Job 1:12

12. All that he hath is in thy power As in the margin, hand. Job is now delivered into the hand of Satan. His piety is to be put to the sorest test. All virtue is conditioned upon trial the higher the virtue the severer the ordeal. The stroke is a bold one, even for the empire of the world. For God had declared Job the best man then living. (Job 1:8.) If Satan should succeed in showing Job to be a hypocrite, he will practically demonstrate that there is no substantial virtue in the world.

So Satan went forth Not so much to his roaming “to and fro,” as in a straight and definite line to execute his permitted “mission” of evil. By that mission he would seek to destroy virtue; but God shall so overrule him that he will only furnish the conditions by which hardy and tried virtue is made possible and demonstrated. A like remark is made of Cain, (Genesis 5:16,) and of Judas, that “he went immediately out” to his deed of treachery. There is no delay: evil nature recoils from the constrained presence of the pure and good to its own congenial work of ruin. He goes with alacrity and with vast resources, and in high expectation of encompassing the fall of one saint, which better pleaseth him than of many unbelievers.

From this we learn that trials are proportioned to the strength of the soul. The intensity of the kindling flames declares the estimate God puts upon the virtue of Job. On the one hand, all temptation at the hand of Satan sets forth the value of the soul, and its high destiny in another life: on the other, the saying is no less true, that “in every temptation to sin the devil cheapens our immortal souls,” and in every way endeavours to depreciate them before the soul itself. “God tries men, that they may rise: Satan tempts them, that they may fall.”