My take? Bad things happen to good people so that good people can become better people through faith in Christ, who has overcome the bad and promised us peace in Him.
These things I have spoken unto you, that in me ye might have peace. In the world ye shall have tribulation: but be of good cheer; I have overcome the world. (John 16:33)
Many are confused and are not aware that God, being able to test them, must used whatever means at His Hands to choose for correction. Don't you chastise your children?
Mat 5:45That ye may be the children of your Father which is in heaven: for he maketh his sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust.
God gave the Angel, who was one of the sons of God, the duty of an adversary!
Job 16:11 (GW) 11 God handed me over to unjust people and threw me into the hands of wicked people.
Job 19:21 (Darby) 21 Have pity upon me, have pity upon me, ye my friends; for the hand of God hath touched me.
Job 2:10 (ASV) 10 But he said unto her, Thou speakest as one of the foolish women speaketh. What? shall we receive good at the hand of God, and shall we not receive evil? In all this did not Job sin with his lips.
ha-Satan: Yet in all this he is as little like the Ahriman of the Zend Aνesta (Rhode, Heil. Sage, p. 182 sq.; Matthai, Religionsgloube d. Apostel, II, i, 171 sq.; Creuzer, Symbol. i. 705) as an indifferent prosecuting attorney general or judicial suρerintendent commissioned by Jehovah. [See Gen 19:24]
Daemons are not mentioned in the canonical books of the Old Test., unless (with many interpreters) we understand "the host of the high ones" in Isa. 24, 21 [the kings of the earth, comp. Dan. 8. 8), the “he goat”] (comp. Isa. 14, 12), and interpret the whole passage as referring to the punishment [of the King of Babylon].
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In the Aρocrypha, the old Hebrew notion of Jehovah's angels who allot disaster occurs not partially, and in the case mishap over takes the enemies of the pious, the angels are alluded to as Auxiliaries and friends of the latter (2 Μacc. 15, 23 sq.), although we may search in vain such passages for a single mention of daemons.
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On the other hand, the books of Tobias and Baruch concerning them.. (δαιμόνιa), while they never refer to Σαταν.
These beings dwell in waste places (Sept. at Isa. 13, 21; 34, 14) ; also ruins Rabe's trans; “they are the heathen gods,”; comp. Seρt, at Psa. 115, 5; 1 Cor, 10, 20);
The Targυm of Jonathan actually names, at Gen. 3, 6, Sammael as ' the "angel of death," see Gerlách, De angelo rnortis, Hal. 1731),'
Josephus knows nothing of Satan, but dáémons
(in as much as from the hand of God only good can come, but against him, the Creator of the universe, no opposing being could originally exist)
DAEMON. Lev. 17, 7, the word translated " deνil" is (sair', hairy), ordinarily a"goat," but rendered " satyr" in Isa. 34, 14 ; probably alluding to the wood-daemons, resembling he-goats, supposed to live in deserts, and which were an objects of idolatry and beast worship anon the Heathens.
satyr Greek Mythology one of a class of lustful, drunken woodland gods, represented as a man with a horse's ears and tail or (in Roman representations) with a goat's ears, tail, legs, and horns.
© Oxford University Press, 2004
The term rendered "devil" in Deut. 32,17; Psa. 106, 37, is a (shed. properly lord, Sept. and Vulg. Daemon),: an idol.
The belief of the Hebrews down to the Babylonian exile seems but dimly to have recognized either Satan or demons, at least as a dogmatic tenet, nor had it many occasions for them, since it treated moral evils as a properly humans act (comp. Gen. 3), and always as subjective and concrete, but regarded misfortunes according to teleological axioms, as a punishment deserved on account of sin at the hand of a righteous God, who inflicted it especially by the agency of one of his angels(2 Sam. 24,16; comp. 2 kings xix, 35), and was according looked upon as the proper author of every afflictive disρensation
Cyclopedia of Bibical Literature, James Strong
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