The Satan

How God's Executioner Became the Enemy

Ryan E. Stokes

• Publisher: Eerdmans
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9781467457156
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Biblical Studies

Many people today think of Satan as a little red demon with a pointy tail and a pitchfork—but this vision of the devil developed over many centuries and would be foreign to the writers of the Old Testament, where this figure makes his first appearances. The earliest texts that mention the Satan—it is always "the Satan" in the Old Testament—portray him as an agent of Yahweh, serving as an executioner of evildoers. But over the course of time, the Satan came to be regarded more as God's enemy than God's agent and was blamed for a host of problems.

Biblical scholar Ryan E. Stokes explains the development of the Satan tradition in the Hebrew scriptures and the writings of early Judaism, describing the interpretive and creative processes that transformed an agent of Yahweh into the archenemy of good. He explores how the idea of a heavenly Satan figure factored into the problem of evil and received the blame for all that is wrong in the world.

CHAPTER 1

The Origin of the Satan

In ancient religious thought, the world abounded with deities and other superhuman entities. These invisible beings were at work in the world, shaping history and influencing humankind. Unseen powers controlled the fortunes of individuals, sometimes for a person’s benefit and sometimes for a person’s harm. The rise and fall of nations were subject to decisions made and actions taken by deities. The writers of the Hebrew scriptures shared this understanding of the world.

The literature of the Hebrew scriptures centers on the activity of Yahweh, the God of Israel, in the world, especially as it pertains to the people of Israel. While numerous passages acknowledge the existence of other divine beings, only a small number of passages suggest that a foreign deity or a god other than Yahweh either blesses or creates problems for Israel. In 2 Kgs 3, the army of Israel is forced to retreat when King Mesha of Moab sacrifices his firstborn son—presumably to the Moabite god Chemosh—and receives divine assistance against the Israelites.¹ Jeremiah 44 narrates a dispute between the prophet Jeremiah and the people of Judah, in which the men and women of Judah tell the prophet that hardship has come upon them because they have ceased making offerings to the “queen of heaven.” This view is not shared by Jeremiah, who contends rather that the people’s unfaithfulness to Yahweh is the source of their problems. In Daniel, one reads of superhuman “princes” of nations, with the princes of Persia and Greece engaged in combat with Michael, Israel’s prince (Dan 10:13, 20–21).² Israel’s subjugation to foreign powers is not merely a matter of wars between human armies, but is connected to conflicts taking place in the divine realm. And Israel’s eventual deliverance is tied to Michael’s ascendancy above the superhuman princes of the other nations (12:1).

Although deities other than the God of Israel at times make their presence felt in the Hebrew scriptures, more typically it is Yahweh alone who is said to control Israel’s fate. Even in the example of Daniel mentioned above, the reader is assured that the outcome of the battles between the superhuman princes has been determined in advance by Yahweh. If Yahweh alone controls the destiny of the children of Israel, then Yahweh receives the credit when things go well for them. The reverse is also true, however. Misfortune, when it occurs, is thought to come from Israel’s one true God. “I am the LORD, and there is no other. I form light and create darkness, I make weal and create woe; I the LORD do all these things” (Isa 45:6b–7). “Does disaster befall a city, unless the LORD has done it?” (Amos 3:6b). The Hebrew scriptures are largely monistic in outlook, in that both good and evil are believed to come ultimately from one and the same God.

Frequently, nevertheless, the Hebrew scriptures speak of various superhuman beings who serve as divine agents for accomplishing God’s purposes among humankind. While some of these beings are God’s agents for blessing the righteous, some of them are God’s agents for bringing judgment upon the wicked. These agents of judgment include “angelic” beings who bring death to God’s enemies, and “spirits” who variously afflict and mislead the wicked. The most notorious of these divine emissaries of judgment in the Hebrew scriptures is the Satan.³

The Satan Tradition in the Hebrew Scriptures

Early discussions of the Satan tradition were predominantly theological in their approach. Interpreters took for granted that the canonical texts bore witness to a uniform doctrine. In particular, they assumed that the authors of the Hebrew scriptures conceived of Satan in the same way as the authors of the NT. Such theological presuppositions characterized treatments of the topic well into the modern era. More historically minded scholars, on the other hand, were reluctant to take up the topic of Satan and evil spirits, perhaps in part because they did not consider such doctrines of invisible evil forces to be appropriate to critical historical inquiry.⁴ In the late nineteenth century, critical scholars finally entered the discussion of Satan.⁵ These interpreters were more attuned to diversity among the biblical writings than their less critical predecessors had been. These scholars were unwilling to assume that the authors of the Hebrew scriptures had the same beliefs regarding Satan as did later Jewish and Christian writers. Nor did they assume that the Hebrew Scriptures were themselves completely uniform in their depictions of this figure, but they discerned diversity and development even among these early biblical writings.

Eventually, biblical scholars arrived at a general consensus about the origin and evolution of the Satan tradition. They hypothesized that this development took place in three stages. The earliest text to speak of a heavenly satan figure, according to this scholarly consensus, was the story of Balaam’s encounter with the angel of Yahweh found in Num 22. Although this passage uses the Hebrew noun śāṭān (שָׂטָן), it is not the name Satan as it would later become. It is merely a common noun meaning “adversary” or perhaps “obstacle.” This satan was not God’s enemy, but was none other than the angel of Yahweh himself, who happened on this occasion to be functioning as an “adversary” to Balaam.

The next phase in the development of the tradition, scholars argued, appears in Job 1–2 and Zech 3. In these passages, one encounters not merely a satan, as in Num 22, but the Satan (haśśāṭān, השטן). Although “satan” has not yet become a name, these texts mark a significant step for the tradition in that direction, in that the word śāṭān is used not simply as a common noun but as a title for an officer in God’s court. Translating the noun śāṭān as “accuser,” scholars concluded that the Satan in this phase of the tradition was the divine “Accuser” or “Prosecutor” of the wicked in God’s heavenly courtroom.

The final phase in the evolution of the Satan tradition, according to the scholarly consensus, is attested by the census story of 1 Chr 21, which uses the noun śāṭān without the definite article. In this late text, the Chronicler did not speak of “a satan” (as in Num 22), or of “the Satan” (as in Job and Zechariah), but of one named “Satan.” The Chronicler alleviated the theological problem created by 2 Sam 24, in which Yahweh incites David to take a disastrous census of Israel, by substituting Satan for Yahweh as the instigator of the census. Finally, in the latest of these biblical texts to speak of a superhuman satan, one reads of a figure resembling the Satan of later Jewish and Christian literature. By the time of Chronicles, “Satan” was apparently the name of an evil heavenly being who leads humans into sin.

This standard critical explanation of the history of the Satan tradition was attractive in its simplicity. Moving from the earlier biblical texts to the later ones (as commonly dated by scholars), it was easy to see how the belief that a superhuman being might serve as a satan was transformed into the belief that there was a particular malevolent superhuman being named Satan. The simplicity of this developmental hypothesis, however, would eventually lead to its rejection, as scholars began to call into question whether the biblical texts did attest such an uncomplicated linear trajectory for this tradition and, moreover, whether these texts even pertained to the same satan figure.

Sara Japhet was the first to deal a blow to the standard developmental hypothesis. In her work on Chronicles, Japhet argued that śāṭān in 1 Chr 21 is not a name but a common noun as it is used elsewhere in the Hebrew scriptures, meaning “adversary.”⁶ Further, she contended that the Chronicler does not speak of a superhuman adversary at all, but merely of a mundane, human adversary, no more than one of the king’s counselors who, against Israel’s interests, advised the king to number the people. First Chronicles 21, then, does not represent the final stage in the development of beliefs about Satan, nor any stage in such a tradition.

The next challenge to the consensus was posed by Peggy Day in her monograph on the concept of a heavenly satan in the Hebrew scriptures.⁷ Although Day identified the Chronicler’s satan as a heavenly being, she agreed with Japhet that this figure was not named “Satan.” Rather this satan was an anonymous “accuser” in God’s court. Day called the scholarly consensus further into question in her analysis of Job and Zechariah. She translated haśśāṭān in these books not as a title, “the Accuser,” but as “a certain accuser.” Job and Zechariah speak not of a permanent prosecutor in God’s court, but of heavenly beings who merely happen on these occasions to serve as prosecutors. According to Day’s analysis, the Hebrew scriptures reveal no development from the belief that heavenly beings may on occasion serve as satans to the belief in one particular satan.

The discussions of individual passages below will engage more closely the various interpretations and arguments that scholars have offered, but this preliminary survey of scholarship on the satan tradition in the Hebrew scriptures sufficiently highlights several questions that I will answer in the first two chapters of the present study. To what extent can one speak of a satan tradition in the Hebrew scriptures, or can one speak only of various unrelated satans? If there is a common tradition behind some of the passages that mention superhuman satans, can one discern the history of its development? Do the biblical texts exhibit a simple linear evolution of thinking on this topic, or was the process more complex? What sort of satan did the biblical authors eventually come to describe? Does any passage in the Hebrew scriptures speak of a person named Satan or of a figure resembling the Satan of later Jewish and Christian theology?

Here I will summarize my own position on these matters. There is a satan tradition in the Hebrew scriptures. Although it is undeniable that the biblical authors portray heavenly satan figures in differing ways, some common notions underlie their portrayals. The interrelatedness of these texts is also apparent in that later passages containing satan figures reinterpret and reapply earlier passages that mention such figures. Furthermore, one can discern much of the process by which the tradition developed. The trajectory of this tradition’s evolution, however, is different from what interpreters up to this point have surmised. I also diverge fundamentally from most of previous scholarship, arguing that the Satan is not primarily an “adversary” or “accuser,” but an “attacker” or “executioner.”

What Is a Satan?

In order to comprehend the origin and early development of the Satan tradition, it is necessary to begin in the proper place. For most readers of the Hebrew scriptures, even for many biblical scholars, their understanding of the Satan figure derives largely from the book of Job. The story of Job is a familiar one, and the Satan plays a prominent and fascinating role in that story.

As I contend in ch. 2, the book of Job’s Satan marks a pivotal moment in the development of the Satan tradition. Nonetheless, the story of Job is not the place to begin an investigation of the Satan tradition. The take on the Satan figure in the book of Job, I argue, is the most developed of the Hebrew scriptures, and its depiction of the Satan is not in every respect representative of the tradition to which it is the heir. With its literary and theological sophistication, the book of Job is also the most challenging text to make sense of with regard to a history of beliefs about the Satan. It is a story into which it is very easy even for careful interpreters to read their own ideas. In order to comprehend the early Satan tradition and the book of Job’s contribution to it, one must correctly discern the origins and basic elements of the tradition. Then one will be in a position to evaluate its development and more complex manifestations.

We begin with the definition of the noun śāṭān, “satan,” considering first those texts in which the meaning of the word is clear and then those texts that are more ambiguous. Once we have defined śāṭān, then we may evaluate those texts in which a superhuman satan appears.

With the possible exception of 1 Chr 21, the Hebrew scriptures do not use the word śāṭān as a name, but simply as a common noun. (That the word occurs as a name even in Chronicles is doubtful, as will be shown below.) While scholars have suggested various translations for śāṭān, until recently the overwhelming majority have agreed that it should be translated as “adversary,” and more specifically, in legal contexts, as “accuser.”⁸ Th...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Foreword by John J. Collins
• Preface
• Abbreviations
• 1. The Origin of the Satan
• 2. The Satan and the Innocent Job
• 3. Demons, Evil Spirits, Fallen Angels, and Human Sin
• 4. The Prince of Mastema and His Deceptive Spirits
• 5. The Prince of Mastema, Enemy of God’s People
• 6. Demons, Evil Spirits, the Satan, and Human Responsibility for Sin
• 7. Belial, Sin, and Sectarianism
• 8. Belial and the Powers of Darkness
• 9. The Satan in the New Testament
• 10. Conclusion
• Bibliography
• Index of Authors
• Index of Subjects
• Index of Ancient Sources