Job 1:17

The third blow falls on the camels. They were the animals used for carrying loads and for travel, the source of commercial wealth. The ones who do it here are the Chaldeans, from the north of Job's country. They seem to have been a warlike people, and many of them at that time, though they had not yet reached the national power they held later. They sweep it all away, both camels and servants, as fully as the Sabeans had done.

They were enemies, plunderers at that time from the east, as the Sabeans were from the south. They fell on the camels, a very valuable part of Job's property, and carried them away. He alone escaped to tell the sad news.

Ur of the Chaldees is mentioned in Gen. 11:28, 31 and Gen. 15:7, and the Chaldeans fell on Job's camels (Job 1:17). After that we do not read of them for some fifteen hundred years, until God sent them to punish Judah (2 Kings 24:2).

To the watching eye, what happened to Job was raids by Arabs and Chaldeans — ordinary raids for plunder — and a violent storm that blew the house down. Satan was in it all. And behind Satan was God, arranging the purifying of Job's heart and our instruction in every age.

So we see that not only men's lusts and passions but the elements too were in Satan's hand, as far as God allowed. One after another the herds, the flocks, the camels and the children perished. The ruin was felt all the more sharply because it did not come in a single moment. There was just time to hear of each loss on its own. On the surface neither God nor the enemy appeared. What appeared were Sabeans, Chaldeans, fire of God from heaven, and a whirlwind from beyond the wilderness.

"And struck down the servants with the edge of the sword" — Satan's hand at its most plain, the destroyer — "and I alone have escaped": escaped just far enough to tell the grim news, and so, as the one survivor, to make it all sting more. If no one had escaped in each case, the news could never have come in that way. The damage was complete. Yet Job felt, as we should too, that all of it was under the eye of God. Never let us forget Him. If Satan's hand was hidden under these painful blows, God's hand was above Satan. How sure and great the comfort!

In the case of Job we find God saying to Satan, with authority and by permission, "Behold, all that he has is in your hand. Only against him do not stretch out your hand." That was the limit of the permission. Satan could get no more.

So the blows fall one after another, with no chance of even partial recovery. They come with terrible suddenness, right in the middle of prosperity, happiness and godliness. They could not be undone; they piled up; they stunned him. In one short hour Job loses everything. Satan had done his work well, under the permission of an all-wise God.

He admits that nothing was his by right. He came into the world naked, and he would leave it as he came. "We brought nothing into the world, and we cannot take anything out of the world" (1 Tim. 6:7). But he turns from the stroke to the Hand that gave it. He looks past all second causes, whether human or miraculous, and lays his sorrow at the Lord's feet. "The LORD gave, and the LORD has taken away; blessed be the name of the LORD."