He is Sufficient

Peter Kirk has commented on a post by Tyler Williams on whether and how “Satan” appears in the book of Job. Peter writes:

Formally, in Job chapters 1 and 2 there is no proper name “Satan”, but only several occurrences of a common noun with the definite article, ha-satan meaning “the adversary”. (In Hebrew, as in English but not Greek, proper nouns never take the definite article.) In the Hebrew Bible only in 1 Chronicles 21:1 does the proper noun satan, the name “Satan”, appear.

[W]ho is “the adversary” referred to in Job, and similarly in Zechariah 3:1-2, if he is not in fact the one we know of as Satan or the Devil? [...] In Jewish writings later than the Hebrew Bible, for example Wisdom of Solomon 2:24, and then in the New Testament and other Christian works, this figure becomes identified with the tempter in the Garden of Eden and with the prince of demons.

“Yes, it might be better to put ‘the adversary’ rather than ‘Satan’ in translations of Job [because] it is good translation practice to render a common noun as a common noun, not as a name.”

I agree with Peter’s conclusion, though I’ll note that in the face of Christian theological tradition, this starts to become a “tissue paper” vs. “kleenex” issue, an issue that can only be kept clean by steadfastly preserving the original context of the text and keeping later interpretation, as Peter suggests, in a footnote:

But I would expect to see a footnote something like “Hebrew ha-satan, understood as referring to Satan.”

To all of Peter’s discussion, I can only add that by the time the story of Job had made its way to the days of Goethe, the poet separated ha-satan, the adversary, the spirit of negation, the Devil, from the serpent:

Mephistopheles. Dust shall he eat, and that with zest,
As did the famous snake, my near relation.†

Though, in turn, Goethe has made God sympathetic to Mephistopheles:

The Lord. In that too you may play your part quite free;
Your kind I never did detest.
Of all the spirits of negation
The wag weighs least of all on me.
Mankind’s activity can languish all to easily,
A man soon loves unhampered rest;
Hence, gladly I give him a comrade such as you,
Who stirs and works and must, as devil, do.

And likewise, Mephistopheles is sympathetic to God:

Mephistopheles. I like to see the Old Man not infrequently,
And I forbear to break with Him or be uncivil;
It’s very pretty in so great a Lord as He
To talk so like a man even with the Devil.

† All quotes taken from “Faust, Parts One and Two” by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (translated by George Madison Priest), published by Encyclopedia Britannica (1952) as “Volume 47. Goethe” of the Great Books of the Western World.