Stokes’s contention that (the) Satan
is in fact an executioner or attacker rather than an accuser coupled with the
prominent traditions about Moses’s (non)burial, (non)death, and heavenly
glorification leads him to a new interpretation of Jude 9, which more
accurately reflects the celestial context in which Zech 3:1-7 occurs and to which
Jude alludes. Zechariah 3:1 reads: ויראני את־יהושׁע הכהן הגדול עמד לפני מלאך יהוה
והשׂטן עמד על־ימינו לשׂטנו. The NRSV translates this verse as: “Then he showed
be the high priest Joshua standing before the angel of the LORD, and Satan
standing at his right hand to accuse him.” Stokes’s argument that (the) Satan
was thought to be God’s attacker or executioner, however, suggests that we
should take לשטנו to mean “to attack him” rather than “to accuse him.” (Ryan E.
Stokes, “Not Over Moses’s Dead Body: Jude 9, 22-24 and the Assumption of
Moses in Their Early Jewish Context,” JSNT 133 [2014]: 201-2). This
translation of שטן has the support of other passages as well (Nom 22:22, 32; 2
Sam 19:22-23 [MT}; 1 Kgs 5:18 [MT]; 11:14, 23, 25; 1 Chr 21:1; Pss 38:21 [MT];
71:13; 109:4, 20, 29). This being the case, it is all the more likely that the
tradition underlying Jude 9 refers to the devil attempting to attack Moses’s
living body. (Daniel B. Glover, Patters of Deification in the Acts of the
Apostles [Wissenschaftliche Untersuchungen Zum Neuen Testament 2. Reihe
576; Tūbingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2022], 95)
