24. devil’s
envy. “In Ps 108:6, LXX, diabolos
is the ‘accuser’; in Esther 7:4; 8:1, LXX, Haman is called diabolos in the sense of ‘opponent’ or ‘enemy.’ In 1 Macc 1:36, the
akra is called a diabolos in the sense of ‘obstacle.’ The LXX also used diabolos for
Hebrew satan, in the sense of ‘the one who separates,’ ‘the enemy,’ ‘the
calumniator,’ ‘the seducer.’ Since this is an innovation in the LXX, we can
only deduce the meaning from the rendering and from the context. The latter
seldom suggests ‘calumniator,’ but rather ‘accuser,’ or ‘adversary.’ This is so
in 1 Chron 21:1 and Job 1 and 2, unless we prefer ‘seducer’ ” (Foerster,
in TDNT 2. 72). For the devil’s envy,
see II Enoch 31:3–6; Vita Adae 12–17
(12:1: “With a heavy sigh, the devil spoke: ‘O Adam! all my hostility, envy,
and sorrow is for thee, since it is for thee that I have been expelled from my
glory”); III Baruch 4:8; Tosef. Sotah
4:17; BT Sotah 9b; BR 18.6; BT Sanh.
59b; ARN 1; Jos. Ant. 1.1.4. (For envy attributed to God, see Apoc. Moses 18:4; Hypostasis of the Archons 138, 6–10; On the Origin of the World 119 and Testimony of Truth, [Robinson 1977:174
and 412]: PRE 13. For the
counterargument that God was not jealous, see Theophilus Ad. Autolycum 2.25; Irenaeus Adv.
Haer. 5.24.20; Ps-Clement 17.16). Bois (1890) and Gregg (1909) thought this
verse referred to Cain. “The murder of Abel by Cain,” wrote Gregg, “was
unquestionably prompted by jealousy.… Moreover, in 10:1–4, the author makes the
sin of Adam of small importance, while Cain is the first ‘unrighteous man,’ the
ancestor and symbol of all who afterwards deserted wisdom.” If the allusion of
our verse is to Genesis 3[4E], as is most likely, it is one of the earliest
extant Jewish texts to equate the serpent with the devil.
A closely analogous attempt to attribute
death to the devil’s envy is to be found in Theophilus Ad Autolycum 2.29: “When Satan saw that Adam and his wife not only
were alive but had produced offspring, he was overcome by envy (phhonō pheromenos) because he was not
strong enough to put them to death; and because he saw Abel pleasing God, he
worked upon his brother called Cain and made him kill his brother Abel. And so
the beginning of death came into this world, to reach the whole race of men to
this very day.” Similarly, according to the Hypostasis
of the Archons, Ialdabaoth envies the high station of his son Sabaoth, who
had been endowed with a psychic nature capable of elevation. His envy takes on
an existence of its own, and in its turn gives rise to Death (144, 3–14
[Ballard:39 and 112]. (In Irenaeus Adv.
Haer. 1.30.9, envy and death are linked together as the legacy of Cain’s
murder of Abel). See W. C. van Unnik 1972:120–32; De aphthonia van God in de oudchristelijke literatur (Amsterdam, London, 1973).
Death entered into the cosmic order. Except for Wisd and II and IV Maccabees, kosmos is used in the LXX only in the original meaning of
‘ornament,’ ‘arrangement,’ or ‘drawing up of an army.’ See Freudenthal
1890:217. The notion that death came into the world through the devil’s envy
seems to be an echo of Zoroastrian teaching, although, as noted above (on
1:13), the author of Wisd, unlike the Iranian sources, is undoubtedly referring
to spiritual rather than physical death. According to Zarathustra, the original
static world was perfect, and alteration came into it only through the
malicious assault of the Hostile Spirit. “Once death and destruction had been
brought into the world, immortality ceased for gētig [i.e. material] creatures, and was replaced by the inevitable
processes of birth and death. In this state of things devout sacrifice has a spenta (‘bounteous,’ ‘beneficent’)
function, furthering the struggle of the good creation—a function which will
continue till the last sacrifice takes place at the end of limited time, and
immortality becomes again the lot of all God’s creatures” (Boyce:231).
Moreover, the attack of Ahriman is motivated by envy: “The Destructive Spirit,
ever slow to know, was unaware of the existence of Ohrmazd. Then he rose up
from the depths and went to the border from whence the lights are seen. When he
saw the light of Ohrmazd intangible, he rushed forward. Because his will is to
smite and his substance is envy (arišk-gōhrīh),
he made haste to destroy it” (Greater
Bundahishn 1.7, translation in Zaehner 1972:313). Cf. Yasna 9.5: “Under the rule of brave Yima, there was neither heat
nor cold, neither old age nor death, nor envy created by the daevas”; Yašt 15.16; translation in F. Wolff, Avesta (Strassburg, 1910):31, 269). Nor
was it difficult for the author of Wisd to identify the serpent of Genesis with
Ahriman, since in his attack on the material world we are informed that “he
rushed upon it in envious desire.… Like a serpent he darted forward, trampled
on as much of the sky as was beneath [sic]
the earth, and rended it” (GB
41.10–42.6. See Zaehner 1961:262). For the knowledge of Zoroastrianism in
Alexandria, see Pliny the Elder NH
30.2.4; D.L. 1.8; Bidez-Cumont 1938: 1. 85–88; Hengel 1974: 1. 230. It may also
be noted that in the Apoc. Abraham 23, the serpent is identified as
the instrument of Azazel. In Apoc. Moses 16, he is the devil’s vessel and
in III Bar 9:7 Sammael took the serpent as a garment. (According to Vita Adae 33 and II Enoch 31, it was the
devil who led Eve astray.) (David Winston, The Wisdom of
Solomon: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary (AB 43; New
Haven: Yale University Press, 2008], 121–123)