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Grab your Bible, and open it to the New Testament. You don’t have to read very far before you run into Satan. The Devil is introduced right at the beginning of Jesus’ ministry, and he immediately gets the name Satan (Matthew 4:1, 10). Matthew has a good reason for this. There is a strong connection between Jesus’ redemptive work and Satan’s existence.

Now, think about the fact the New Testament is called “new” because there is also an Old Testament. You would expect Satan to be a regular sight there too. Nothing is less true! If you read the Old Testament from cover to cover, all nine hundred pages in my Bible, you will run into this evil figure only three times (2 Chronicles 21:1; Job 1–2; Zechariah 3:1–2). That’s once per three hundred pages.

This difference between the Old and New Testaments is intriguing. Satan is a frequent figure in the New Testament. If you read the New Testament cover to cover, only 250 pages, you will run into his name thirty-six times. If you include all the other names for Satan, such as devil, tempter, Beezeboul, Belial, and adversary, you end up with almost 140 times. In 250 pages, that is more than every other page!

Yes, I know that, if we do our best, we can find Satan a few more times in the Old Testament. The snake in Genesis: that has to be Satan. Right? And the prideful Lucifer, that’s Satan too. We can recognize Satan in a few more places in the Old Testament, but we only recognize him because the New Testament has taught us so much about Satan. With Revelation in the back of our mind it suddenly becomes clear that the snake in Eden is Satan. But without the New Testament, we would have never associated the prideful angel Lucifer with Satan.

There is also a big difference between how the Old Testament and the New Testament portray Satan. This difference is significant if you consider the theological role that Satan plays for many people. Satan is not small or unimportant at all for a good deal of Christians. He is the great opponent of God and humanity.

We can attribute this difference to humanity’s growing understanding and to God’s growing revelation. Through the ages people learnt more and more about reality and God revealed more and more to them. This could be why Satan’s role is so small in the Old Testament and suddenly so much larger in the New Testament. Maybe people in the time of Abraham were not ready to learn all about the great enemy, or maybe they had just not realized it yet. Maybe by the time the New Testament rolled around, they were ready to understand the nature of evil.

We could conclude that there has always been progress in how humanity understood God’s grace and mercy, and salvation. That same progress can be seen with how humanity understood Satan. But, if we are honest, there seems to be quite a large gap between Satan of the Old and New Testament. Larger than for other topics. In fact, the gap is not just in how often we read about him, but also in what he does.

Do you feel exploration calling? Are you intrigued? Be patient, for just a little longer. We can’t leave the path yet. Let’s first look at the great tempter in more detail. What do we know about him?

Satan, Who Was That Again?

It is not hard to make a list of Satan’s characteristics. We needn’t even open the Bible. Satan is evil. He’s a rebel. He used to be an angel, but he has fallen. He didn’t want to listen to God because he was prideful and so he was thrown out of heaven. Disguised as a snake he tempted Eve, and thus sin was introduced into the world. He’s still around and tempts each one of us.

We could say more, but this is a good general picture. Most Christians believe in this description, and most people who know anything about Satan will give you these—or very similar—details. It shouldn’t be hard to find Bible verses that show us these characteristics, but if we look at the Old Testament we only see some parts of this image of Satan. Other parts are wholly missing. Let’s look for Satan in the Old Testament.

Job is probably the oldest passage from the Bible discussing Satan. Job is an intriguing book that raises—at least for me—many questions. Job begins with a sort of United Nations in heaven. Satan is apparently the delegate from Earth. There, during a break in the meetings, he has a conversation with God. As regularly happens when you speak to someone from a different country, God asks: “Hey, Satan, you’re from Earth, do you know Job?” And Satan does know him. Read what happens next:

The Lord said to Satan, “Have you considered my servant Job? There is no one 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 nothing? Have you not put a fence around him and his house and all that he has, on every side? You have blessed the work of his hands, and his possessions have increased in the land. But stretch out your hand now, and touch all that he has, and he will curse you to your face.” The Lord said to Satan, “Very well, all that he has is in your power; only do not stretch out your hand against him!” So Satan went out from the presence of the Lord. (Job 1:8–12)

Quite a strange discussion. So strange in fact, that we sometimes don’t see all the nuances. What happens exactly?

“Job is a good man,” says God. “The best of the best. No one on earth is as righteous as he is. He is a true Believer, with a capital B. And best of all, he honors me above everything. He respects me. He loves me.”

“Obviously!” Satan answers. “Look at what you have given him. You protect him. You protect his family and even his cattle! You bless everything he does. He just keeps getting richer and richer. No wonder he likes you!”

“Job doesn’t believe because he is a good person,” Satan continues. “Job believes because you make it worth his while. I bet you that he won’t be faithful if you don’t bless him anymore.”

Now, God must know Job better than that, but he gives Satan the chance to test his theory. Job’s children, his servants, and his cattle all die. But Job stays faithful to God.

Careful Examination

If we want to understand this narrative properly, we need to give it some careful examination. That means we must look at it as the original audience would have looked, using only this narrative as our reference. We can’t include books written later, like Chronicles or the New Testament. We can’t include our theology or what we have read in other books. That is a challenge, but let’s try.

In this narrative, we see that God and Satan are talking to each other. Satan has not been banished from God’s sight. He is allowed to enter heaven, to enter God’s presence, and to talk to God. God says that Job is a good person, but Satan has his doubts. If we are honest, these doubts are not very hard to understand: if God gives you everything you desire, you might well believe because you get so much.

So, Satan suggests testing Job’s faith. How? Does he want to tempt Job to do evil, like we would expect Satan to? Not at all. Satan does not want to tempt Job, he wants to take away some of Job’s blessings. He wants to remove some things that Job did not necessarily deserve and see what happens to Job’s faith.

Now I am the first to admit that what Satan does is not great. Not great for Job, absolutely not great for Job’s family, servants, and cattle. But, if we are honest, does this passage show us Satan, the big rebel, who was thrown out of heaven? Do you see the Satan who tempts all of humanity to sin? Not really. He’s a bit of a rebel, maybe, because he’s not willing to take God’s word that Job is righteous. But he does ask God for permission and does exactly what God allows him to do.

In the next chapter there is a second discussion in heaven. Satan wants to make life more challenging for Job. Again he gets God’s permission, this time to hurt Job, as long as he does not kill him. The rest of the book of Job discusses Job’s pain and struggles and how, no matter what, Job stayed faithful to God.

Let’s draw some conclusions about Satan’s role. And don’t forget to put everything you know about Satan out of your head. My conclusion is that Satan tests Job and thus proves that Job truly believes. In other words, Satan vindicates Job.

That’s a different conclusion to what we might have expected. And, let’s be honest, maybe God is just using Satan to achieve a goal that Satan does not want at all. But, if we take this narrative as the introduction to the book of Job, we clearly see that it is Satan who provides the evidence that Job is—without any doubt—a good person.

A Very Different Satan

This role for Satan is rather different to what we are used to from the New Testament. It is also very different to what you often hear in church or from theologians. Nevertheless, if we read more of the Old Testament, we actually see a similar role for Satan in Zechariah. In Zechariah 3, as an introduction to a baffling vision about Joshua and the Messiah, we see this passage:

Then he showed me the high priest Joshua 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 man a brand plucked from the fire?” (Zechariah 3:1–2)

I imagine this as a court scene. We have the defendant, Joshua, we have an angel of the Lord, and we have Satan. Satan is standing at God’s right hand to accuse the defendant. That seems very similar to what the public prosecutor does. Satan is not a tempter or the source of all evil. He’s there to show the Lord what mistakes Joshua has made.

This is quite similar to Job. In Zechariah, a man who is righteous is proven righteous in a court case. Satan, as the prosecutor, attempts to show that Joshua is evil, but in the end Joshua is vindicated.

Apparently, the image of Satan as an evil tempter has not stuck among the Bible authors. Satan is an accuser, not a tempter. This is not very strange, because Satan is actually just a Hebrew word. It means accuser. In a wonderful tautology, Zechariah 3:1 literally reads “Satan standing at his right hand as satan.” And, now that we have started with Hebrew, there is more to learn about Satan—or more precisely, satan.

In the narrative of Balaam we also run into Satan, just not in English. The story of Balaam is very entertaining to read; do that by all means. Start in Numbers 22; I will only discuss it very briefly. Balaam sets out to do something that God does not want him to do. Balaam knows that very well. He’s riding along on his donkey and fleeing from God’s will. That can never end well.

Suddenly the donkey starts acting up. It does not want to move forward. Balaam gets agitated and hits the donkey, to no avail. Eventually the donkey speaks and tells Balaam what is happening, and then Balaam realizes what is going on:

God’s anger was kindled because he was going, and the angel of the Lord took his stand in the road as his adversary. Now he was riding on the donkey, and his two servants were with him. (Numbers 22:22)

That is the English, but the Hebrew is very different. A literal translation could be “The angel of YHWH stood in the road as satan.” That’s right, Satan, the great figure of evil, in the same sentence as an angel of the Lord. That’s quite something. An angel playing the role of Satan, at the very least a strange occurrence. What, then, does it mean?

Progressive Understanding

As I wrote above, the Bible is full of progressive understanding. This is specially the case with Satan. As you read backwards from the New Testament, everything falls into place. But without the New Testament, you would have a completely different view of Satan. He is not portrayed as rebellious. At most he is the devil’s advocate, testing the righteousness of individuals on God’s behalf. He does not tempt people to sin, but does keep a close eye on everyone to see if they are sinning. Maybe from his point of view it would be a victory if someone were to sin, but his divine task is proving that people are righteous. He shows that a person will be faithful no matter what, just as he did with Job. The word “satan” itself is not even a bad word in some contexts. Even an angel can be a satan when doing God’s bidding.

Now, I’m itching to step off the path. I see so many interesting things just out of reach. So many things that we can discover. Don’t get me wrong—the Old Testament has already shown us many intriguing perspectives but, trust me, where we are going is even more intriguing. If you were paying attention, and if you have a good knowledge of the Old Testament, you know that I have skipped a passage. The final place that Satan appears is in Chronicles.

First and Second Chronicles are the newest books in the Old Testament. If what I have been saying about progressive understanding is correct, we should see some of that in this book. It should show us a glimpse of the further revelation of God in the Bible. And, don’t worry, it does.

New and Improved Version

Chronicles is basically a retelling of the books of Samuel and Kings. You could call it Samuel & Kings: The New and Improved Version. Maybe we could compare it to a new Bible translation. When you read it, it feels a bit strange. The wording is different and unfamiliar, but often it is a lot easier to understand. Chronicles is the same: different and unfamiliar to Samuel and Kings, but often easier to understand. Read what 2 Samuel says and how Chronicles relates it:

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.” (2 Samuel 24:1)

Satan stood up against Israel, and incited David to count the people of Israel. (1 Chronicles 21:1)

David is going to hold a census. It is not entirely clear to me why counting the Israelites is so bad. Maybe David was planning to use this information to boast about how many subjects he had, or maybe David didn’t stick to the rules from the Torah for holding censuses. Whatever the reason, it is clearly very bad. Joab advises David not to count, and when David is done he is very sorry that he did.

In Samuel, David counts his people because God is angry. I can understand that God gets angry sometimes, but that God then makes David do something that both he and God regret is harder to understand. Especially if you read the rest of the chapter and see the terrible consequences of this census. This is even more mystifying if we consider that God is portrayed so lovingly in the New Testament. I find it hard to imagine that God does this. Apparently, so did the editor and author of Chronicles. They must have read this narrative and known that there was something else going on. Of course, it wasn’t God who put David on this track of destruction, it had to be Satan. In their version, they fixed the theology.

Let us leave the Old Testament behind us now. In fact, let’s step off that path and go exploring. As we walk, the undergrowth is getting thicker, the going is getting tougher. What do we see?

Jubilees

In the third week of that jubilee the polluted demons began to lead astray the children of Noah’s sons and to lead them to folly and to destroy them. And the sons of Noah came to Noah, their father, and they told him about the demons who were leading astray and blinding and killing his grandchildren. And he prayed before the LORD his God and he said, “God of the spirits which are in all flesh, who has acted mercifully with me and saved me and my sons from the water of the Flood and did not let me perish as you did the children of perdition, because ‘Great was your grace upon me, and great was your mercy upon my soul. Let your grace be lifted up upon my sons, and do not let the evil spirits rule over them, lest they destroy them from the earth. But bless me and my sons. And let us grow and increase and fill the earth.’”4 (Jubilees 10:1–3)

This passage is about demons that lead people astray, that blind and kill. They lead people to sin, they blind them from the truth, and they kill them. They don’t personally kill people, but lead them to sin and its wages: death. They are evil demons that have nothing good in store for Noah and his family. Here is an image of the forces of darkness that is much closer to home. This is more like what we are used to, and very different to what we saw in the Old Testament.

The passage above is a part of Jubilees. This book was written about 200 BCE, probably by a priest or another theologically trained person. Jubilees fantasizes about what Moses saw when he was on Sinai for forty days (Exodus 24:18). In fifty chapters Moses writes down everything that the angel told him. Every single detail of history, from the very beginning at creation, all the way up to Moses’s time. In Jubilees thousands of years of history are written down by Moses on mount Sinai. This is obviously not how Jubilees came to be, but it is a nice piece of fiction that fits into biblical history.

Noah

After a while the angel starts to tell Moses about Noah. Noah has survived the flood and wants to get on with his new life on a clean earth. But all is not going according to plan. Demons are being irritating. They are messing things up for Noah and his family. They can’t go a day without some demon or other coming along and pestering them. Finally it’s the last straw, and the children come to complain to Noah.

Noah, the patriarch, is the person who has to pray to God. So he gets down on his knees. He reminisces about the time of the flood, and about how God’s mercy saved him and his children from death. Then he asks for more mercy. He does not want the evil spirits to master his children. These spirits are clearly very dangerous, for if they lead his children astray, the children will be lost. Noah’s prayer does not stop there. He continues:

And you know that which your Watchers, the fathers of these spirits, did in my days and also these spirits who are alive. Shut them up and take them to the place of judgment. And do not let them cause corruption among the sons of your servant, O my God, because they are cruel and were created to destroy. And let them not rule over the spirits of the living because you alone know their judgment, and do not let them have power over the children of the righteous henceforth and forever. (Jubilees 10:4–6)

Apparently Noah knows a lot about these spirits. He knows where they came from and he knows what their power is. The demons are children of something Noah calls “your Watchers.” These Watchers were, if we can judge by Noah’s tone, not the nicest people around. They must be very important: why else would Noah bring them up? So who, or what, are these Watchers?

The Watchers

The Watchers are often discussed in extrabiblical books. The birthplace of all these discussions is an obscure passage in Genesis. Out of nowhere, the book talks about sons of God who see that the daughters of humanity are beautiful and marry them (Genesis 6:2). These sons of God have children with human women, and “the Nephilim were on the earth in those days” (Genesis 6:4). And the children of the sons of God and humanity are “the heroes that were of old, warriors of renown” (Genesis 6:4). In the very next verse, Genesis starts to discuss how incredibly evil humanity was, and then comes the flood. These Nephilim are only found in one other Bible verse, which calls the people in the promised land “Nephilim,” or, as most translations read, “giants” (Numbers 13:33).

It should be quite apparent that this is not the easiest passage from the Bible to interpret. For centuries people have been interpreting it in different ways. Who are these sons of God? Are the Nephilim the fruit of the marriage between the sons of God and humankind? What does the word Nephilim even mean? Are they giants? What is the link between these four verses and the flood? All of these questions led to a huge, fantastical discussion outside of the Bible. You could find almost any interpretation, but the most common one goes something like this.

In Noah’s time there were many angels on earth. They had been sent by God to watch over humanity. The angel with the flaming sword from Eden was the first of thousands. It was a great army, with angelic generals, but one angel was the supreme commander. This angel has many names such as Azazel, Semyaz, and Satanael.

These angels roamed the earth, amongst humanity. No problem there, were it not that women are so pretty. Some authors say that the women seduced the angels on purpose, using makeup and perfume. Others say that it was the angels who initiated the romance. Whatever the explanation, angels and women end up in bed together. This generally leads to offspring.

So, what does the child of an angel and a woman look like? Well, it can’t be normal. Angels are beings of spirit, women are beings of flesh and blood. The offspring of this union must be very special. How? Well, it must be a giant! It’s an angel-human hybrid, huge and impressive with supernatural powers: a hero. But, this was clearly not God’s intention. Angels can’t marry people, people marry people. Angels don’t marry at all (Matthew 22:30). These are incredible sins against God’s natural order. They are sins against God. These supernatural offspring must then be very evil. They were born out of sin, so they must be sinful. And if this is happening all around, clearly all of humanity was evil. Everyone, that is, except Noah—so God sent the flood, but Noah was saved.