Unfortunately, it turned out far worse than could ever have been expected. Armed with the carte blanche given to him by the lord, satan attacked simultaneously on all fronts. One day, while job's sons and daughters, seven sons and three daughters, were eating and drinking wine in the eldest brother's house, a messenger came to job's house, our very own cain, who, as we know, had been employed to tend the she-asses, and he said to job, The oxen were ploughing and the asses feeding beside them, when the sabeans fell upon them and took them away and put all the servants to the sword, and only I escaped alone to tell you. Cain was still speaking when another messenger arrived, The fire of god is fallen from heaven and has burned up the sheep and the slaves and only I escaped alone to tell you. While he was still speaking, there came another, The chaldeans, he said, divided into three groups and fell upon the camels and carried them off, having first put the servants to the sword, and only I escaped alone to tell you. While he was still speaking, there came another, who said, Your sons and your daughters were eating and drinking wine in the eldest brother's house, when suddenly the came a great wind from the wilderness and smote the four corners of the house and it fell in upon them and killed them, and only I escaped alone to tell you. Then job stood up and rent his cloak and shaved his head, and fell down upon the ground and said, Naked came I out of my mother's womb and naked shall I return to the womb of the earth, the lord gave and the lord has taken away, blessed be the name of the lord. The disasters befalling this unfortunate family will not stop here, but before proceeding, allow us a few remarks. The first is to express our bewilderment at the fact that satan was able to do as he pleased with the sabeans and the chaldeans in order to serve his particular interests, the second is to express our even greater bewilderment on learning that satan had been authorised to make use of a natural phenomenon, in this case a great wind, and worse still, and this really is inexplicable, to use god's own fire to burn the sheep and the slaves tending them. So, either satan is far more powerful than we thought, or what we are seeing here is a grave case of tacit complicity, assuming it was tacit, between good and evil. Mourning had fallen like a tombstone on the land of uz, because all those who died had been born in the city, which was now condemned, who knows for how long, to a general poverty in which job would not be the least of the poor. A few days after these unhappy events, there was another gathering of the celestial beings, and satan was again amongst them. The lord asked him, Where have you been, and satan answered, I have been going to and fro on the earth and walking up and down in it, Did you notice my servant job, asked the lord, there is none like him on the earth, he is a perfect and upright man, who fears god and eschews evil, and who still holds fast to his integrity, even though you moved me to destroy him for no reason, and satan answered, I did so with your agreement, whether or not job deserved it was none of my business, neither was the idea of tormenting him, and he went on, A man is capable of giving all that he has to save his life, even his own skin, but put forth your hand now and make him suffer illness in his own bones and body and you will see that he will curse you to your face. The lord said, He is in your hands, but on condition that you spare his life, That is all I require, answered satan and he left the gathering to go and find job and, before you could say knife, he had covered him with boils from the soles of his feet to the crown of his head. It was terrible to see the poor man sitting in the dust of the road while he scraped the pus from his legs with a potsherd, like the lowest of the low. Job's wife, who had not said a word until now, not even to mourn the death of her ten children, felt that it was time to speak up and she asked her husband, Do you still cling to your integrity, if I were you, if I were in your place, I would curse god even if, by doing so, I risked bringing about my own death, to which job responded, You speak like a foolish woman, if we receive good from god, why should we not also receive evil, that was his question, but his wife answered angrily, Evil is satan's business, it would never have occurred to me that god would appear to us now in the guise of satan's rival, God cannot have put me in this state, only satan, Yes, but with the lord's agreement, she said, adding, According to the ancients, the devil's wiles would never prevail over the will of god, but I'm not sure now that things are that simple, it seems likely that satan is just another instrument of the lord, the one who does the dirty work to which god prefers not to put his name. Then job, at the height of his suffering, and perhaps, although without admitting as much, encouraged by his wife, broke the dyke of the fear of god sealing his lips and cried, Let the day perish wherein I was born, and the night in which it was said, There is a man-child conceived, let that day be darkness, let not god regard it from above, neither let the light shine upon it, let darkness and the shadow of death stain it, let a cloud dwell upon it, let the blackness of the day terrify it, let it not be joined to the other days of the year, let it not be counted among the months, let that night be solitary, let no joyful voice come therein, let the stars of the twilight be dark, let it look for light, but have none, neither let it see the dawning of the day, because it shut not up the doors of my mother's womb nor hid sorrow from me, thus job bemoaned his fate, pages and pages of imprecations and lamentations, while three friends of his, eliphaz the temanite, bildad the shuhite and zophar the naamathite lectured him on the need for resignation and on the duty of all believers to bow their head to the will of god whatever that will might be. Cain had managed to find employment, the fairly lowly task of looking after the donkeys of a small landowner, to whom he had to repeat over and over, to him and his relatives, the story of the attack by the sabeans and their theft of the she-asses. He reckoned that the angels must still be around, collecting information about job's misfortunes in order to carry the news back to the lord, who would be impatient to hear them, but, to his surprise, they were the ones who sought him out, to congratulate him on having escaped the cruelty of the sabean nomads, A miracle, they said. Cain, of course, thanked them, but that prerogative did not make him forget his grievances with god, which were growing steadily, The lord must be very happy, he said to the angels, he won his bet against satan, and despite all job's sufferings, he has still not denied god, We knew he wouldn't, And god knew too, I imagine, Oh yes, the lord most of all, Which means that he made the wager because he knew he would win, In a way, yes, So nothing has changed, then, the lord knows no more about job than he did before, True, In that case, can you explain to me why job should have been transformed into a leper, covered in suppurating wounds, having lost all his children and all his wealth, The lord will find some way of compensating him, Will he resuscitate his ten children, raise the walls of his house and bring back the animals that were killed, asked cain, That we don't know, And what will the lord do to satan, who would seem to have abused the authority given to him, Probably nothing, Nothing, asked cain, scandalised, slaves may not count in the statistics, but a lot of other people died too, and you're telling me that the lord will probably do nothing, It's not our fault, that's how it's always been in heaven, The fact that satan should be present at a gathering of celestial beings is, in itself, incomprehensible to any mere mortal. The conversation ended there, the angels left, and cain began to think that he really should find a more dignified path in life, I'm not going to stay here for ever, looking after donkeys, he thought. This praiseworthy notion was deserving of consideration, but, unfortunately, his options were nil, apart from going back to the land of nod and taking his place at the palace and in lilith's bed. He would grow fat there and give her two or three more children, but now another idea occurred to him, that of going to see how his parents were, to find out if they were still alive and if they were all right. He would wear a disguise so as to go unrecognised, but no one would deprive him of that joy. Joy, he asked himself, for cain there can never be any joy, cain is the man who killed his brother, cain is the man born to witness the unspeakable, cain is the man who hates god.