Most modern, popular Christian ideas about Satan are not Biblical, part 1

After getting involved in the comment section on another post in this sub that had to do with Satan, I wanted to write down some thoughts on this topic in a longer post. I am labeling this "part 1" because I'm going to cover the New Testament in a part 2.

It would be good to get a little background on this topic from another post I did a while back that had to do with how we view the Bible and deal with contradictions, but whether or not you read that post that is up to you, obviously.

Now first off, "Satan" is not a name. It is a word that means "adversary" or "accuser", depending on the context, and we can see that from the ways it is used in the Hebrew Bible. A couple examples will suffice. First off, the strange story of Balaam in Numbers 22 has this word. This story is a good example to go along with my post on contradictions, linked above, as we have this strange thing happening in the story: God tells Balaam to go with the Moabites in verse 20, Balaam gets up in the morning and goes with them in verse 21, and then God...gets mad at Balaam for doing what God told him to do in verse 22. "How dare you do what I told you to do!" If you want to see a scholar discussing why the story takes such a strange turn here, I'd advise you to watch this video. But for the purpose of this post, I want to talk about something else in in verse 22 and in verse 32 - it says in the first verse that "the Lord took his stand in the road as his adversary" and then in the second verse it says "I have come out as an adversary because your way is perverse before me." In both verses, the word translated "adversary" is "satan". You can see this in a side-by-side English/Hebrew comparison here for verse 22 and here for verse 32.

For another example I go to I Samuel - in I Samuel 27, David decided that in order to be safe from Saul’s anger towards him, it might be a good idea to hide out for a while in the land of the Philistines.  So he takes some of his men and they hide out in Gath under the care of a man named Achish (gesundheit).  In chapter 29, we find that David and his men are even serving in the Philistine army during this time!  But the Philistine army in this chapter is preparing to attack Israel, and the fact that David and his men are amongst the forces makes one of the commanders a little uncomfortable, and so he asks about “these Hebrews”.  Achish sings the praises of David and his men, but in verse 4 we find that this doesn’t satisfy the commander, who wants David and his men to be sent away.  And once again, if you look at a side-by-side Hebrew/English comparison for this verse, you see that when it says in English translations "lest he become our adversary", the word here is "satan".

So there are many usages of this word in the Hebrew Bible where it is not a name. But there are only 3 places in the Hebrew Bible where ha satan appears as a character. The first time is a contradiction - we have an account in 2 Samuel 24:1 that tells us that "the anger of the Lord was kindled against Israel, and he incited David against them, saying, “Go, count the people of Israel and Judah.”" When the Chronicler tells us the same story, he says in I Chronicles 21:1: "Satan stood up against Israel and incited David to count the people of Israel." Now first off, there are many places between the Chronicles and the Samuels where accounts are word for word the same - for many reasons, scholars believe the Samuels came first, and the Chronicles came second, and the Chronicler used the Samuels as source documents, copying accounts word for word and making edits along the way. In this instance, the Chronicler was uncomfortable with God inciting David in this way, and wants to shift the blame to Satan - this is the only place in the Hebrew Bible where we see this idea of shifting the blame away from God and onto Satan.

Now let's go to Job - Job is a great illustration for why people's ideas about Satan don't mesh well with the Bible. Because the popular idea of Satan as the nemesis of God, the ultimate bad guy, the supreme evil, the prince of Hell, simply doesn't mesh well with Job, as we see here that ha satan is a fully-fledged member of God's court - he simply walks into the courtroom along with the other sons of God. See Job 1:6 - you'll note that it simply says "one day the heavenly beings came to present themselves before the Lord, and the accuser also came among them." And note that the footnote after "heavenly beings tells us that the Hebrew is literally "sons of God" and the footnote after "the accuser" tells us that the Hebrew is "the satan". And note - here, the satan doesn't sneak in, and he doesn't beat up any guards. He just waltzes right in with the other sons of God. He's a fully fledged member of God's court, and he fulfills the role of district attorney or state prosecutor (and think about that name: "the accuser"). And note something else about this story - in the end of the story, it does not use this same method of absolving God by blaming Satan. It's interesting to note how Satan completely disappears from the plot after performing the role of testing Job’s faith, and never makes a reappearance afterward! And even when Satan was a character, the audience still can’t tell who’s “to blame” for Job’s calamities - he has no power on his own, and has to ask God’s permission, and even has to ask God to do some of it Himself!  It’s almost as if the author is saying “hey, this idea of dualism doesn’t really solve the problem!  You still have the nagging question of why bad things happen anyways!  Because even if there is an evil supernatural being who rivals God, he's still not in charge and can’t do anything without God’s permission - so can we really assign the blame to him?  God still has to allow it - so you are still left asking why.”

The only other appearance of ha satan in the Hebrew Bible has him taking on the same role of state prosecutor/district attorney - this is in Zechariah 3:1-7. This passage describes a vision where Joshua represents Israel, and is standing trial before the angel of the Lord and the accuser. And this sets up an interesting parallel with the New Testament that I will get to in a moment. Because here we see the angel of the Lord taking on the opposite role to the accuser - the defense attorney. But consider the context for a minute - at the time Zechariah was written, Israel is in captivity under the Persian empire. And many Hebrews are questioning: why would God allow this? And the answer many came to was that their forefathers must have done something really bad for them to deserve this. But this passage has God coming to their defense as their defense attorney and repudiating the conventional wisdom that said that they deserved to be punished. Here, the accuser is not a being of pure evil, but represents the conventional wisdom of the day that explained Israel's captivity in this way.

And while I said that "part 2" was for the New Testament, I feel I must bring a parallel to this passage from a few places. In John 14:16-17, the passage has Jesus saying that he "will ask the Father, and he will give you another Advocate, to be with you forever. This is the Spirit of truth", and the word translated as "Advocate" is Paraklēton. Later on in John 15:26, a similar term is used - paraklétos - and if you look at this Strong's concordance entry for that term, you see that it sets up a juxtaposition with "the accuser" as it is described a bit down the page as "one who pleads another's cause before a judge, a pleader, counsel for defense, legal assistant; an advocate."

Now, one of my favorite theologians used to say something like this (I am paraphrasing): "I don't think it matters so much whether this happened or not, rather, what matters is: what was this author trying to say?" And in that spirit, I think that the lesson that ha satan means to teach us is that the voice of God is not an accusing voice, but the voice of an advocate. I take the teachings on ha satan to be metaphorical - representing accusing and scapegoating voices of blame that we each struggle with internally - and I believe the purpose of these teachings is to tell us to watch out for those voices and listen to the voices of kindness, generosity, and love instead. And if you believe in Satan as a literal personality but also believe that the lesson we must learn is to listen to the voice of love rather than the voice of accusation, I have no quarrel with you.