Job possessed not merely wealth, but a system—an entire economic apparatus that might have defined his existence and, unknowingly, would become the measure of his identity and how others perceived him. To our modern ears it might fall flat. Sheep, camels, oxen, female donkeys. The logistics needed to care for this amount of animals are extensive. Water and food, caretakers and land. Consider this: a sheep needs to graze on a few kilograms of food each day and needs a few liters of water per day. It can produce wool and needs to be cared for by a shepherd. Camels eat leaves and need other types of land or feed. Camels can be used for their milk, if we regard the eastern context, but they can also be used as caravans for trade routes. See it as a type of truck to transport goods. The same goes for female donkeys—milk and transport. The yoke of oxen implies that they were not used for food but rather for work, so vast areas of land could have been worked with these oxen. This massive network required a lot of internal administration and organization. Workers needed to keep this machine running. Massive produce needed to be moved, and maintaining all of this required a large amount of expenses just to keep up. This sounds more like a very large economic machine with many moving parts dependent on each other. This is why Job was called the richest man in the east.
Truly a man that stood out. It must have been a remarkable sight to behold Job and his estate. Yet beyond these possessions lay something rarer: character. God drew attention to Job. In Job 1:8 we see that God Himself claims that Job stood out—he was upright, blameless, revered God, and turned away from evil. Job was not just wealthy but he was also righteous.
Satan heard God and drew a correlation between the wealth and well-being of Job and his righteousness. Satan made his accusation: that Job’s righteousness was merely the shadow cast by prosperity—remove the light, and the man would curse God. God permitted the hedge to fall. Job lost everything—and Satan waited, watching to see if Job would reveal that his reverence for God was based only on the goodness he received.
Job most likely sat in a state of loss for a very long time. As his wealth slipped from his possession, he did not sin against God.
Job lost his children, his wealth, his health, and all the respect and honour that accompanied it. Even his wife seemed to regard him with disdain. As she asked him why he would not rather curse God and die, she unknowingly echoed Satan’s own temptation. What deep cut must that have been? His own wife, worn down by ruin, now became the voice that tempted Job to embrace darkness as the light around him faded. The whispers carried on the wind of gossip rippled over the eastern lands: Job has fallen from favour. A once powerful, rich, and famous man became a story of loss, pain, and suffering. His three friends arranged to meet and go see him. When they saw him, he looked different. He was not the man they knew. They did not recognise him. They wept in reaction, sitting in silence for seven days.
From a prominent position—family, friends, favor, and vast wealth—to ruin, mockings, sores, suffering, and pain. Now his friends’ gaze fell upon their once glorious friend, and they wept and sat in awe, without words.
Seven days of silence. Thoughts hanging like mist in a valley… the slow movement of revelations comparable to the valley in part being displayed by the incremental cracks of the fog. Thinking and processing slowly took shape as the boundaries between thoughts and emotions mingled. Job was about to break the silence and manifest his thoughts. We are about to hear the words of a man who lost everything and drank the shards of loss and suffering.