5-4 Job’s Satan
Job 1:6: “Now there was a day when the sons of God came to present
themselves before the Lord, and Satan came also among them”.
Popular Interpretation
Satan in Job is an angel who came among the angels in heaven and
criticized Job, whom he had been watching whilst walking around
in the earth seeing what trouble he could make. He then brings lots
of problems upon Job to try and turn him away from God.
Comments
1. “Satan” is only mentioned in the first two chapters of Job and nowhere in the book is he explicitly defined as an angel.
2. We have seen in our comments on Genesis 6:2 , that the phrase
“sons of God” can refer to those who have the true understanding of God
(Rom. 8:14; 2 Cor. 6:17-18; 1 Jn. 3:7). Angels do not bring false
accusations against believers “before the Lord” (2 Pet. 2:11)
3. It cannot be conclusively proved that Satan was a son of God - he “came among them”.
4. Satan is described as “going to and fro in the earth”. There is
no implication that he was doing anything sinful. Zechariah 1:11
implies that this is a Hebraism for observing.
5. How can Satan be in heaven and also on the earth in Job’s time
when, according to popular belief, he was thrown out at the time of
Adam, or in 1914, according to the “Watchtower”?
6. Remember that there cannot be sin or rebellion against God in heaven (Ps.5:4-5; Hab. 1:13; Matt. 6:10; Ps. 103:19-21).
7. The major theme of the book of Job is that God brought
the problems into Job’s life and that eventually they made him a
more righteous person (Job 2:10; 16:11; 19:21; 23:16; 42:11). Notice
that Job did not believe that only good things came from God; he
nowhere complains about Satan bringing the problems. Job realized
that his sufferings had made him come to know God in practice rather
than just in theory - “I have heard of Thee by the hearing of the
ear: but now mine eye seeth Thee” (42:5). Seeing that problems make
us more righteous people if we respond correctly to them (Heb. 12:5-11),
why would a sinful, wicked being, who wants to turn us away from
God, bring these things into our lives, when actually they only
make us more righteous and closer to God?
8.
The fact that Satan and the sons of God were in “the presence of the
Lord” and presented themselves “before the Lord” (2:7; 1:6) does not
necessarily mean that they were in heaven. The representatives of God
carry the name of God, e.g. the angel which led Israel through the
wilderness was called “the Lord” because it carried God’s name (Ex.
23:20-21), but it was not God himself in person (Ex. 33:20 cp. v. 12).
Similarly, priests represent God (2 Chron. 19:6) and to come before
them was to come “before the Lord” (Deut. 19:17). Cain “went out from
the presence of the Lord” (Gen. 4:16) - not out of heaven but probably
away from the presence of the angel - cherubim. Jesus was presented as
a baby “before the Lord” (Lk. 2:22)- i.e. before the priest.
9. Notice that Satan had to get power from God (Job 2:3-6); he had
none in his own right, indeed, God brought Job to Satan’s notice (1:8).
Job comments about God being the source of his sufferings: “If it be
not he, who then is it?” (Job 9:24 RV). Job didn’t believe anyone apart
from God was responsible.
10. There is no indication that anything Satan did was sinful.
Satan never actually says or does anything wrong; he simply makes
the observation that there may well be a relationship between Job's
service of God and the material blessing which God has given him.
He is them empowered by God to bring calamities into Job's life.
Time and again is it stressed, really stressed, that God brought
the problems upon Job, not satan independently (1:12,16; 2:3,10;
6:4; 8:4; 19:21; 42:18).
11. Even if the “satan” (adversary) to Job was an angel, there
is no reason to think it was sinful. An angel asked Abraham to offer
Isaac to find out exactly how obedient Abraham would be, hence he
said, “Now I know that thou fearest God, seeing thou hast not withheld
thy son, thine only son from me” (Gen. 22:12). Similarly the angel
which guided Israel out of Egypt, “led thee these forty years in
the wilderness to humble thee, and to prove thee, to know what was
in thine heart, whether thou wouldest keep His commandments, or
no” (Deut. 8:2). God himself knows all things, but the angels bring
problems into the lives of their charges in order to see how they
will respond. It may be possible to understand Job’s satan like
this. Remember that an evidently righteous angel was called a “satan”
in Numbers 22:22.
12. Much has been made of the fact that in Job 1 and in Zech. 3:1,2
we read of ha satan, the adversary. In Hebrew
as in English, the definite article is significant. If I refer to
myself as a personal, specific individual / being, I say "Duncan".
To speak of "the Duncan" would be a description of a function,
more than a reference to my personal name. Sitting at a restaurant
table, you might call out: "Waiter!", intending a specific
individual. You'd only speak of "the waiter"
when describing his function- e.g. "The waiter served me badly".
Hebrew and English operate in the same way here. So when we read
in Job 1 and Zechariah 3 of the satan, ha satan,
we're not reading of 'A specific person whose personal proper name
is 'Satan''. Rather we're reading of a person who functioned
as a satan or adversary. Dianne Bergant makes the point: "The
word 'satan' appears with an article indicating that here the word
is a title or description and not a proper name" (1). In other
words, 'the satan' isn't the personal name of a personal being called
Satan. It's a description of the function of a character, as an
adversary. Note that the man Haman is called ho diabolos in Esther 7:4 LXX.
13. We read and receive the style of the book of Job in a way far
different to how its original readership would've done. Continuing
the point made in [12] above, the Russian literary analyst Vladimir
Propp has shown that all stories, folklore etc. of that time contained
characters with a set function- there was the hero, the companion,
the friends / bystanders, and the adversary (2). Whilst
I accept that Job was a historical character, the way the book is
written in such structured Hebrew poetry shows for sure that the
events were 'written up' in story / ballad form. And so when the
initial readership encountered "the adversary", ha
satan, they wouldn't have thought of him as a cosmic being
of evil. The presence of someone functioning as "the adversary"
would've been quite normal to them.
14.
If we follow through the argument of the book, the logical answer of
Job to the friends' allegations would have been "I'm suffering because
Satan has it in for me! He's doing this, not God!". For the friends
were reasoning that God was bringing such affliction into Job's life
because Job was a sinner. The fact Job doesn't make this obvious retort
indicates to me that "the Satan" wasn't understood by either Job nor
the friends as a personal supernatural being of evil.
15.
We have demonstrated in chapter 1 how Jewish thinking came to be
influenced by Babylonian ideas of a dualistic cosmos, split between God
and some 'Satan' figure. The book of Job is a corrective to this, in
that it teaches that evil comes from God, and any Satan figure is under
His total control. Yet a mere skim reading of the prologue to Job has
led some to the very opposite conclusion. Significantly, the apostate
Jewish writing The Testament Of Job completely twists the
intent of the Biblical record, and adds into it the common
misconceptions concerning Satan- e.g. it claims of Job's wife: "Satan
followed her along the road, walking stealthily, and leading her hear
astray... [Job warns her] 'Do you not see Satan standing behind you and
unsettling your reasoning?'" (23:11; 26:6). These classical images of
'Satan' have to be added in to the Biblical record- because they are simply not there in the Biblical text.
Suggested Explanations
1. We have seen that coming “before the Lord” may describe coming
before a representative of God, such as a priest or an angel. The “sons
of God” - the believers at that time - presented themselves before a
priest or angel, perhaps at a religious feast. Someone there, maybe one
of the worshippers, reflected that it was not surprising that Job was
such a strong believer, seeing that God had so richly blessed him. God
gave that person the power to afflict Job, to demonstrate that Job’s
love of God was not proportionate to the blessings God had given him.
2. Maybe the Satan was composed of Job’s three “friends” - they
are rebuked at the end of the book (notice that “satan” is not rebuked
by name). Their discussions with Job indicate that they had their
doubts as to his integrity and suspected that his faith was now
weak because God had taken away the blessings from him - “But now
it is come upon thee, and thou faintest: it toucheth thee, and thou
art troubled...who ever perished (which it looked as though Job
was going to), being innocent?” Eliphaz pointed out (Job 4:5 &
7).
3. It has been suggested that the prologue to Job is in fact a
literary device to place theological problems before us, e.g. of
the relationship between service of God and receipt of blessing,
and sin and suffering. But we must remember that later Scripture
takes the experiences of Job as literal, and Job himself as a real
historical person. However, it is not impossible that the account
of the conversation between God and the satan was not a literal
occurrence, but simply a way of setting up the problems which the
historical narrative then addresses. It's worth meditating on this
one. But it isn't a view which strongly commends itself to the present
writer, not least because there seem few, if any, examples of this
kind of device in the rest of Scripture.
4. The friends insist that "the destroyer" [by which
they surely meant an early equivalent to 'the devil' of popular
belief today] had touched Job- whereas Job insists that it is God
who had destroyed him (Job 15:21 cp. 19:10; 13:21). In some ways
the book of Job is a deconstruction of the popular Persian and Canaanite
myths about a 'satan' figure. Job, both in the story of his sufferings
and his specific words, seeks to demonstrate that the essential
issues in life is being "just with God", and not whether
or not we are touched by the hand of an evil being; for the hand
of God which touched Job (Job 19:21) is the hand of 'satan' into
whom God delivered Job temporarily (Job 1:12). Job says that the
attitude of the friends is wrong- they should be looking into themselves,
rather than fantasizing about the action of some unseen evil being
they imagined: "Ye should say, Why persecute we him, seeing
the root of the matter is found in me?... know that there
is a [personal] judgment"(Job 19:28,29).
5.
It can be argued that the book of Job is a dialogue concerning evil and
suffering, with three popular views being represented by the three
friends. These views are examined and corrected by the personal history
of Job, as well as by the epilogue and prologue to the book. Eliphaz
seems to be representative of the idea that Job is being hit by
supernaturally controlled evil- Eliphaz speaks of a force of darkness
(Job 22:10,11) and sinful or faulty Angels living in an unclean Heaven
(Job 4:18; 15:15). Yet the answer to all this is that the Satan figure is under God's control, all Job's misfortunes come from God
and His Angels- one of whom may have been called 'the adversary'
('Satan')- are in fact perfectly obedient to Him and not disobedient.
And finally, Elpihaz and the friends are rebuked for their various
wrong understandings, with God declaring Himself supreme and ultimate
sovereign. Likewise Bildad's view of Angels in Job 25:5 "The stars are
not pure in God's eyes" is corrected by God in Job 38:7, when He says
that "the morning stars sang together and all the Sons of God shouted
for joy".
Notes
(1) Dianne Bergant, Job, Ecclesiastes (Wilmington: Michael
Glazier, 1982) p. 27.
(2) Vladimir Propp, Theory And History Of Folklore, ed.
Anatoly Liberman (Minneapolis: University Of Minnesota Press, 1984);
Morphology Of The Folktale (Austin: University Of Texas
Press, 1968).
