That means that Satan here is not a personal name.
This should not be capital 'S' Satan.
So that part of the Facebook, you know, village atheist rant
is correct.
But I want to show you kind of what's lurking behind this.
If you read again, the thing on Facebook or YouTube,
and it'll say something like, "hey, not only is Satan not in Genesis 3,
but in Job 1 & 2, it should be translated The Satan or The Adversary,
you know, The Accuser, it's not this figure from Genesis 3.
And so there's no such thing as the devil.
The Bible hasn't..." You know, you're making all this up.
Okay, those are terrible and flawed conclusions
drawn from something that is real in the text.
And so I want to unpack this for you.
Now, to summarize what we have in Unseen Realm,
I want to show you again, visually how this works.
It is true that in Job 1 & 2 and in Zechariah 3,
the footnote is there for a reason;
(Hebrew), the adversary, the accuser.
That's because in Hebrew, we have the word Satan
prefixed with a definite article,
a little particle that is essentially the word 'The'.
So literally, it's The Satan, Ha Satan.
Hebrew is like English in this respect.
English does not tolerate a definite article
before a proper personal noun.
I'm not 'The Mike'.
Okay, my brother is not 'The Brad',
my wife is not 'The Drenna'.
English just doesn't tolerate that. It's stupid and ridiculous.
Hebrew is the same way.
Hebrew does not have definite articles before proper personal names
and that means,
that means that Satan here is not a personal name.
This should not be capital 'S' Satan.
So that part of the Facebook, you know, village atheist rant
is correct.
It shouldn't be capital 'S', it should be just a generic adversary.
It's not the figure of Genesis 3.
You know, this character, this figure that we now know by name.
All of that is true, but that what isn't true in the village atheist rant
is that there's no theology in the Bible about an original rebel.
Oh, there is, and that is what Genesis 3 is about.
I'm going to run a search here;
what I'm going to do to show you this visually,
is this is a simple search, I'm looking for the Hebrew definite article,
one letter Ha, with the noun Satan, that's all we're looking for here.
So if we run this search,
you say, "I don't read Hebrew, Mike," but here's all you need to see,
Zechariah 3, see the Ha is in red, the article Ha Satan,
Ha Satan, Ha Satan, Ha Satan.
Down here in Job,
Job 1:6, Job 1:7,
Job 1:8, 9 & 12,
Job 2:1 & 2, 3, 4, 6, 7.
Every place that you read in your English Bibles in Job 1, Job 2 and Zechariah 2
where you have Satan, it's Ha Satan. It is not a personal name.
Everyone, there are no exceptions, every time.
So that is the issue, again that we're dealing with. Now,
Just going to set that up in a moment here.
What do we do with this?
Again, I'm going to sort of run through this real quickly,
you know, for the sake of time.
What we have here in Job 1 & 2 is we have a Divine Council meeting.
It's very clear from the passage
where the sons of God have assembled. They're going to meet with God,
again, there's lots of these meetings in the Old Testament.
And somebody shows up in the room called Ha Satan,
The Accuser, The Adversary. And God asks him,
let's just go back here. God asks him, "Hey, where have you been?
You know, from where have you come?"
Satan, Has Satan, the Satan answer the Lord and said,
"from going to and fro in the earth, and walking up and down in it."
And then the Lord says to Satan, "Hey, have you taken a look at Job?
Well, there's nobody like that guy."
And then the scene unfolds.
Ha Satan is actually an office. This is actually a job description.
This is a being,
and this goes along with the biblical theme of heavenly books,
where what we do and the things that happened to us.
The Bible says probably 12, 15 places that these things are recorded.
And you know, the Book of Life is the most familiar one,
but there are other books going on.
But Ha Satan is essentially an office where this guy goes around,
and he observes people to see who is living righteously and who isn't.
That's his job.
So, when God asks the Satan "where have you been?",
and he tells him, he's been doing his job.
And that's why God asked him, "Hey, Hey, have you have you caught Job's act?
There is nobody like Job, he is blameless and upright.
You know, that guy, I love that guy. He's wonderful. He really loves me.
And he shows me by the way he lives, you know."
So that, you know, God is really, you know, enthused about Job.
And Satan, The Satan says, "Yeah, you know, I've seen that dude.
If you took away all he had, it'd be a different story."
Now this is the line that the accuser crosses.
He has just challenged God's assessment of Job's character.
He's basically said, "you don't really know Job like I do."
He's saying this to God.
"If you did this, and the other thing he would curse you to your face."
So a challenge has gone out from The Satan, Ha Satan to God.
He has overstepped his bounds.
He is out of his pay grade now.
And so God, you know, has to do something here in response.
Now, the way the rest of the story, you know, goes,
we know what, what, what's going on here,
if we look at it in those terms,
because everything that happens to Job from that point on
derives from this incident, from this challenge.
The Satan has just challenged God's omniscience,
God's truthfulness, and God cannot let that stand.
Now, he could destroy The Satan. Just you know, blow him up.
"Don't ever talk to me like that again," you know, that kind of thing.
But that doesn't solve the question.
He could kill him off,
but the question is still on the table for everybody else to wonder about.
That isn't the way God's gonna handle it. God says, "okay,
do whatever you want to him except take his life."
And the reason it's worded that way is God has to allow Satan
to, you know, The Satan, to do everything he can to Job so that
he can't come back later and complain "Oh, yeah, well,
Job would have buckled if you let me do this."
No, God's leaving it wide open.
Do what you want, but you're not allowed to kill him off
because then, you know, that would become an excuse too.
You know, we all here need to know who's right and who's wrong.
I'm right about Job and you're wrong.
And we're going to demonstrate that. Job is going to remain alive.
You can do whatever you want to him. And I'm telling you right now,
I am correct.
Your challenged to me. You know, God's speaking to The Satan here,
your challenged to me is going to be met,
and you will be the one found wrong.