THERE IS NO “JEWISH”
DEVIL
Sidrah: Genesis 41:1-44:17
Haftarah: Zechariah 2:14-4:7
This
week the Haftarah is related to the celebration of Hanukkah instead of the
weekly Sidrah. While it contains a
number of famous and profound verses, and the remarkable symbol of the Menorah,
I choose to focus on a frequently misunderstood personage in the Hebrew Bible,
known in Hebrew as ha-Satan, or in
English as “the adversary.” In the Haftarah
he stands to oppose the appointment of a priest named Joshua as High Priest
over the Second Temple which will soon be rebuilt. A figure with the same title appears in the
Book of Job to accuse an innocent man of insincerity, and in the first book of
Chronicles (1) “an adversary” entices King David to take a census of the nation
without Divine authorization.
Significantly, the description of this event in the second book of
Samuel states that Hashem incited King David to take the census because He was
angry with the nation.
Hashem
rebukes the adversary who opposes Joshua the priest, but does not punish or
curse him for his words. The Malbim explains
the repetition of the word, “rebuke” as a dismissal of two accusations against
the priest Joshua. First, Hashem
declares Joshua vindicated of any charges against his personal character; the
Malbim understands the filth on the priest’s clothes to be soot from the “fire”
from which Joshua the “firebrand” has been rescued. Second, Hashem announces that He has chosen
Jerusalem to be His capitol and will restore it as the capitol of the Jewish
nation, with Joshua serving as chief priest in the rebuilt Temple. The Malbim attributes both verdicts to
Hashem’s compassion, which is as infinite and as irrefutable as His attribute
of justice.
In the
story of Job, the adversary is also not punished for speaking against Job even
though Job shows himself steadfast in the face of adversity and Hashem declares
him righteous. Any reader who sees
Hashem “making a bet with Satan” and treating an innocent man as a pawn, does
not view Him as either just or merciful.
In Jewish liturgical poetry the figure known as ha-Satan frequently gains the title of prosecutor in the Heavenly
court, a role some see as consistent with that of the serpent in the narrative
of the Garden of Eden. Accordingly, says
the Midrash, Hashem does not ask the serpent for his motive because he would
reply, “Who were they supposed to listen to, me or You?”
Occasionally
the Tanakh (2) interchanges the name of Hashem with the phrase, “angel of
Hashem.” How can the “adversary”
mentioned in Chronicles equate to the intervention of Hashem described in
Samuel? To shorten a very long answer,
Judaism did not create the belief that anything evil or even harmful comes only
from some entity acting independently of Hashem’s will. The
point of our Haftarah is that Hashem
decided that the time was right for the end of the Babylonian exile. The point of the story in David’s life is
that an unseen hand wrote tragedy into the narrative, but no human can grasp
the reason, and all King David could do was pray for mercy. No matter how angry we feel when the universe
does not give in to our wishes, the proper response is to shout in protest as
Job did and accept the reply even if it does not satisfy us, because we are
responsible for working with each other to relieve suffering regardless of its
source.
(1)
The “double books” in the Hebrew Bible were
originally single books. Samuel, Kings and Chronicles were divided into “first”
and “second” books when they were translated into Greek.
(2)
Tanakh:
derived from the initials of the Hebrew words Torah, Nevi’im (Prophets), and Ketuvim (Writings), the three major
divisions of the books in the Hebrew Bible. The “k”consonant at the end of the word
becomes “kh” because of the rules of Hebrew phonology.