Job 2:8

"And he took him a potsherd to scrape himself withal; and he sat down among the ashes."

Commentary

Job uses a broken piece of pottery to scrape the painful boils covering his body from Satan's affliction. The potsherd represents the lowest, most common tool available, emphasizing Job's reduced state from wealth to using discarded fragments for basic relief. Sitting in ashes was an ancient Near Eastern expression of extreme mourning, repentance, or humiliation. Job's position outside the city in the ash heap marks his complete social isolation and ritual uncleanness, physically manifesting his spiritual anguish and loss.