Job 1:13 - Meaning and Application

Here we have a full account of Job’s troubles.

Satan brought them on the very day Job’s children began their round of feasting at their oldest brother’s house (Job 1:13). Since the oldest son likely had the largest share, the meal was probably the richest of all. The whole family was resting in peace and felt no danger, just when this custom was being renewed. Satan chose that time so the suffering would feel even sharper. “The night of my pleasure has he turned into fear” (Isaiah 21:4).

The blows all came at once. While one messenger of bad news was still speaking, another arrived, then a third, then a fourth. By God’s permission, Satan arranged it that way for two reasons. First, Job might see what looked like a special anger from God and grow bitter against providence, as if God had decided to ruin him no matter what. Second, he would have no time to think, pray, or settle his heart into patient trust. He would be overwhelmed by one disaster after another. God’s children are often under many trials at once, like wave after wave. So when one trouble comes, let it teach us to prepare for another.

Job lost everything he had, and the losses matched the list of his goods. He had 500 pairs of oxen and 500 female donkeys, with servants to care for them, and he lost them all at once (Job 1:14, Job 1:15). This was not because his servants were careless. The oxen were plowing, not wasting time, and the donkeys were feeding beside them, under watch. Even careful work and honest duty cannot keep us from trouble. Yet it is some comfort if suffering finds us where we ought to be, not in some wrong path. The loss came through the wickedness of the Sabeans, likely bandits who lived by stealing. They carried off the animals and killed the servants who tried to defend them. One servant escaped, not out of kindness, but so Job would hear it from an eyewitness before the news spread any further. Satan stirred them up, and in that one act he made both Job suffer and the Sabeans sin.

Job also had 7,000 sheep and shepherds, and he lost them all at once by fire from heaven (Job 1:16). He may have been ready to blame the Sabeans, but the next report turned his thoughts upward: “The fire of God has fallen from heaven.” Since thunder is God’s voice, lightning is his fire. This was no ordinary lightning, because it struck Job’s flocks directly and consumed both sheep and shepherds. Satan handled this trial with care, aiming to make Job curse God. These sheep were especially important because Job used them in sacrifice to honor God. It was as if God had become angry at the very things Job used in worship. Satan had already lied about Job to God, calling him a false servant, and now he tried to lie about God to Job, making him seem like a hard master who would not protect the flocks used in sacrifice. That could tempt Job to say that serving God is pointless. The messenger called it “the fire of God,” and that was true enough, but Satan likely wanted Job to think God had turned against him. Job later said that destruction from God was a terror to him (Job 31:23). How much more painful, then, was news of destruction that seemed to come straight from God’s hand. If fire from heaven had burned the sheep on the altar, Job might have taken it as favor. But since it burned them in the pasture, he could only see displeasure in it. There had been nothing like it since Sodom was burned.

Job had 3,000 camels and servants tending them, and he lost them all at the same time to the Chaldeans, who came in three bands, drove them off, and killed the servants (Job 1:17). If God’s fire had fallen on the Sabeans and Chaldeans instead of on Job’s innocent servants, his judgments would have been clear and obvious, like great mountains. But when the wicked prosper and carry off their loot while good people are suddenly cut down, God’s justice is like the deep sea, whose bottom we cannot reach (Psalm 36:6).

At last came the deepest loss of all, his ten children. Job was told that they had died when the house where they were feasting collapsed on them, along with all the servants there except the one who escaped to bring the news (Job 1:18, Job 1:19). This was the hardest blow of all, and it naturally would cut him the most deeply. So the devil kept it for the end, hoping that if the other losses did not break him, this one would. Children are part of ourselves, and losing them tears at a man in the tenderest place.

But to lose them all at once, and to have them all cut off in a moment, when they had been the care and hope of so many years, pierced Job deeply. They all died together, and not one was left alive. David, though a wise and good man, was deeply shaken by the death of one son. How much heavier, then, must this have felt for poor Job, who lost them all and became childless in a single moment?

They died suddenly. If they had been taken away by a slow sickness, Job would have had time to expect their death and prepare for the loss. Instead, it came without warning. That made the blow harder to bear, because there was no chance to ready his heart for the break.

They died while they were feasting and making merry. If they had died while praying, Job might have carried the sorrow more easily. He could have hoped that death found them in a right spirit. But for them to be overtaken that day, like a thief in the night, while they may have been weighed down with food and drink, could only add to his grief. Job had always been deeply concerned for their souls, and now they were beyond the reach of the sacrifices he used to offer for each of them.

See how the same fate can come to all people. Job’s children were often prayed for by their father, and they lived in love with one another, yet they still came to this untimely end. They died by a wind raised by the devil, who is called the ruler of the power of the air (Ephesians 2:2), but it was understood as the direct hand of God and a sign of his anger. Bildad later explained it that way, saying, "Your children have sinned against him, and he has given them over for their sin" (Job 8:4).

They were taken away just when Job most needed them to comfort him in all his other losses. This is how empty all created help can be. Only in God do we find real help, and present help, at all times.