All these are represented to him by witnesses, to all appearance credible, as dead; and he mourns for his great loss accordingly.

Would not a merchant feel to all intents and purposes a ruined man, if he received a clear intelligence from different parts of the world at once that all his ships and warehouses had been destroyed by hurricanes and fire?
Faith given, patience follows: and the trial is morally the same, whether the news be true or false.
"Remarkably enough, after the calamitous time is past, when the good man of Uz is discerned as rewarded by heaven for his patience by the double of everything once lost--his children remain the same in number, ten.

It seems to me quite possible that neither camels, &c., nor children, really had been killed.

Satan might have meant it so, and schemed it; and the singly coming messengers believed it all, as also did the well-enduring Job.

But the scriptural word does not go to say that these things happened; but that certain emissaries said they happened.