Albert Barnes Commentary Job 2:8

"And he took him a potsherd to scrape himself therewith; and he sat among the ashes." — Job 2:8 (ASV)

And he took him a potsherd – The word used here חרשׁ chârâsh means a fragment of a broken vessel; see the notes at Isaiah 45:9. The Septuagint renders it ὄστρακον ostrakon – “a shell.” One object of taking this was to remove from his body the filth accumulated by the universal ulcer ; and another design probably was to indicate the greatness of his calamity and sorrow.

The ancients were accustomed to show their grief by significant external actions (compare the notes at Job 1:20), and nothing could more strongly denote the greatness of the calamity than for a man of wealth, honor, and distinction to sit down in the ashes, take a piece of broken earthenware, and begin to scrape his body, covered over with undressed and most painful sores. It does not appear that anything was done to heal him, or any kindness shown in taking care of his disease. It would seem that he was at once separated from his home, as a man whom none would venture to approach, and was doomed to endure his suffering without sympathy from others.

To scrape himself withal – The word used here גרד gârad has the sense of grating, scraping, sawing, or to scrape or rasp with an edged tool. The same word, identical in its letters, is used at present among the Arabs, meaning to rasp or scrape with any kind of tool. The idea here seems to be that Job took the pieces of broken pottery that he found among the ashes to scrape himself with.

And he sat down among the ashes – On the expressions of grief among the ancients, see the notes at Job 1:20. The general ideas of mourning among the nations of antiquity seem to have been to strip off all their ornaments, to put on the coarsest apparel, and to place themselves in the most humiliating positions.

To sit on the ground (see the note at Isaiah 3:26), or on a heap of ashes, or a pile of cinders, was a common mode of expressing sorrow; see the note at Isaiah 58:5. To wear sackcloth, to shave their heads and their beards, to abstain from pleasant food and from all cheerful society, and to utter loud and long exclamations or shrieks, were also common modes of indicating grief.

The Vulgate renders this sedebat in sterquilinio, “sitting on a dunghill.” The Septuagint states, and he took a shell to scrape off the ichor (ἰχῶρα ichōra), the sanies, or filth produced by a running ulcer, and sat upon the ashes out of the city, implying that his grief was so excessive that he left the city and his friends, and went out to weep alone.