Job loses his oxen and donkeys to a raid and his servants are killed (Job 1:14–15). Fire from heaven burns up the sheep and servants (Job 1:16), Chaldeans take the camels and kill servants (Job 1:17), and a great wind collapses a house, killing all his children (Job 1:18–19).
On a normal day of feasting in the eldest son’s home, disaster breaks in without warning (Job 1:13–15). A messenger reaches Job with a report from the fields: the oxen were working and the donkeys were grazing nearby when Sabean raiders attacked. They seized the animals as plunder and killed the farm workers with swords. These verses begin the rapid sequence of calamity reports in Job’s opening narrative. After Job is introduced as prosperous and careful about his children’s spiritual and social life (Job 1:1–5), the reader is shown a heavenly conversation that sets the test in motion (Job 1:6–12).
Job 1:13–15 introduces the first blow against Job’s prosperity through ordinary human violence. While Job’s children are feasting in the oldest son’s house, a messenger reports that working animals (oxen plowing; donkeys grazing nearby) were suddenly attacked.
A careful answer keeps the immediate passage, the book's argument, and the whole-Bible storyline together, so the question is answered in context instead of as a detached idea.
Start with Job 1:14-15, then read the surrounding section so the answer stays connected to the passage's flow.
14that there came a messenger to Job, and said, "The oxen were plowing, and the donkeys feeding beside them,
15and the Sabeans attacked, and took them away. Yes, they have killed the servants with the edge of the sword, and I alone have escaped to tell you."