this post was submitted on 01 Aug 2024
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I always wondered if Satan was actually defeated by this, or if he spent the whole ordeal just thinking, "Oh, whoa, he actually took the bait. Holy shit, he's actually doing it. This is hilarious. I can't believe it was this easy. Unreal."
So, IIRC, Job was written during the time where 'Satan' was not really a kind of ... evil lord of this world, the way he was later interpreted by Christians and some later Jews.
'Satan' is actually a kind of descriptive, formal title meaning something like: the accuser/the prosecutor. Its more literally translated as The Satan.
Basically, his job was to second guess God as a kind of ... opposite of a yes man. Basically his role was to ... what we would now say 'play devil's advocate'.
This makes more sense when you realize that Judaism emerged from a polytheistic/henotheistic Canaanite religion.
El or El Elyon (God Most High or God the Greatest) is the sort of Zeus-like master or most powerful of all the gods, the sect that eventually developed into Judaism began referring to him as Yahweh, Ashera is his consort and Goddess of fertility, Elohim is actually plural and means the gods, Ba'al was part of this pantheon, etc.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yahwism
'The Satan' was basically a kind of minor, subordinate god within an originally large pantheon of Canaanite deities, he did not really become associated with some kind of nearly equally powerful evil opposition to Yahweh until after many of the Judahites were held in captivity in Babylonia, and exposed to the Zoroastrian idea of one great good deity and another great evil deity by Cyrus the Great and the Persians, who conquered Babylonia and allowed the Judahites to return to Judah.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Return_to_Zion
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satan
Edit: That last bit is also why Cyrus is portrayed fairly positively and even directly praised by some Old Testament writings, compared to... basically every other foreign or occupying regent or emperor being portrayed quite negatively.