Satan Part 1 (Satan in the Hebrew Bible)

Be it as an anti-hero, a clown, a trickster, a tempter, or the Lord of Evil, Satan is ubiquitous in Western culture. Despite being consistently portrayed as a some sort of nefarious spiritual being arising from the Judeo-Christian tradition, Satan is conspicuously absent from biblical narrative. The name Satan only appears three times in the Hebrew Bible, and Lucifer (commonly identified with Satan in modern thought) appears once in Isaiah. Where then, did the common Satan mythos arise from? The answer lies in the few mentions in the Bible, apocryphal texts, the rabbinic tradition, and further expansion from Christian and secular sources.

The only instance of Satan as a name (the word “satan” in the Hebrew language means adversary, and as such appears as a generic noun in other places) in the Hebrew Bible appears in 1 Chronicles 21:1, “Satan stood up against Israel, and incited David to count the people of Israel.” This census of the Israelites displeases God and he sends a pestilence that kills 70,000 Israelites, however as a result of this, God reveals to David where to build the temple in Jerusalem. Satan is not mentioned again in the narrative, nor in the rest of Chronicles. There is also no explanation for why Satan incited David. It is also interesting to note that 2 Samuel 24:1 recounts the same story, but begins with, “Again the anger of the Lord was kindled against Israel, and he incited David against them, saying, 'Go, count the people of Israel and Judah.'” The Society of Biblical literature notes that in this passage, “the anger of the Lord” seems to function as a separate entity from the Lord himself. It appears that both authors do not want to overtly accuse the deity of inciting the Israelites against him through his own command. In the case of Chronicles, the author achieves this disassociation by attributing the action a being entirely separate from God.

Satan next appears in the opening chapters of the Book of Job, commonly regarded as a folktale or parable in modern times, rather than a strict history. The book begins with the heavenly beings gathered before the Lord, Satan among them. Satan claims that he has been roving around the Earth. The Society of Biblical literature postulates that in this instance, Satan functions as the Lord's spy on Earth, why an all powerful deity needs a spy is not addressed in the text, nor the commentary. (In this instance, the word “satan” is preceded with a “the” in the Hebrew, implying that “The Satan” is some sort of official in God's cabinet). God then asks Satan if he has encountered Job. (In an interesting similarity to Satan, Job can also mean enemy in Hebrew). God claims that Job is the most upright and blameless man on Earth. Satan claims that Job is only righteous because God has never given him a reason to rebel. In response to this, “The Lord said to Satan, 'Very well, all that he has is in your power; only do not stretch out your hand against him!'” (Job 1:12). After which, Satan proceeds to destroy all of Job's possessions and kill his family. Job refuses to question God because of his misfortune so Satan once again appears before the Lord and says, “Skin for skin, All that people have they will give to save their lives. But stretch out your hand now and touch his bone and his flesh, and he will curse you to your face.” (Job 2:7). This marks Satan's last appearance in Job. The story continues with Job suffering more and more before the Lord himself finally addresses Job with a slew of rhetorical questions asserting his complete dominion over the universe and the foolishness of man to question him.

When viewed as parable, the Satan character is ancillary in Job to the central message of God's dominion, however, when interpreted as a literal history of a man named Job and an account of an encounter with God and Satan, Job gives us many of the qualities of Satan that have persisted into the current popular conception. This is the only instance in the Hebrew Bible of Satan functioning explicitly as unique being. He has a personality separate and distinct from God. He appears to interact (or has interacted at one time) regularly with God. He is also able to freely roam the Earth, and, with God's permission, can supernaturally bring about destruction. The most important development from this conception of Satan is that he has been established as wholly distinct from God. This allows later storytellers to give him attributes that would be profane to ascribe to God. This passage also provides us with a basis for the idea of Satan as the tempter, although here, he does not tempt one to do any and every kind of sin, his goal is to make Job turn his back on the Lord. It's also interesting that he doesn't function as a kind of “the devil made me do it” personification of man's inner struggle. He merely destroys until someone gives up hope.

The last appearance of (the) Satan in the Hebrew Bible is in Zechariah 3. Here, Zechariah sees the high priest Joshua in a vision standing before an angel, with Satan to the right of him. “And the Lord said to Satan, 'The Lord rebuke you, O Satan! The Lord who has chosen Jerusalem rebuke you! Is not his man a brand plucked from the fire?'” (Zechariah 3:2-3). The passage continues, without Satan appearing again, with the angel telling Joshua that one day the Lord of Hosts will remove the sins of the land in a single day. This passage has been appropriated by Christians as a prophetic vision of Jesus taking away man's sin and it is possible that the juxtaposition of this messianic prophecy and the rebuke of Satan could lead interpreters to associate the two, although this is not explicit in the text. More concretely, the image of Joshua with an angel and Satan on either side of him seems to persist in popular culture with the trope of “the devil on my shoulder.”