As I a Bible believing Christian, I happen to accept the idea that every word of the Bible is inspired. With that in mind, I ran into something the other day that was initially troubling, but ultimately interesting.
Now again the anger of the LORD burned against Israel, and it incited David against them to say, “Go, number Israel and Judah.
- 2 Samuel 24:1
In this account of the census that David takes within the Dueteronomistic history, the anger of the Lord is what incites David to take a census of the people. But there is a parallel account of this particular event in Chronicles.
Then Satan stood up against Israel and moved David to number Israel.
- Chronicles 21:1
Whoa! Here we get quite a different story! Satan (or the opposer literally in Hebrew) is what causes David to take a census of the people. Now as Bible believing Christians, we have a problem: two contradictory accounts. In my understanding, we have two basic options.
One: We can look at the historical context of the passages and understand that 2 Samuel is an exlic book and therefore is more concerned with the reason the people ended up in Babylon. It highlights the sin of the people and therefore puts more weight on David. Also, the Jewish people left Babylon with a greater interest in divine creatures. Chronicles is a post-exilic book. So it is possible that this development lead to two different methods for two different authors at two different times conveying the same idea to two different sets of audiences. Though this does not harmonize the two accounts, it does give a satisfactory explanation for their difference.
Two: The word Satan simply means an adversary or in our case, the adversary of God. We get the idea of Devil from the hebrew word Azazel. which was a goat demon. Many translators of the Old Testament often translated the word Azazel as ‘Devil’, and as one can see, for good reason.
Depiction of Azazel
But it is important for this discussion to note that other things than the stereotypical ‘Devil’ are called Satan (adversary). Human beings are also called Satan. Peter is called Satan (Matthew 16:23) when he becomes a “stumbling block”. The language of the Bible allows for Satan to be anyone or anything that hinders or is adverse the will of God. So in this sense, could it be that there is no contradiction and that God’s anger can sometimes be his own adversary?
Either option gives the Biblical theologian a bit to think about.
Thoughts?
Shalom,
Bryan
i enjoyed this article. Satan can infact be anything. To me, Satan is an action. I wouldnt call myself very religious, but everyone has their different views. There is evil in almost every religion.
Have you heard about spains church helping the government sell babies?
you might be interested int this article.
http://zazenlife.com/2011/12/20/spains-terrible-past-governmentchurch-sold-infants-under-dictator-franco/