Rebuking The Adversary The Activity And Origin Of Satan In The Old Testament

First, it is significant that demons and other anticreation beings were frequently pictured in the form of serpents throughout Near Eastern cultures. For example, according to R. S. Hendel:

The symbol of the underworld deity Ningishzida . . . is a venomous horned snake, which is depicted rising from his shoulders. Ningishzida is named in incantations as a guardian of underworld demons, and in the Adapa myth is a guardian of the gates of heaven. The female demon Lamashtu is depicted grasping snakes in both hands, while the male demon Pazuzu can be depicted with the exposed phallus as a snake.40

Further, the close literary connection we sometimes find between serpents and chaos, evil, and destruction throughout these cultures is also highly significant, as K. J. Joines, F. Landy and several other scholars have convincingly argued.41 So too is the association sometimes made between serpents and human mortality. In this light, Joines seems justified in concluding that “the underlying purpose of this serpent is to deceive and to destroy mankind; consequently, it basically symbolizes chaos.”42

Closely related to this is the argument of Flemming Hvidberg in his exploration of the Canaanite background to Genesis 1—3. Against those scholars who argue that the story is either an etiological tale about snakes or is portraying the serpent in a positive light, he concludes:

The old Jewish-Christian belief that the serpent is the devil is far more historically true than late Judaism and early Christianity could conceive.

The serpent is Zbl Baal (Prince Baal), Bel Zebul, Jahweh’s great adversary in the ancient struggle for the soul of Israel which is the theme of the whole of the Old Testament.

There is a profound connection between the Canaanite Baal-deity and the devil of Judaism. . . . It is possible that a line can be traced from the powers of chaos down to the devil of late Judaism.43

In sum, the background of Genesis 3 thus lends credence to the traditional Christian identification of the serpent with Satan.

A close reading of the text itself lends further weight to this interpretation. For one thing, while the author twice compares the serpent to wild animals (viz., it is more crafty, and more cursed, than the animals, 3:1, 14), he does not explicitly identify the serpent as a natural animal. For another, the author seems to set this creature apart from the other creatures insofar as he has previously concluded that all the creatures that the Lord made were good (1:24-25), whereas the serpent is clearly not good.44 That the serpent can talk, reason and deceive also seems to set it apart from the animal kingdom. Significantly, these abilities are not taken away with its curse, a point that further indicates that the author was not simply identifying the cursed serpent with a natural snake. He presumably would have known that snakes do not talk!

The references to the cursed serpent crawling on his belly, eating dust, striking at the heels of people but ultimately having his head crushed by them (3:14-15) do not necessarily refute this view. Crawling on one’s belly and “eating dust” (something snakes do not do) were idiomatic ways of referring to defeat and humiliation in ancient Semitic culture (e.g., Mic 7:17). Such references clearly refer to the loathsome behavior of snakes, but they do so metaphorically. So too with the picture of the serpent striking at people’s heels but having his head crushed. They are most easily taken as metaphorically depicting the animosity between humans and “the serpent” by referring to the natural enmity between people and snakes. They strike out at us, but we crush their heads.

Concerning the serpent in this passage, I would argue that the author is neither trying to explain why snakes crawl on the ground nor portraying the serpent as a symbol of goodness and fertility. He is rather seeking to illustrate the cursed nature of a demonic serpent (later identified as Satan) by referring to ground-crawling snakes. The author is saying that the serpent, the master of “seditious chaos” (F. Landy), now faces certain defeat and humiliation (like a snake), though he can yet inflict wounds on us (strike our heel). In this light, the later Jewish and Christian traditions were justified in linking this demonic creature with the prince of all demons, Satan.

Isaiah 14:1-23. This passage contains a prophecy against Sennacherib, who after conquering Babylon proclaimed himself as its king (v. 4). Verses 4-11 address his humiliating end. Though he is mighty now and able to inflict suffering and turmoil on his subjects (v. 3), he shall be brought down to the grave and mocked (vv. 9-11). Then follows a passage that has traditionally been taken to apply more profoundly to Satan than it does to the king of Babylon.

How you have fallen from heaven, O morning star, son of the dawn!

You have been cast down to the earth, you who once laid low the nations! You said in your heart, “I will ascend to heaven; I will raise my throne above the stars of God [El]; I will sit enthroned on the mount of assembly, on the utmost heights of the sacred mountain [Zaphon]. I will ascend above the tops of the clouds; I will make myself like the Most High [Elyon].” But you are brought down to the grave [Sheol], to the depths of the pit. (vv. 12-15 NIV)

The traditional argument has been that the wording of this passage goes beyond what can be appropriately applied to any human being, even to the king of Babylon. What human could ever “fall from heaven” and “be brought down to the earth?” Who would ever think they could ascend to heaven, rise above the stars of God (viz., the gods, here seen as stars), and ascend above the clouds? Hence the church has traditionally tended to see this passage as extending beyond Sennacherib and applying ultimately to Satan, the evil cosmic force working through Sennacherib.45 Is this interpretation valid? Two things may be briefly said.

First, the traditional exegesis is certainly not required by the text as it stands, which is why the majority of modern critical exegetes dismiss it outright. While the language of Isaiah goes beyond what could be literally intended of any human being, nothing in the text itself suggests that Isaiah is here talking literally. Isaiah is simply comparing the king of Babylon to the planet Venus, the morning star (hêlel = shining one; ben-ša?ar = son of dawn). It rises bright at dawn and climbs to the highest point in the sky, only to be quickly extinguished by the brightness of the rising sun. Thus, Isaiah says, shall be the career of the presently shining king of Babylon. He appears on the stage of world history as the brightest star, ascending higher and higher. But in the end he shall quickly disappear in the light of the sun.

Hence nothing in the text requires that we take Isaiah’s poetic language as referring to anyone other than the man Sennacherib. The fact that every verse following this passage speaks about this fallen star as a mere mortal further confirms this point: “You are brought down to Sheol. . . . ‘Is this the man who made the earth tremble, . . . who made the world like a desert?’ . . . You are cast out, away from your grave, like loathsome carrion, . . . like a corpse trampled underfoot” (vv. 15-19). Such language, obviously, could hardly apply to a spiritual, cosmic force like Satan. But this is not to say that the central insight of the traditional teaching was misguided, and this is my second point.

Read in the context of other Near Eastern conflict myths, Isaiah’s use of Venus as a metaphor for a rebellious and arrogant king does not seem simply to draw attention to something that shines, rises and then diminishes. The curious association of the God-created natural behavior of this bright morning star with something rebellious is significant. One of the recurring themes we find in the Near Eastern cosmic conflict myths is that of a young god who aspires to advance himself beyond his powers and appropriate domain, and who is thereby vanquished. In several contexts this god is associated with Venus.

For example, we know of one Canaanite story of a god named Athtar the Rebel, who wanted to rule on the throne of Baal. Unfortunately, he was too small for the throne. “His feet did not reach the footstool, his head did not reach the top.” Apparently in frustration, he says, “I will not reign on the reaches of Zaphon” (the sacred mountain). Thus he is instead given rulership over the earth (or underworld), a much smaller affair that he can presumably handle.46

What is most interesting about this for our purposes is that Athtar’s name means “Shining One, Son of Dawn.”47 Indeed, in another story about Athtar, his aspirations to reign with the god El by disclosing Yamm’s plans on building a palace for himself are thwarted by none other than the sun-goddess Shapash.48 The morning star, again, is vanquished by the sun! Variations on this theme seem to have found their way onto Greek soil as well, where stories of rebels (such as Phaeton, whose name means “shining”) being defeated by rising too close to the sun were not uncommon.49

Understood against this background, Isaiah’s poetry takes on new significance. The very fact that Isaiah associates the rising morning star with an act of rebellion suggests that he is tapping into some dimension of the Near Eastern cosmic conflict motif. That Isaiah further specifies that this rising star wanted to rise above “the stars of El,” to sit enthroned on “the recesses of Zaphon” and “become like Elyon”—all of which play a role in the Canaanite stories of Athtar—strengthens the conviction that Isaiah is intentionally drawing on familiar Canaanite themes to make a point to his audience.50 As Forsyth argues, the point seems to be the identification of “the king of Babylon, the power responsible for the fall of Jerusalem . . . with the figure of the cosmic rebel.”51

In this light, we can interpret Isaiah as reworking the cultural stories about the rebellious rising star in the same way as other Old Testament authors reworked the cultural myths of Baal’s battle with the raging Yamm, or Marduk’s battle with Tiamat. Isaiah portrays the arrogant activity of the king of Babylon as representing and reenacting the arrogant activity of a cosmic rebel, just as other authors had seen Yahweh’s parting of the Red Sea as a reenactment of Yahweh’s primordial defeat of Yamm or Rahab (Ps 77:16; 89:9-10; Is 51:9-11).

Isaiah is not thereby endorsing any particular story about Athtar. But he is using this known story to reveal a truth that the Athtar story illustrates: there is a cosmic rebellion, and the rebellious and arrogant extension of Sennacherib’s kingdom beyond its legitimate domain is both a participant and a prototype of it.

We can therefore concede that Isaiah’s prophecy is from beginning to end about none other than the man Sennacherib while also affirming that this prophecy has a cosmic dimension to it. Earthly battles correspond to heavenly battles. Hence we may consider the drama of Sennacherib’s illegitimate kingship as a participant in and a prototype of a much vaster drama of another oppressive conqueror who attempted to set up an illegitimate kingship on a cosmic scale.

As such, in the words of Bertoluci, this passage about one particular hostile king also points toward “an archetype of the political and religious powers which through the ages are hostile to God and His people, and is, as well, the impellant force behind every evil activity.”52 Or, in the words of K. L. Schmidt, both a “heavenly and earthly . . . demonic and human” event is being alluded to in this passage. Schmidt continues, “Such a myth applies to a finally enigmatic incident, to a demonic . . . event, which illuminates the foreground and background of the history of the doings of mankind.”53

When we consider the cosmic dimension of the mythological motifs Isaiah was alluding to in this passage, the later church tradition seems quite justified in identifying Helel ben-Shahar (translated as “Lucifer” in the Vulgate) with Satan. In its own fashion, the story of the rebellious king of Babylon illumines the story of the rebellious king of the whole world, and thus provides a cosmic backdrop for a warfare understanding of “the history of the doings of mankind.”

Ezekiel 28: The fall of the perfect one. The case for the traditional Christian reading of Ezekiel 28 as referring to the fall of Satan is similar to that of Isaiah 14. Here too we find a person, in this case the king of Tyre, about whom things are said that do not seem applicable to a mere human being. He is said to be “wiser than Daniel”; indeed, no secret is hidden from him (v. 3).54 He sees himself as having “the mind of a god” (v. 6) and even refers to himself as “a god” (v. 2).

Far more significant, however, is what the Lord himself says of this king:

You were the model of perfection, full of wisdom and perfect in beauty. You were in Eden, the garden of God; every precious stone adorned you . . . You were anointed as a guardian cherub, for so I ordained you. You were on the holy mount of God; you walked among the fiery stones. You were blameless in your ways from the day you were created till wickedness was found in you. (vv. 12-15 NIV)

But because this guardian cherub’s “heart was proud because of [his] beauty” and because he became “filled with violence,” the Lord “cast [him] from the mountain of God” (vv. 16-17).

It is not difficult to see why the church quickly hit upon the interpretation that this prophecy was at once speaking about the fall of the king of Tyre and the fall of Satan. When Ezekiel speaks of the Garden of Eden, the holy mount of God and a guardian cherub walking among the fiery stones, he seems to have moved beyond the realm of “thisworldly” history, even after an allowance is made for Semitic hyperbole. When he speaks of this pagan king as being “the model of perfection, full of wisdom and perfect in beauty,” someone other than the king of Tyre seems to be intended.

As with Isaiah, it is likely that Ezekiel is here appropriating aspects of the Near Eastern cosmic battle motif as a way of communicating the cosmic significance of the fall of the king of Tyre. The portrayal of the garden of God as the holy mountain surrounded by precious stones (sometimes conceived of as the stars) fits with various aspects of some Canaanite cosmic conflict stories. The theme of the rebel who possesses secrets is very common, and the notion that he is bright and beautiful fits well with other aspects of these myths (such as the rebellious Shining Son of Dawn stories mentioned above).55 The mention of Eden and the cherub, however, suggests that features of these cosmic conflict stories have been combined with elements of the Genesis account of the fall of humans as well (Genesis 2—3). Such would be an understandable, and indeed clever, literary device if indeed the author is depicting the fall of a cosmic being.56

In any event, while little can be said with certainty about the exact background to this passage, it seems probable that Ezekiel, like Isaiah, is making both a historical and a cosmic point within this passage. The fall of the king of Tyre illustrates and reenacts the cosmic fall of some unnamed “guardian cherub” (one of the gods of the nations?) who was, among other things, the model of perfection before his fall.

What lends further credence to the interpretation of this passage as a fusion of cosmic and historical themes is that, in the passages that follow, Ezekiel appears to do the same thing with other kings and with other cosmic figures. Thus he portrays Pharaoh as the great monster of the sea (Ezek 29:3; 32:2) and then applies a version of the Babylonian and Canaanite battles between Marduk (or Baal) and Tiamat (or Yamm) to him—except, of course, that Yahweh is the vanquisher. In Ezekiel 29 the monster will be captured with a hook and fed to the beasts (vv. 4-6).57 Chapter 32 says it will be captured with a net and left on dry land, where God “will cause all the birds of the air to settle on you, and I [God] will let the wild animals of the whole earth gorge themselves with you” (v. 4).

The cosmic dimensions of Pharaoh’s (viz., the sea monster’s) demise are then brought full circle when the Lord says, “When I blot you out, I will cover the heavens, and make their stars dark; I will cover the sun with a cloud, and the moon shall not give its light. All the shining lights of the heavens I will darken above you” (vv. 7-8).

It seems, then, that throughout this section Ezekiel portrays historical events as illustrating and intersecting with cosmic events. More specifically, he envisages Yahweh’s overthrow of his present historical enemies as examples of his overthrowing his cosmic enemies. In this light, the Christian understanding, derived from later revelation that clearly depicts Satan as God’s archenemy, can be considered justified in sensing that the fall of Satan himself is intimated in the fall of the king of Tyre (and we might add, the pharaoh of Egypt) as portrayed in this book.

We may summarize our investigation of the warfare motif in the Old Testament throughout the last four chapters by reviewing six conclusions.

First, while all the Old Testament authors are intent on expressing the sovereignty of Yahweh, they understand this sovereignty to entail that Yahweh does genuinely battle cosmic foes. In the only terms that they, in their ancient Near Eastern culture, could understand, it was revealed that hostile, proud, raging, destructive forces of chaos oppose God’s will and threaten the very foundations of the earth. In short, Yahweh must battle the hostile waters, Yamm, Leviathan, Rahab and Behemoth.

While Yahweh has unquestionably already vanquished these monsters and will continue to do so on a cosmic scale, this victory never undermines the genuineness of Yahweh’s present and future battles in the eyes of Old Testament authors. As in other Near Eastern myths, some authors understood Yahweh to have battled and defeated these forces prior to creation, a fact that I tentatively tried to square with the Genesis 1 creation account by entertaining a form of the restoration theory. Yet through the voluntary forfeiture by humans of their rightful rule, these anticreation forces continue to engulf and threaten the earth.

Indeed, so authentic is the ongoing cosmic spiritual battle that in a few instances Old Testament authors suggest that these forces successfully resisted God’s will in opposing nations or individual persons. For three weeks the “prince of Persia” successfully blocks God’s answer to Daniel’s prayer (Dan 10); the demonlike Chemosh, feeding on a king’s sacrificed son, successfully routs Israel (2 Kings 3:26-27); and Yamm at times successfully mocks God by engulfing Israel as he earlier (Gen 1:2?) engulfed the earth (Ps 74:10-13). Hence, as Levenson notes, the psalmist has to continually remind himself—in the face of evidence to the contrary—of Yahweh’s primordial victory.58 We shall shortly see that this conception of the power of hostile forces to thwart God’s will becomes much more intensified in the apocalyptic period and in the New Testament.

Second, while only a small amount of attention is given to evil spirits (“demons”) in the world, a significant amount of attention is given to the existence of gods who form a council of Yahweh and collectively constitute his army. While every Old Testament author unequivocally affirms that there is only one Creator and one Supreme God, they also assume the existence of other created gods. In so doing, they reestablish (not originate) a primal form of creational monotheism.

What is more, the Old Testament assumes that a significant amount of authority has been given to these gods to oversee the welfare of various nations (Deut 32; Ps 82). Others seem to be identified, or at least closely associated, with “natural” phenomena such as the sun, stars, moon, wind and thunder (Deut 4:19-20; 17:13; Judg 5:20; Job 38:7; Is 14:13; 40:26; 45:12; 104:4; 148:1-6; Hab 3:11). These gods, then, like humans (but on a larger scale), are in a position to carry out Yahweh’s will for the good of others. But if they choose, they are also in a position to temporarily thwart Yahweh’s will to the detriment of others, particularly those under their authority (Dan 10; Ps 82). If they choose the latter, they are, or at least shall be, judged accordingly (Ps 82). They shall eventually die “like mortals” and “fall like any prince” (v. 7).

Third, while Satan will later become the example par excellence of a god who went wrong (and the greatest of the gods beneath Yahweh at that!), in the Old Testament he remains a relatively minor figure, being mentioned by name only once (1 Chron 21:1). Nonetheless, against the views of many contemporary scholars, I have argued that he is, in the Old Testament, not seen as being a legitimate member of Yahweh’s assembly, nor is he portrayed as simply carrying out Yahweh’s orders. Rather, he is an adversary against God even more than he is an adversary against humans. His character is consistently seen as malicious.

It is this malicious element in his character at this early stage of revelation that lays the foundation for later perspectives. Here, we shall find, the figure of Satan comes to absorb within himself the chaotic cosmic characteristics previously attributable to Leviathan and other anticreation beasts.

Fourth, with some justification (in the light of subsequent revelation), the serpent of Genesis 3 can be interpreted as either symbolizing or embodying Satan. Isaiah 14 and Ezekiel 28 can also be understood as referring not only to the fall of human kings but also to the fall of Satan. While we are told virtually nothing about the time and circumstances of this cosmic fall, we are told enough to infer that it should not have happened.

These two prophetic passages are both spoken as lamentations for someone gone wrong. Drawing on familiar Near Eastern images, both passages depict someone created great who became prideful in his heart and rebellious in his spirit, and who then was cast down. Something similar can perhaps be inferred about the pride of Yamm, the waters, Rahab and Leviathan, as exemplified in other passages. These cosmic forces, it seems, ought not to be forces of chaos and destruction, and God ought not to have to oppose them.

All of this has significant repercussions for our understanding of the problem of evil. While an unambiguous “free will defense” is obviously not provided here, the Old Testament is laying the foundation for seeing evil as originating in the heart of free creatures—human and divine. It is, at the very least, certainly disallowing any understanding of evil as an eternal feature of the cosmos or of God. Evil is from the start construed as a tragic intrusion into God’s otherwise good creation.

Fifth, the only place where anything like the problem of evil is explicitly addressed at length in the Old Testament is the book of Job. The central point of the entire epic is that neither Job’s friends nor Job himself are correct in their explanations of his misfortunes. Job’s sorry plight was neither punishment for his (supposed) sin nor part of some wise, righteous and judgmental divine plan, as his friends insisted. But it was also not the result of an arbitrary irrational streak in God, as Job (and contemporary “demonic-in-Yahweh” theorists) suspected.

Rather, the point of the book is to say that these are not the only two options, a point that the post-Augustinian philosophical tradition lost and has yet to regain consistently. Both the prologue to Job and Yahweh’s speeches in Job leave us with the acute awareness that there is much more to this cosmos than just us and God. As almost all primordial peoples have realized, and as the New Testament makes even more explicit, there is also an incredibly vast, magnificent, complex and oftentimes warring and hostile “world in between” that we must factor in. Without undermining the sovereignty of God, the Bible generally portrays the cosmos as more like a divinely governed democracy than a divinely controlled dictatorship, and this democracy encompasses, but greatly transcends, free human beings.

But the book of Job and the entire Bible also assume that we know next to nothing about the goings on of this “world in between.” For example, in the whole of Scripture, and in direct contrast to much other literature in the ancient world and throughout history, we are given the names of only two angels.59 It is only through direct revelation that one gains a perspective like Daniel’s on warring cosmic “princes,” or the prophetic perspective Jeremiah speaks of as one who is privileged to listen in on the assembly of Yahweh’s council of gods (Jer 23:18; see 1 Kings 22:19-20; Is 6:8; Ps 82:1; 89:7; 103:20-21; 148:2; Job 1:6; 2:1). It is because of our near total ignorance—not on the basis of his sheer divine authority—that Yahweh instructs Job and his friends to remain silent in the face of evil.60 It is, in the end, neither God’s fault nor Job’s fault.

One of the primary reasons why the problem of evil is so intellectually intractable for us is precisely that we have not learned the lesson of Job, or of other primordial peoples. We have not moved beyond the false dichotomy of Job and his friends: evil in our culture is still generally seen as being either our fault or God’s will, or both. We are yet caught in an Augustinian, classical-philosophical model of God’s providence and an Enlightenment model of our aloneness in the cosmos.

This is, in a less direct way, also a lesson we can learn through the Old Testament motifs of Yahweh’s battle with the sea monsters, Yahweh’s struggle to control the gods, and even from the multitude of nonbiblical conflict myths that are found in most cultures throughout history. There is a “world in between”; it is largely characterized by warfare; and, for better or for worse, it significantly affects the world as a whole, and therefore each of our lives. It is my conviction that, until this “world in between” is factored into the equation, no attempts to render evil intelligible within a monotheistic context will significantly advance beyond where Job and his friends were (mistakenly) some thirty-five hundred years ago.

There are, of course, a multitude of questions this “world in between” poses for us Western Christians that need addressing, issues that we shall address later.61 For example, how is this view of things compatible with a belief in God’s omnipotence? Why would God create a world in which his will is not necessarily carried out? Why would God create beings who have the power to hurt so many others? How are we to conceptualize God being influenced by our prayer? Can God guarantee ultimate victory over his rebellious foes and our spiritual cosmic nemeses? If so, why does he not simply destroy these rebel forces now? Why does he tarry while the innocent suffer?

For now, however, it is enough to demonstrate the too frequently minimized truth that the Bible does hold to this warfare worldview, and thus to this understanding of evil. It is enough to demonstrate that the Bible does not assume that every particular evil has a particular godly purpose behind it. It is presently enough to show that the Bible attributes the responsibility for evil to forces that are hostile to God—especially to Satan—not to God himself. These are the primary data that any Christian theoretical understanding of God and evil must be founded on, and it is this foundation that this study seeks to establish.

If the material that composes this foundation creates tensions with our standard Western assumptions about reality, and perhaps even with some of our Western Christian assumptions about God and his control of the world, we must at this point simply let those tensions remain. In no case should we allow ourselves to revise the data merely because they cause us discomfort.

If all this is true of the Old Testament, it is, we shall now see, much more apparent in the New Testament. The relatively marginal concept of Yahweh battling cosmic forces here takes center stage. The awareness of and appreciation for the existence, influence and significance of “the world in between” intensify significantly. With it, the understanding of evil as not coming from God’s hand but directly or indirectly originating in forces that oppose God gains greater clarity.

To this understanding of God, angels and evil in the New Testament, then, we now turn.