Before Israelites believed in
Satan, they seem to have believed in various executing angels ( or satans) who
carried out the justifiable punishment of sinners on behalf of a just God. One
intriguing Hebrew text perhaps offers us a glimpse of a very early stage in the
formulation of the belief in a superhuman satan. Numbers 22 tells the story of
the efforts of a powerful sorcerer named Balaam to curse Israel. As he is
traveling by donkey to do this, a sword-wielding "angel of the Lord;' who
is either an angelic servant of God or is God himself in human-like form, comes
to kill Balaam. This angel is invisible to Balaam, but Balaam's donkey, who can
see the danger, saves her master's life by avoiding the angel. Eventually,
Balaam is enabled to see the armed angel, who then informs Balaam, "I have
come out as a satan against you because your way is perverse before me . . . .
If [ your donkey] had not turned away from me, surely just now I would have
killed you" (Num 22:32- 33). This passage depicts no sinful or rebellious
being, but simply an angel in God's service, perhaps even God himself, as a
satan. Nor does this passage describe a figure who occupies a permanent role of
satan. This angel is portrayed as a positive figure, who happens in this
particular instance to function in the capacity of a satan, that is, an
executioner. This angel appropriately threatens to put Balaam to death for his
transgression.
A satan similar to the one who
threatens Balaam appears in another text in the Hebrew Scriptures. First
Chronicles 21 tells the story of a census that King David conducts in Israel.
The census, unfortunately, was illicit, so God sends a deadly plague upon
Israel in response to David's action. An earlier account of the same event is
given in 1 Samuel 24. The Samuel narrative explains that David conducted the
census because God, who had become angry with Israel, incited him to do so (2
Sam 24:1). The later retelling of this account in 1 Chronicles clarifies,
however, that it was in fact a satan who incited David to take the census (1
Chron 21:1 ) . Some scholars have suggested that the Chronicler's version of
the events attempts to alleviate the theological problem of God instigating
David's sin, replacing God with a satan as the one behind David’s misdeed. It
is more likely, nonetheless, that the Chronicler simply supposed that God was
punishing Israel via an angelic emissary. In other words, the satan who
instigates the census in 1 Chronicles 21 was likely understood as an agent of
God, much like the satan who confronted Balaam in Numbers 22, whom God sent to
chastise Israel. As in the 2 Samuel version of the story, God is ultimately
behind David's desire to conduct the census, but Chronicles clarifies that God
works through the agency of a satan. (Ryan E. Stokes, “Satan, From Divine Court
to Monster,” in The Oxford Handbook of Biblical Monsters, ed. Brandon R.
Grafius and John W. Morehead [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2025], 202-3)
