Job 1:12

So the Lord said to Satan, “All right then, everything he has is in your power. Only do not extend your hand against the man himself!” So Satan went out from the presence of the Lord.
Job 1:12 New English Translation (NET)
 
Even remembering that this is all an elaborate set-up in order to teach us something about God, we still shudder at the very idea of something like this actually taking place. One of the issues we have, as we’ve mentioned before, is that we are viewing the scene before us through the lenses of our modern ways of thinking, which isn’t really helpful to us. We forget that this story’s origins date back to a much different time when people’s ideas, beliefs and perceptions about God, and gods, was on a whole other level. In fact, this story seems to be in the midst of the move in belief that God, Yahweh, was simply a tribal god among many gods, to the monotheistic belief that God, Yahweh, was the One True God, and all the other gods weren’t real gods at all. We want to be careful, therefore, about being too quick to think we understand what the Bible is saying without taking some time to do a little study and reflection. Things aren’t always what they seem at first.