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Judaism and Hebrew Scriptures 137
attorney, assigned the task of bringing out the
worst side of human beings:
And the Lord said to Satan, “Have you
considered my servant Job, that there is none
like him on the earth, a blameless and upright
man, who fears God and turns away from
evil” Then Satan answered the Lord, “Does
Job fear God for nought Hast thou not put a
hedge about him and his house and all that he
has, on every side Thou hast blessed the work
of his hands, and his possessions have
increased in the land. But put forth thy hand
now, and touch all that he has, and he will
curse thee to they face.” And the Lord said to
Satan, “Behold, all that he has is in your
power, only upon himself do not put forth
your hand” (Job 1:8–12).
Satan then goes forth—with God’s blessing—
to ruin Job. From the viewpoint of later, especially
Christian, theology this story can only seem like a
crude, cruel wager, unworthy of a just and
almighty God. If, however, instead of being the
Prince of Darkness, Satan is simply a loyal member
of God’s heavenly host, then the story comes into
focus. Like the angel of death, Satan is just an angel
with an unpleasant job description. The notion
that the term Satan might refer to someone with
the role of prosecutor is supported by Psalms
109:6, where the author asks, with respect to
someone who is vilifying him, that God appoint an
“accuser” (i.e., a satan) to “bring him to trial.”
Essentially the same understanding of Satan
appears to be embodied in First Chronicles, as the
inspiration for King David’s census, undertaken
for the purpose of taxing the people: “Now Satan,
setting himself against Israel, incited David to
count the people” (1 Chronicles 21:1). Although
Satan is thus portrayed as inspiring this action,
David is nevertheless punished for it. The implicit
reasoning here seems to be that although Satan
tempts people to injustice, we have the freedom
to—and, therefore, the responsibility for—resisting
or giving in to these suggestions.
If the Satan of 1 Chronicles seems to be somewhat
more negative and aggressive than the Satan
of Job, it is not until the Book of Zechariah that
Satan starts to become truly sinister. “Then he
showed me Joshua the high priest standing
before the angel of the Lord, and Satan standing
at his right hand to accuse him. And the Lord
said to Satan,‘The Lord rebuke you, O Satan! The
Lord who has chosen Jerusalem rebuke you! Is
not this a brand plucked from the fire’” (Zech.
3:1–2) Here Satan is still performing his older
role as accuser, but now God is moved to anger
by Satan’s activity.
Zechariah lived during the time when the
Persians had defeated the Babylonians and
returned the Jews to Palestine from Babylonia.
Seeking to make them allies, the Persians even gave
the repatriated Jews money to rebuild the Temple.
The Persians were Zoroastrians, whose religious
system was built around the notion of an ongoing
conflict between Ahura Mazda, the god of light
and the upper world, and Ahriman, the god of
darkness and the lower world. Partially because of
their friendly link with the Persians, the Judaism
was influenced by Zoroastrianism. Thus Satan, the
closest thing the Jews had to an evil spirit, was
reconceived as God’s enemy, though he was never
became as powerful as Ahriman.
The tendency to amplify Satan’s role as the
master of evil continues in later, noncanonical
books. By the time of the emergence of the
Qumran community of Essenes (a generation
before Jesus), Satan finally becomes the familiar
lord of darkness; for example: “The Prince of
Light thou has appointed to come to our support:
but Satan, the angel Mastema, thou hast created
for the pit; he rules in darkness, and his purpose is
to bring about evil and sin, (1 QM 19:12). It was
this image of Satan, which appears to have been in
general circulation in Palestine during the first
century, that was incorporated into Christianity.
As with Satan, the early Christian notion of hell
was drawn from contemporaneous Judaism.
Jewish thinking about the afterlife, in turn, developed
out of reflections on the covenant.
The very core of Judaism is a covenant relationship—which
is both a contractual agreement
and a marriage of love—between Yahweh and his
chosen people. The ancient Hebrews emphasized
the importance of the present life. Like both the
ancient Greeks and Mesopotamians, existence