Satan in the bible

Originally posted by whereu ↑

Much of this has been posted before, but with the renewed focus on Satan it is, in my opinion, time to consider what Satan is in the bible.

Here is a article on The Absence of Satan in the Old Testament

Extracts
Although English Bibles continue the practice of capitalizing the word “satan” in passages like Job 1 and 2, those passage do not have a specific individual in mind — that is, “satan” in these passages should *not* be understood as a proper personal name.
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The reason for this is straightforward. In biblical Hebrew, the definite article (the word “the) is a single letter (heh).
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Biblical Hebrew does not, however, put the definite article (the word “the”) on proper personal nouns (personal names). In this respect, Hebrew is like English. I don’t call myself “the Mike”.
Without exception, the word “satan” in Job occurs *with* the article. This indicates quite clearly that “satan” is *not* a personal name. It is generic, and means “the adversary”.

In terms of statistics, the noun “satan” occurs 27 times in the Hebrew Bible, ten times *without* the article.
Of these ten, seven refer to human beings and two refer to the Angel of Yahweh for sure. The lone outlier is 1 Chron 21:1. This is the famous passage where “Satan” provokes David to take a census, but in the parallel passage, 2 Sam 24:1-25, it’s Yahweh provoking David to take the census.
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The “satan” figure here is none other than the Angel of Yahweh — and so this instance without the article is akin to the two instances in the book of Numbers where “satan” was used of the Angel. This relieves the “is Yahweh Satan?” question and any notion of contradiction — since it would mean BOTH passages have Yahweh provoking David — one appears to be the invisible Yahweh; the other is the visible Yahweh.

I'm confident that the author's explanation that "relieves" the question of "any notion of contradiction" is appreciated by wostup..

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satan as a personal name it would seem wasnt mentioned in the ot.

the serpents name we do not know however we can glean from further on into the ot and then into the nt (which wasnt written yet so when jesus referred to satan (get thee behind me satan; satan tempted him in the wilderness) he was still in the old testament).

the hebrew word used in that passage (referring to the garden of eden) when referring to the serpent was "ha nachash" which means "serpant" or "shining one". nachash is an adjective meaning "bright" as in light/shining

in the ot it is used in hebrew by "ha satan" - not a personal pronoun but an adverb or maybe an adjective and means "the accuser"

the noun "nachash" carries the meaning of one who practices divination. hebrew adjectives can be converted into a noun which is called substantivised

so the meaning of the word is "shining one" - see ez 28; is 14

the best method of finding out what the ot means is to view it from a jewish perspective and from the original language, apart from revelation