he should have the forest and deepest wound that his estate was capable of:  he would have him whipped, not with cords, but with scorpions; he would have the little finger of God heavier upon him than his loins upon others. Destroy him, undo him by your touching.  He speaks by a figure which is when we go less in our expressions than in our intentions, when our words are lower than our spirits.  And that is proper for Satan, who is the great deceiver, the great juggler in word and deed; to desire that Job should only be touched, when he meant he should be utterly undone and ruined.  Touch all that he hath, that is, all his estate, all his possessions, his children, his family, his cattle, whatsoever belongs to Job, let all feel an undoing stroke from thy hand. Before I come to that which he undertakes upon the affliction, I shall observe two or three things from the words, thus far opened. “Put forth now thine hand”:  We may note from that, the extreme importunity of Satan to do mischief.  He would not give God a minute, not a moment’s respite to consider this thing, but do it now, presently, let him presently be afflicted, he makes haste to destroy, he makes haste to shed blood, “their feet are swift to shed blood,” as the Psalmist speaks.  So Satan, his feet are swift to shed blood, when Satan would have God to afflict us, do it presently, says he; now sin, now provoke God, do not stay till the next day; but when we are called to give up ourselves to God, then tomorrow will serve the turn, and next year will serve to repent, yea when you are old, ’tis time enough to repent; when he tempts to do any mischief, any sin, then now, now sin, but ’tis time enough to do good hereafter, tomorrow will serve for that. “Put forth now thine hand, and touch all that he hath”:  It is a truth which Satan here speaks concerning the hand of God; that if God but touch the highest and greatest estate in the world, it will fall to pieces quickly.  There is a truth in it, take it in the earnest sense that can be, if God do but lightly touch the estate of a man, it will soon fall in pieces.  God is not put to any stress to afflict and punish, as in Ps. 81:14:  “I should soon have subdued their enemies and have turned my hand against their adversaries.”  God expresses the utter overthrow of the enemies of his people, but by the turning of a hand, if God do but turn his hand, they are all gone presently, soon subdued.  If he do but touch the might, the pomp, the greatness, the riches and the power of all those in the world that are opposers of his church, presently they fall to the ground:  A touch from the hand of God will end our wars.  If he touch the mountains they smoke (as it is in the Psalm) and consume to ashes:  they that are the mighty and great ones of the world, the mountains, by one touch of his hand fall as it were to nothing.  So if God do but touch our estates, they moulder away, no creature can uphold them. Then again observe here, the cunning impostor of Satan that puts such sore, such heavy afflictions into such light and easy expressions; he clothes his malice, his utmost malice here in very fair words, do but touch him, says this enemy; but you see what Satan touches are, touch all that he hath.  Why Satan, would nothing have made a trial, but only a touching of all?  For Job to have lost somewhat had been a trial, a touch for Job to have lost half his flocks of sheep, or his oxen, had been a trial and no very light one either; for Job to have lost a son, to have found one of his children suddenly struck dead, had been an affliction and a heavy one too; such a touch as that might well have touched the father’s heart.  Would it not serve Satan that a son should die or that some of his cattle should be destroyed, but he must have all touched, all that he hath?  The malice of Satan is insatiable, there is nothing that will serve him, unless he may devour all. This touch of Satan, which he desires might be laid upon Job, is like the touch that many have given to those, who have come into their hands amongst us; they would but touch them, but they would touch them in all; when they put forth their hands (as they pretended) in ways of justice, in their courts, they would touch men in all, touch them in their liberties by imprisonment, and touch them in their estates by extreme vast fines, and touch them in their names by disgrace, touch them in their bodies by whipping and cutting, and touch them in their relations, by keeping all friends from the sight of them.  No moderation, no bounds, but touch them in all that they had.  And (O exactness of justice) when God came to touch that power, he gave them a touch, just after the rate and proportion of their own touches; for when those courts and persons came to have their power and actions scanned, it was not moderating, or regulating, or restraining, or abating, or limiting their power, that satisfied; they must quite down and be taken away.  God gave them a touch, just as they touched others before:  So that a man may say certainly, there is a God that judges the earth.  These are the touches of Satan and the touches of merciless men are as like his as themselves are; they think there is nothing done unless men be undone:  they never give over touching till they come to ruining. —— This article is taken from:  Caryl, Joseph.  An Exposition with Practical Observations upon the Book of Job. London: G. Miller, 1644.  A PDF file of this book can be downloaded, free of charge, at http://www.ClassicChristianLibrary.com