Free The Origin of Satan by Elaine Pagels Page B

death, to perform a specific task, although
    one that human beings may not appreciate; as the literary scholar
    Neil Forsyth says of the satan , “If the path is bad, an obstruction
    is good.”9 Thus the satan may simply have been sent by the Lord
    to protect a person from worse harm. The story of Balaam in the
    biblical book of Numbers, for example, tells of a man who
    decided to go where God had ordered him not to go. Balaam
    saddled his ass and set off, “but God's anger was kindled because
    he went; and the angel of the Lord took his stand in the road as
    his satan ” [ le-satan-lo ]—that is, as his adversary, or his
    obstructor. This supernatural messenger remained invisible to
    Balaam, but the ass saw him and stopped in her tracks:

    And the ass saw the angel of the Lord standing in the road,
    with a drawn sword in his hand; and the ass turned aside out of
    the road, and went into the field; and Balaam struck the ass, to
    turn her onto the road. Then the angel of the Lord stood in a
    narrow path between the vineyards, with a wall on each side.
    And when the ass saw the angel of the Lord, she pushed
    against the wall, so he struck her again (22:23-25).

    The third time the ass saw the obstructing angel, she stopped
    and lay down under Balaam, “and Balaam’s anger was kindled,
    and he struck the ass with his staff.” Then, the story continues,

    the Lord opened the mouth of the ass, and she said to Balaam,
    “What have I done to you, that you have struck me three
    times?” And Balaam said to the ass, “Because you have made a
    fool of me. I wish I had a sword in my hand, for then I would
    kill you.” And the ass said to Balaam, “Am I not your ass, that
    you have ridden all your life to this very day? Did I ever do
    such things to you?” And he said, “No” (22:28-30).
    THE SOCIAL HISTORY OF SATAN / 41

    Then “the Lord opened the eyes of Balaam, and he saw the
    angel of the Lord standing in the way, with his drawn sword in
    his hand, and he bowed his head, and fell on his face.” Then the
    satan rebukes Balaam, and speaks for his master, the Lord:

    “Why have vou struck vour ass three times? Behold, I came
    here to oppose you, because your way is evil in my eyes; and
    the ass saw me. . . . If she had not turned away from me, I
    would surely have killed you right then, and let her live”
    (22:31-33).

    Chastened by this terrifying vision, Balaam agrees to do what
    God, speaking through his satan , commands.
    The book of Job, too, describes the satan as a supernatural
    messenger, a member of God's royal court.10 But while Balaam's
    satan protects him from harm, Job's satan takes a more
    adversarial role. Here the Lord himself admits that the satan
    incited him to act against Job (2:3). The story begins when the
    satan appears as an angel, a “son of God” ( ben ‘elohim ), a term
    that, in Hebrew idiom, often means “one of the divine beings.”
    Here this angel, the satan , comes with the rest of the heavenly
    host on the day appointed for them to “present themselves
    before the Lord.” When the Lord asks whence he comes, the
    satan answers, “From roaming on the earth, and walking up and
    down on it." Here the storyteller plays on the similarity between
    the sound of the Hebrew satan and shut, the Hebrew word "to
    roam," suggesting that the satan s special role in the heavenly
    court is that of a kind of roving intelligence agent, like those
    whom many Jews of the time would have known—and
    detested—from the king of Persia’s elaborate system of secret
    police and intelligence officers. Known as “the king’s eye” or
    “the king’s ear,” these agents roamed the empire looking for signs
    of disloyalty among the people.11
    God boasts to the satan about one of his most loyal subjects:
    “Have you considered my servant Job, that there is no one like
    him on earth, a blessed and upright man, who fears God and
    turns away from evil?” The satan then challenges the Lord to put
    Job