Devil

Calumniator, or slanderer; a fallen angel, especially the chief of them. He is called Abaddon in Hebrew, Apollyon in Greek, that is, destroyer.

Angel of the bottomless pit, Rev 9:11.

Prince of the world, Joh 12:31.

Prince of darkness, Eph 6:12.

A roaring lion, and an adversary, 1Pe 5:8.

A sinner from the beginning, 1Jn 3:8.

Beelzebub, Mat 12:24.

Accuser, Rev 12:10.

Belial, 2Co 6:15.

Deceiver, Rev 20:10.

Dragon, Rev 12:3.

Liar, Joh 8:44.

Serpent, Is. 27: 1.

Satan, Job 2:6.

Tormentor, Mat 18:34.

The god of this world, 2Co 4:4.

See SATAN.

The accursed enemy of Christ and his church. He is known in Scripture under a great variety of names, all, more or less, expressive of his character. Abaddon, and the angel of the bottomless pit, (Rev. ix. 11.) Beelzebub, (Matt. x2: 24.) Belial, (2 Cor. vi. 15.) the Old Dragon, (Rev. x2: 3.) the father of liars, (John. 8. 44.) Lucifer, (Isa. 14. 12.) a murderer from the beginning, (John 8. 44.) Serpent, (Isa. 27. 1.) Satan, (Job 2: 6.) the god of this world, (2 Cor. 4: 4.) a roaring lion. (1 Pet. v. 8.) See Satan.

Diabolus, an evil angel. The word is formed from the French diable, of the Latin diabolus, which comes from the Greek διαβολος, which, in its ordinary acceptation, signifies calumniator, traducer, or false accuser, from the verb διαβαλλειν, to calumniate, &c; or from the ancient British diafol. Dr. Campbell observes, that, though the word is sometimes, both in the Old Testament and the New, applied to men and women, as traducers, it is, by way of eminence, employed to denote that apostate angel, who is exhibited to us, particularly in the New Testament, as the great enemy of God and man. In the two first chapters of Job, it is the word in the Septuagint by which the Hebrew שטן , Satan, or adversary, is translated. Indeed, the Hebrew word in this application, as well as the Greek, has been naturalized in most modern languages. Thus we say, indifferently, the devil, or Satan; only the latter has more the appearance of a proper name, as it is not attended with the article. There is, however, this difference between the import of such terms, as occurring in their native tongues, and as modernized in translations. In the former, they always retain somewhat of their primitive meaning, and, beside indicating a particular being, or class of beings, they are of the nature of appellatives, and make a special character or note of distinction in such beings. Whereas, when thus Latinized or Englished, they answer solely the first of these uses, as they come nearer the nature of proper names. Διαβολος is sometimes applied to human beings; but nothing is more easy than to distinguish this application from the more frequent application to the arch- apostate. One mark of distinction is, that, in this last use of the term, it is never found in the plural. When the plural is used, the context always shows that it refers to human beings, and not to fallen angels. It occurs in the plural only thrice, and that only in the epistles of St. Paul,

1Ti 3:11; 2Ti 3:3; Tit 2:3. Another criterion whereby the application of this word to the prince of darkness may be discovered, is its being attended with the article. The term almost invariably is ο διαβολος. The excepted instances occur in the address of Paul to Elymas the sorcerer, Act 13:10; and that of our Lord to the Pharisees, Joh 8:44. The more doubtful cases are those in 1Pe 5:8, and Rev 20:2. These are all the examples in which the word, though used indefinitely or without the article, evidently denotes our spiritual and ancient enemy; and the examples in which it occurs in this sense with the article, are too numerous to be recited.

2. That there are angels and spirits, good and bad, says an eminent writer; that at the head of these last, there is one more considerable and malignant than the rest, who, in the form, or under the name, of a serpent, was deeply, concerned in the fall of man, and whose head, in the language of prophecy, the Son of Man was one day to bruise; that this evil spirit, though that prophecy be in part fulfilled, has not yet received his death’s wound, but is still permitted, for ends to us unsearchable, and in ways which we cannot particularly explain, to have a certain degree of power in this world hostile to its virtue and happiness,—all this is so clear from Scripture, that no believer, unless he be previously “spoiled by philosophy and vain deceit,” can possibly entertain a doubt of it. Certainly, among the numerous refinements of modern times, there is scarcely any thing more extraordinary than the attempt that has been made, and is still making, to persuade us that there really exists no such being in the world as the devil; and that when the inspired writers speak of such a being, all that they mean is, to personify the evil principle! A bold effort unquestionably; and could its advocates succeed in persuading men into the universal belief of it, they would do more to promote his cause and interest in the world than he himself has been able to effect since the seduction of our first parents. But to be armed against this subtle stratagem, let us attend to the plain doctrine of divine revelation respecting this matter. In the old Testament, particularly in the first two chapters of Job, this evil spirit is called Satan; and in the New Testament, he is spoken of under various titles, which are also descriptive of his power and malignity; as for example, he is called, “the prince of this world,” Joh 12:31; “the prince of the power of the air,” Eph 2:2; “the god of this world,” 2Co 4:4; “the dragon, that old serpent, the devil,” Rev 20:2; “the wicked one,”

1Jn 5:19. He is represented as exercising a sovereign sway over the human race in their natural state, or previous to their being enlightened, regenerated, and sanctified by the Gospel, Eph 2:2-3. His kingdom is described as a kingdom of darkness; and the influence which he exercises over the human mind is called “the power,” or energy, “of darkness,” Col 1:13. Hence believers are said to be “called out of darkness into marvellous light,” 1Pe 2:9. Farther, he is said to go about “as a roaring lion, seeking its prey, that he may destroy men’s souls,”

1Pe 5:8. Christ says, “He was a murderer from the beginning, and abode not in the truth, because there is no truth in him; when he speaketh a lie, he speaketh of that which is his own, for he is a liar, and the father of it,” Joh 8:44. We are also taught that this grand adversary of God and man has a numerous band of fallen spirits under his control; and that both he and they are reserved under a sentence of condemnation unto the judgment of the great day, Jud 1:6; and that “everlasting fire,” or perpetual torment, “is prepared for the devil and his angels,” Mat 25:41. In these various passages of Scripture, and many others which might be added, the existence of the devil is expressly stated; but if, as our modern Sadducees affirm, nothing more is intended in them than a personification of the abstract quality of evil, the Bible, and especially the New Testament, must be eminently calculated to mislead us in matters which intimately concern our eternal interests. If, in inferring from them the existence of evil spirits in this world, we can be mistaken, it will not, be an easy matter to show what inference deduced from Scripture premises may safely be relied on. It ought not, however, to surprise Christians that attempts of this kind should be made. St. Paul tells us, that in his day there were “false apostles, deceitful workers, transforming themselves into the apostles of Christ; and no wonder,” says he, “for Satan himself is transformed into an angel of light,” 2Co 11:13-14.

3. To the notion, that the Jews derived their opinions on this subject from the oriental philosophy, and that like the Persians they set up a rival god; it may be replied, that the Jewish notion of the devil had no resemblance to what the Persians first, and the Manicheans afterward, called the evil principle; which they made in some sort coordinate with God, and the first source of all evil, as the other is of good. For the devil, in the Jewish system, is a creature as much as any other being in the universe, and is liable to be controlled by omnipotence,—an attribute which they ascribed to God alone.

4. The arguments from philosophy against the existence of evil spirits are as frail as that which is pretended to be grounded upon criticism. For that there is nothing irrational in the notion of superior beings, is plain from this: that if there be other beings below us, there may be others above us. If we have demonstration of one Being at least who is invisible, there may be many other created invisible and spiritual beings. If we see men sometimes so bad as to delight in tempting others to sin and ruin, there may exist a whole order of fallen beings who may have the same business and the same malignant pleasure; and if we see some men furiously bent upon destroying truth and piety, this is precisely what is ascribed to these evil spirits. It is one of the serious circumstances of our probation on earth, that we should be exposed to this influence of Satan, and we are therefore called to “watch and pray that we enter not into temptation.”

5. The establishment of the worship of devils so general in some form throughout a great part of the Heathen world, is at once a painful and a curious subject, and deserves a more careful investigation than it has received. In modern times, devil-worship is seen systematized in Ceylon, Burmah, and many parts of the East Indies; and an order of devil-priests exists, though contrary to the Budhist religion, against the temples of which it sets up rival altars.

Mr. Ives, in his travels through Persia, gives the following curious account of devil-worship: “These people (the Sanjacks, a nation inhabiting the country about Mosul, the ancient Nineveh) once professed Christianity, then Mohammedanism, and last of all devilism. They say it is true that the devil has at present a quarrel with God; but the time will come when, the pride of his heart being subdued, he will make his submission to the Almighty; and, as the Deity cannot be implacable, the devil will receive a full pardon for all his transgressions, and both he, and all those who paid him attention during his disgrace, will be admitted into the blessed mansions. This is the foundation of their hope, and this chance for heaven they esteem to be a better one than that of trusting to their own merits, or the merits of the leader of any other religion whatsoever. The person of the devil they look on as sacred; and when they affirm any thing solemnly, they do it by his name. All disrespectful expressions of him they would punish with death, did not the Turkish power prevent them. Whenever they speak of him, it is with the utmost respect; and they always put before his name a certain title corresponding to that of highness or lord.” The worshippers of the devil mentioned by Ives were also found by Niebuhr in the same country, in a village between Bagdad and Mosul, called Abd-el-asis, on the great Zab, a river which empties itself into the Tigris. This village, says he, is entirely inhabited by people who are called Isidians, and also Dauasin. As the Turks allow the free exercise of religion only to those who possess sacred books, that is, the Mohammedans, Christians, and Jews, the Isidians are obliged to keep the principles of their religion very secret. They therefore call themselves Mohammedans, Christians, or Jews, according to the party of him who inquires what their religion is. Some accuse them of worshipping the devil under the name of Tschellebi; that is, Lord. Others say that they show great reverence for the sun and fire, that they are unpolished Heathens, and have horrid customs. I have also been assured that the Dauasins do not worship the devil; but adore God alone as the Creator and Benefactor of all mankind. They will not speak of Satan, nor even have his name mentioned. They say that it is just as improper for men to take a part in the dispute between God and a fallen angel, as for a peasant to ridicule and curse a servant of the pacha who has fallen into disgrace; that God did not require our assistance to punish Satan for his disobedience; it might happen that he might receive him into favour again; and then we must be ashamed before the judgment seat of God, if we had, uncalled for, abused one of his angels: it was therefore the best not to trouble one’s self about the devil; but endeavour not to incur God’s displeasure ourselves. When the Isidians go to Mosul, they are not detained by the magistrates, even if they are known. The vulgar, however, sometimes attempt to extort money from them. When they offer eggs or butter to them for sale, they endeavour first to get the articles into their hands, and then dispute about the price, or for this or other reasons to abuse Satan with all their might; on which the Dauasin is often polite enough to leave every thing behind, rather than hear the devil abused. But in the countries where they have the upper hand, nobody is allowed to curse him, unless he chooses to be beaten, or perhaps even to lose his life.

Devil [DEMON; SATAN]

A fallen angel; and particularly the chief of them, the devil, or Satan. He is the great principle of evil in the world; and it is his grand object to counteract the good that God desires to do. He exerts himself, especially with his angels, to draw away the souls of men from embracing salvation through Jesus Christ.\par His name signifies the calumniator, or false accuser; as the Hebrew Satan means the adversary. But the Scriptures give him various other appellations descriptive of his character. He is called, "The prince of this world," Joh 12:31 ; "The prince of the power of the air," Zep 2:2 ; "The god of this world," 2Co 4:4 ; "The dragon, that old serpent, the devil," Jer 20:2 ; "That wicked one," 1Jn 5:18 ; "A roaring lion," 1Pe 5:8 ; "A murderer," "a liar," Joh 8:44 ; "Beelzebub," Mat 12:24 ; "Belial," 2Co 6:15 ; "The accuser of the brethren," Jer 12:10 . He is everywhere shown to be full of malignity, cruelty, and deceit, hating God and man. He is ceaselessly active in his efforts to destroy souls, and uses innumerable devices and wiles to adapt his temptations to the varying characters and conditions of men, enticing wicked men, and even good men at times, as well as his own angels, to aid in his work. Almost the whole world has been under his sway. But he is a doomed foe. Christ shall bruise the serpent’s head; shall dispossess him for the world, as he has done from individuals, and at length confine him for ever in the place prepared for him and his angels, Mat 25:41 .\par The word "devils" occurs frequently in the gospels; but it is the translation of a different Greek word from that used to denote the devil, and might be rendered "demons." The Bible applies the other word only to Satan-"the devil", and his angels, who are like their leader in nature and in actions. There are many examples in the New Testament of persons possessed by demons. These are often called demoniacs. Some have argued that these were afflicted by natural diseases, such as epilepsy, insanity, etc., and were not possessed by evil spirits. But our Savior speaks to and commands the demons who actuated the possessed, which demons answered and obeyed, and gave proofs of their presence by tormenting those whom they were obliged to quit. Christ alleges, as proof of his mission, that the demons are cast out; he promises his apostles the same power that he himself exercised against those wicked spirits. Campbell says, "When I find mention made of the number of demons in particular possessions, their actions so particularly distinguished from the actions of the man possessed, conversations held by the former in regard to the disposal of them after their expulsion, and accounts given how they were actually disposed of-when I find desires and passions ascribed particularly to them, and similitudes taken from the conduct which they usually observe, it is impossible for me to deny their existence."\par

Devil. (slanderer). The name describes Satan as slandering God to man and man to God. The former work is, of course, a part of his great work of temptation to evil and is not only exemplified, but illustrated as to its general nature and tendency by the narrative of Genesis 3. The other work, the slandering or accusing men before God, is the imputation of selfish motives, Job 1:9-10, and its refutation is placed in the self-sacrifice of those "who loved not their own lives unto death." See Satan; Demon.

(Greek) "the accuser" or "the slanderer" (Job 1:6-11; Job 2:1-7; Rev 12:10). In Hebrew Satan means "adversary." The two-fold designation marks the two-fold objects of his malice - the Gentiles and the Jews. There is one one Devil, many "demons" as KJV ought to translate the plural. Devil is also used as an adjective. 1Ti 3:11, "slanderers"; 2Ti 3:3, "false accusers." Peter when tempting Jesus to shun the cross did Satan’s work, and therefore received Satan’s name (Mat 16:23); so Judas is called a "devil" when acting the Devil’s part (Joh 6:70). Satan’s characteristic sins are lying (Joh 8:44; Gen 3:4-5); malice and murder (1Jn 3:12; Genesis 4); pride, "the condemnation of the Devil," by which he "lost his first estate" (1Ti 3:6; Job 38:15; Isa 14:12-15; Joh 12:31; Joh 16:11; 2Pe 2:4; Jud 1:1:6).

He slanders God to man, and man to God (Genesis 3; Zechariah 3). His misrepresentation of God as one arbitrary, selfish, and envious of His creature’s happiness, a God to be slavishly-feared lest He should hurt, rather than filially loved, runs through all pagan idolatries. This calumny is refuted by God’s not sparing His only begotten Son to save us. His slander of good men, as if serving God only for self’s sake, is refuted by the case of "those who lose (in will or deed) their life for Christ’s sake." Demons, "knowing ones," from a root daemi, to know, are spirits who tremble before, but love not, God (Jas 2:19), incite men to rebellion against Him (Rev 16:14). "Evil spirits" (Act 19:13; Act 19:15) recognize Christ the Son of God (Mat 8:29; Luk 4:41) as absolute Lord over them, and their future Judge; and even flee before exorcism in His name (Mar 9:38).

As "unclean" they can tempt man with unclean thoughts. They and their master Satan are at times allowed by God to afflict with bodily disease (Luk 13:16): "Satan hath bound this woman these eighteen years" with "a spirit of infirmity," so that she was "bowed together." Scripture teaches that in idolatry the demons are the real workers behind the idol, which is a mere "nothing." Compare 1Co 10:19-21; 1Ti 4:1; Rev 9:20. Compare Deu 32:17, Hebrew sheedim, "lords" (1Co 8:5); Act 16:16, "a spirit of divination" (Greek of Python, an idol); Act 17:18, "a setter forth of strange gods" (Greek: demons); 2Ch 11:15; Psa 106:37; Lev 17:7. Idolatry is part of the prince of this world’s engines for holding dominion.

Our word "panic," from the idol Pan, represented as Satan is, with horns and cloven hoofs, shows the close connection there is between the idolater’s slavish terror and Satan his master. The mixture of some elements of primitive truth in paganism accords with Satan’s practice of foiling the kingdom of light by transforming himself at times into an "angel of light." Error would not succeed if there were not some elements of truth mixed with it to recommend it. Corrupting the truth more effectually mars it than opposing it. Satan as Beelzebub (Mat 12:24-30) is at the head of an organized kingdom of darkness, with its "principalities and powers" to be "wrestled" against by the children of light. For any subordinate agent of this kingdom, man or demon, to oppose another agent would be, reasons Christ, a division of Satan against Satan (involving the fall of his kingdom), which division Satan would never sanction (Eph 6:12-13).

Demons are "his angels" (Mat 25:41; Rev 12:7; Rev 12:9). Natural science can give no light when we come to the boundary line which divides mind from matter. The Bible-asserted existence of evil among angels affords no greater difficulty than its manifest existence among men. As surely as Scripture is true, personality is as much attributed to them as it is to men or to God. Possession with or by a demon or demons is distinctly asserted by Luke (Luk 6:17-18), who as a "physician" was able to distinguish between the phenomena of disease and those of demoniac possession. The Spirit of God in the evangelists would never have sanctioned such distinction, or left people under a superstitious error, not merely connived at but endorsed, if the belief were really false. There is nothing wrong in our using the word "lunacy" for madness; but if we described its cure as the moon’s ceasing to afflict, or if the doctor addressed the moon commanding it to leave the patient alone, it would be a lie (Trench, Miracles, 153).

In Mat 4:24, "those possessed with demons" are distinguished from "those lunatic" (probably the epileptic, but even this caused by a demon: Mar 9:14, etc.). Demons spoke with superhuman knowledge (Act 16:16); recognized Jesus, not merely as son of David (which they would have done had their voice been merely that of the existing Jewish superstition), but as "Son of God" (Mat 8:29). Our Lord speaks of the disciples’ casting out of demons as an installment or earnest of the final "fall" of Satan before the kingdom of Christ (Luk 10:18). People might imagine the existence of demons; but swine could only be acted on by an external real personal agent; the entrance of the demons into the swine of Gadara, and their consequent drowning, prove demons to be objective realities.

Seeing that physical disease itself is connected with the introduction of evil into the world, the tracing of insanity to physical disorganization only partially explains the phenomena; mental disease often betrays symptoms of a hostile spiritual power at work. At our Lord’s advent as Prince of Light, Satan as prince of darkness, whose ordinary operation is on men’s minds by invisible temptation, rushed into open conflict with His kingdom and took possession of men’s bodies also. The possessed man lost the power of individual will and reason, his personal consciousness becoming strangely confused with that of the demon in him, so as to produce a twofold will, such as we have in some dreams. Sensual habits predisposed to demoniac possession. In pagan countries instances occur wherein Satan seemingly exercises a more direct influence than in Christian lands. Demoniac possession gradually died away as Christ’s kingdom progressed in the first centuries of the church. There are four gradations in Satan’s ever-deepening fall.

(1) He is deprived of his heavenly excellency, though still having access to heaven as man’s accuser (Job 1-2), up to Christ’s ascension. All we know of his original state as an archangel of light is that he lost it through pride and restless ambition, and that he had some special connection, possibly as God’s vicegerent over this earth and the animal kingdom; thereby we can understand his connection and that of his subordinate fallen angels with this earth throughout Scripture, commencing with his temptation of man to his characteristic sin, ambition to be "as gods knowing good and evil;" only his ambition seems to have been that of power, man’s that of knowledge. His assuming an animal form, that of a serpent, and the fact of death existing in the pre-Adamite world, imply that evil probably was introduced by him in some way unknown to us, affecting the lower creation before man’s creation. As before Christ’s ascension heaven was not yet fully open to man (Joh 3:13), so it was not yet shut against Satan. The old dispensation could not overcome him (compare Zechariah 3).

(2) From Christ to the millennium he is judicially cast out as "accuser" of the elect; for Christ appearing before God as our Advocate (Heb 9:24), Satan the accusing adversary could no longer appear against us (Rom 8:33-34). He and his angels range through the air and the earth during this period (Eph 2:2; Eph 6:12). "Knowing that he hath but a short time" (Revelation 12), in "great wrath" he concentrates his power on the earth, especially toward the end, when he is to lose his standing against Israel and expulsion shall be executed on him and his by Michael (Rev 12:7-9; Dan 12:1; Zechariah 3, where Joshua the high priest represents "Jerusalem," whose "choice" by the Lord is the ground of the Lord’s rebuke to Satan).

(3) He is bound at the eve of the millennium (Rev 20:1-3). Having failed to defeat God’s purpose of making this earth the kingdom of Christ and His transfigured saints, by means of the beast, the harlot, and finally Antichrist, who is destroyed instantly by Christ’s manifestation in glory, Satan is bound in the bottomless pit for a thousand years during which he ceases to be the persecutor or else seducer of the church and "the god and prince of the world" that "lieth in the wicked one."

(4) At its close, being loosed for a while, in person Satan shall head the last conspiracy against Christ (permitted in order to show the security of believers who cannot fall as Adam fell by Satan’s wiles), and shall be finally cast into the lake of life forever (Rev 20:7-10). As the destroyer, he is represented as the "roaring lion seeking whom he may devour" (1Pe 5:8). As the deceiver he is the "serpent." Though judicially "cast down to hell" with his sinning angels, "and delivered into chains of darkness to be reserved unto judgment" (2Pe 2:4), he is still free on earth to roam to the length of his chain, like a chained dog, but no further. He cannot hurt God’s elect; his freedom of range in the air and on earth is that of a chained prisoner under sentence.

(ὁ Διάβολος, of which the English term is but a variation). This term signifies one who travesties another’s character for the purpose of injuring it, a slanderer, and is sometimes applied to any calumniator, e.g. a gossip- monger (1Ti 3:11; 2Ti 3:3; Tit 2:3); but it is spoken especially, by way of eminence, of the arch enemy of man’s spiritual interest, whom the Jews represented as continually impugning the character of saints before God (comp. Job 1:6; Rev 12:10; Zec 3:1). SEE ACCUSER. In 1Pe 5:8, he is expressly called “the accuser (ἀντίδικος) “of the brethren,” with a reference to forensic usages. SEE ADVOCATE. The word is found in the plural number and adjective sense in 1Ti 3:11; 2Ti 3:3; and Tit 2:3. In all other cases it is used with the article as a descriptive name of Satan, except that in Joh 6:70, it is applied to Judas (as “Satan’ to Peter in Mat 16:23), because they — the one permanently, and the other for the moment — were doing Satan’s work. (On Joh 11:31, see Engelhard’s Commentatio, Erf. 1794; “Hane, Schriferkl. p. 51-75; on Heb 2:14, Anon. De Diabolo, Gött. 1784; Oestmann, De loco 1Pe 5:8, Gryph. 1816). The name describes him as slandering God to man, and man to God. SEE DIABOLUS.

a. The former work is, of course, a part of the great work of temptation to evil; and is not only exemplified, but illustrated, as to its general nature and tendency, by the narrative of Genesis in. We find there that its essential characteristic is the representation of God as an arbitrary and selfish ruler, seeking his own good, and not that of his creatures. The effect is to stir up in man the spirit of freedom to seek a fancied independence; and it is but a slight step further to impute falsehood or cruelty to God. The success of the devil’s slander is seen, not only in the scriptural narrative of the Fall, but in the corruptions of most mythologies, and especially in the horrible notion of the divine φθόνος, or envy, which ran through so many (see, e.g. Herod. 1:32; 7:46). The same slander is implied rather than expressed in the temptation of our Lord, and is overcome by the faith which trusts in God’s love even where its signs may be hidden from the eye (comp. the unmasking of a similar slander by Peter in Act 5:4).

b. The other work, the slandering or accusing of man before God, is, as it must naturally be, unintelligible to us. The All-seeing Judge can need no accuser, and the All- Pure could, it might seem, have no intercourse with the Evil One. But, in truth, the question touches on two mysteries, the relation of the Infinite to the finite spirit, and the permission of the existence of evil under the government of him who is “the Good.” ‘As a part of these it must be viewed — to the latter especially it belongs; and this latter, while it is the great mystery of all, is also one in which the facts are proved to us by incontrovertible evidence. SEE SATAN.

The word “devil” also often stands, but improperly, in our version as a rendering of δαίμων, an impure spirit from the other world acting upon a human being. SEE DAEMON.

In Lev 17:7, the word translated “devil” is שָׂעַיר(saïr´, hairy), ordinarily a “goat,” but rendered “satyr” in Isa 13:21; Isa 34:14; probably alluding to the wood-daemons, resembling he-goats, supposed to live in deserts, and which were an object of idolatrous and beastly worship among the heathen. SEE SATYR. The term rendered “devil” in Deu 32:17; Psa 106:37, is שֵׁד(shed, properly lord, Sept. and Vulg. demon), an idol, since the Jews regarded idols as demons that caused themselves to be worshipped by men. SEE IDOLATRY.

The belief of the Hebrews down to the Babylonian exile seems but dimly to have recognized either Satan or daemons, at least as a dogmatic tenet, nor had it any occasion for them, since it treated moral evil as a properly human act (comp. Genesis 3), and always as subjective and concrete, but regarded misfortune, according to teleological axioms, as a punishment deserved on account of sin at the hands of a righteous God, who inflicted it especially by the agency of one of his angels (2Sa 24:16; comp. 2Ki 19:35), and was accordingly looked upon as the proper author of every afflictive dispensation (Amo 3:6). Apparitions were part of the popular creed: there were beings inimical to mankind inhabiting solitudes, but not yet adopted in the association of religious ideas. SEE SPECTRE.

The Azazel (q.v.) is thought by many to have been held to be such a daemon; yet, if we grant even this, it still remains but an isolated being, one might almost say, a mere liturgical idea. Nevertheless, it cannot be denied that these representations were fitted to serve as introductory to dogmatic daemonology, when the belief was eventually carried out to its full conclusion. The period of the exile is the time of this development; and when also the Medo-Persian tenets of Ahriman and his emanations came into direct contact with the Israelitish faith, they exerted so powerful an influence in drawing out the national conceptions that the Amshaspands of the Zend-Avesta (q.v.) are strongly reflected in the Jewish angelology. Earlier, indeed, a Satan, so called by way of eminence, occasionally appears as the malicious author of human misfortune, but only under the divine superintendence: e.g. he incites David to a sinful act (1Ch 21:1); casts suspicions upon Job’s piety (Job 1:6 sq.), and, with Jehovah’s permission, inflicts upon him a lot gradually more severe to the utmost point of endurance; appears as the mendacious impeacher (ὁ κατήγωρ, Rev 12:10) of the high-priest Joshua before the Angel of God, but draws upon himself the divine malediction (Zec 3:1 sq.). Yet in all this he is as little like the Ahriman of the Zend-Avesta (Rhode, Heil. Sage, p. 182 sq.; Matthai, Religionsglaube d. Apostel, II, 1:171 sq.; Creuzer, Symbol. 1:705) as an indifferent prosecuting attorney-general or judicial superintendent commissioned by Jehovah: ill-will actuates him, and desire for the misery of the pious. Daemons are not mentioned in the canonical books of the Old Test., unless (with many interpreters) we understand “the host of the high ones” in Isa 24:21 (צְבָא הִמָּרוֹם, army of the lofty, comp. Dan 8:10), of the evil angels (comp. Isa 14:12), and interpret the whole passage as referring to their punishment. SEE LUCIFER.

“In the Apocrypha, the old Hebrew notion of Jehovah’s angels who allot disaster occurs but partially, and in case mishap overtakes the enemies of the pious, the angels are alluded to as auxiliaries and friends of the latter (2Ma 15:23 sq.), although we may search in vain such passages for a single mention of daemons. On the other hand, the books of Tobias and Baruch are full of representations concerning them (δαιμόνια), while they never refer to Satan. These beings dwell in waste places (Bar 4:35; Tob 8:3; comp. Sept. at Isa 13:21; Isa 34:14); also; ruins (Gemara, Berachoth, p. 16, Rabe’s trans.; they are the heathen gods, Bar 4:7; comp. Sept. at Psa 95:5; 1Co 10:20); but mingle among men, take their abode in them as tormenting spirits (Tob. vi, 9), and can only be expelled by mystical means (Tob. 6:20). One of them, Asmodaeus (q.v.), is licentious (on the lust of daemons as being signified in Gen 6:2, see the book of Enoch, ch. vii, and the Testam. Reuben, c. 5, in Fabricii Pseudepigr. V. T. 1:530), falls in love with a beautiful maiden, and through jealousy kills her seven successive bridegrooms on the wedding night (Tob 3:8; comp. 6:15). In the took of Wisdom (ii. 24), the devil (ὁ διάβολος) comes plainly forward as an interpretation of the serpent that seduced Eve (Genesis in; the Targum of Jonathan actually names, at Gen 3:6, Sammael as the “angel of death,” מִלְאִךְ מוֹתָא: see Gerlach, De angelo mortis, Hal. 1734), and here the Zend-avestic parallel becomes more evident (the serpent was a symbol of Ahriman, Creuzer, Symbol. 1:724). Josephus knows nothing of Satan, but daemons (δαίμονες or δαιμόνια), souls of dead men (War, 7:6, 3), are with him tormenting spirits, which take possession of men (ib.), and inflict upon them severe, incurable diseases, particularly of a psychical character (Ant. 6:8, 2; 11, 3, in explanation of 1Sa 16:14). Their expulsion can be effected (see Gemara, Berachoth, p. 28, Rabe’s tr.) by magical formulae (Ant. 8:2, 5) and mystical means (War, 7:6, 3). Such daemoniacs (δαιμονιζόμενοι) are, as is well known, mentioned in the gospels, and Jesus restored many of them by a simple word. SEE POSSESSED (WITH A DEVIL).

But perhaps the daemonology of the New Test. is exhibited in a more strictly dogmatic light than any other. The daemons have Satan as their chief (ἄρχων, Mat 12:24), dwell in men as “unclean spirits” (πνεύματα ἀκάθαρτα or πονηρά, Mat 12:43; Luk 8:2; Luk 10:20; Luk 11:24; Eph 6:12; one inferior to the other, Luk 11:26), and induce maladies as “spirits of infirmities”’ (πνεύματα ἀσθηνειῶν, Luk 8:2; Luk 13:11; comp. 1Co 5:5; 1Ti 1:20). They appear in association with Satan in the Apocalypse (Rev 12:7; Rev 12:9; Rev 16:13 sq.). Satan himself (ὁ Σατανᾶς, ὁ Διάβολος, ὁ πονηρός, Βεελζεβούλ, SEE BEELZEBUB, Βελίαλ [בְּלַיִּעִל] or Βελίαρ, 2Co 6:15 SEE BELIAL ), is the originator of all wickedness and mischief (Luk 10:19; Luk 13:16; Luk 22:31; Act 5:3; 2Co 11:3; Eph 2:2), therefore the opponent (ὁ ἐχθρος) of the kingdom of God (Mat 13:39; Luk 10:18; Luk 22:3 sq.; for whose subjugation Christ came, Joh 12:31; Joh 14:30; Joh 16:11), and the tempter (ὁ πειράζων) of the faithful (1Co 7:5; 1Th 3:5; 1Pe 5:8 sq.), as Jesus himself was tempted by him in the beginning of his ministry (Matthew 4). Satan’s first act towards mankind was the leading of Eve into sin (2Co 11:3; comp. Rev 12:9; Joh 8:44), and so he became the originator and king of death (1Co 15:26; Heb 2:14; the Sammaell’, סַמָּאֵל, of the later Jews, see Buxtorf, Lex. Chald. col. 1495). He and his angels (Rev 12:9; comp. 2Co 12:7), i.e. apparently the daemons, were originally created good (inasmuch as from the hand of God only good can come, but against him, the Creator of the universe, no opposing being could originally exist); but through their own fault they fell (Joh 8:44 [?]; 2Pe 2:4; Jud 1:6); yet they rule in the kingdom of darkness (Eph 6:12; comp. Col 1:13; roving about in the atmosphere, Eph 2:2), as well as over all mankind alienate from God (ὁ κόσμος, as κοσμοκράτορες, Eph 6:12; but Satan as ἄρχων τοῦ κόσμου τούτου or θεὸς τοῦ αἰῶνος τούτου, Joh 12:31; Joh 14:30; Joh 16:11; 2Co 4:4; Eph 2:2), although destined to a future fearful sentence (2Pe 2:4; Jud 1:6), when Christ shall appear to overthrow the kingdom of Satan (1Jn 2:8); indeed, Satan has already through him received his condemnation (Joh 12:31; Joh 16:11; comp. Heb 2:14). The later speculations of the Jews on the subject of Satan and daemons may be seen in Eisenmenger (Entdeckt. Judenth. ii, c. 8, p. 408 sq.). The Targums often introduce Satan into the O.T. text; in fact, whenever an opportunity presents itself (e.g. Jonath. on Exo 32:19; Lev 9:2). On this subject, see especially Mayer, Historia Diaboli (2d ed. Tub. 1780); Ode, De angelis (Traj. ad Rh. 1739), sect. 4, p. 463 sq.; Schmidt, in his Biblioth. fiur Krit. u. Exegese, 1:525 sq. (“Comparison of the New.-Test. daemonology with the Zendic books”); Winzer, De daemonologia in N.T. proposita (Viteb. 1812, Lips. 121, incomplete); Matthai, Religionsglaube der Apostel, II, 1:98 sq.; Colln, Bibl. Theol. 1:423 sq.; 2:69 sq.; 229 sq.; M. Stuart, in the Bibliotheca Sacra (1843), 1:120 sq. SEE ANGEL; SEE EXORCISM; SEE SATAN.

Devil, slanderer. A name given to the greatest of evil spirits. He is so called 34 times in the Scriptures. He is called Satan 39 times; Beelzebub, the prince of the demons, 7 times. Mat 12:24. He is called the angel of the bottomless pit, Abaddon, in Hebrew; Apollyon, in Greek; that is, destroyer, Rev 9:11; adversary, 1Pe 5:8; accuser, Rev 12:10; Belial, Jdg 19:23; 2Co 6:15; deceiver, Rev 12:9, R. V.; dragon, Rev 12:7; Rev 20:2; the god of this world, 2Co 4:4; the evil one, from whom, in the Lord’s prayer, we are to pray to be delivered, Mat 6:13; Mat 13:19; Mat 13:38; Luk 11:4, A. V.; Eph 6:16; 1Jn 2:13-14; 1Jn 3:10; 1Jn 3:12; liar, Joh 8:44; Lucifer, Isa 14:12, A. V., but R. V. reads day star; murderer, Joh 8:44; prince of the power of the air, Eph 2:2; prince of this world, Joh 12:31; serpent. Gen 3:1-4; Rev 12:9; Rev 20:2; a sinner from the beginning, 1Jn 3:8. From the beginning of the world the devil has had a hand, and sometimes a controlling one, in the most important events in the history of man. He tempted Eve, Gen 3:1; he tried Job, Job 1:7; provoked David to number Israel, 1Ch 21:1; he tempted our Lord in the wilderness. Mat 4:1; he "entered into Judas," Luk 22:3; he is the deceiver which deceiveth the whole world, Rev 12:9, etc. "He that committeth sin is of the devil: for the devil sinneth from the beginning. For this purpose was the Son of God manifested, that he might destroy the works of the devil." 1Jn 3:8. The time is coming, and may be near at hand, when "the dragon, that old serpent, which is the devil and Satan," shall be bound for a thousand years, "that he should deceive the nations no more till the thousand years should be fulfilled; and after that he must be loosed a little season." Rev 20:2. "And when the thousand years are expired, Satan shall be loosed out of his prison and shall go out to deceive the nations." Rev 20:7. The fall and punishment of the devil is recorded. Mat 25:41; Luk 10:18; Joh 8:44; 2Pe 2:4; 1Jn 3:8; Jud 1:6; Rev 20:10. The word devil is sometimes applied to a very wicked man or woman. Joh 6:70; Act 13:10; and in the Greek of 2Ti 3:3; Tit 2:3, where the A. V. reads "false accusers."

In Jewish and Christian theology, the prince and ruler of the kingdom of evil; any subordinate evil spirit

DEVIL.—See Demon and Satan.

See Demonology and Satan.

DEVIL.—The word came into English from Greek either directly or through its Latin transliteration. Used with the definite article, its original meaning was that of the accuser or traducer of men (see Satan), whence it soon came to denote the supreme spirit of evil, the personal tempter of man and enemy of God. With the indefinite article it stands for a malignant being of superhuman nature and powers, and represents the conception expressed by the Greeks in the original of our term ‘demon.’ At first the idea of malignancy was not necessarily associated with these beings, some being regarded as harmless and others as wielding even benign influence; but gradually they were considered as operating exclusively in the sphere of mischief, and as needing to be guarded against by magic rites or religious observances.

1. Earlier conceptions.—Jewish demonology must be traced back to primitive and pre-Mosaic times, when both a form of animism was present in a belief in the ill-disposed activity of the spirits of the dead, and a variety of places and objects were supposed to be rendered sacred by the occupation, permanent or temporary, of some superhuman power. Of these views only traces are to be found in the earliest parts of Scripture, and the riper development of later ages may fairly be ascribed to foreign, and especially Bab. [Note: Babylonian.] and Greek, influences. That certain animals were believed to be endowed with demonic power appears from Gen 3:1-15, though here the serpent itself is represented as demonic, and not yet as possessed by an evil spirit (Wis 2:24, Rom 16:20). So with the ‘he-goats’ or satyrs (Lev 17:7, 2Ch 11:15, Isa 13:21; Isa 34:14), which were evidently regarded as a kind of demon, though without the rich accompaniments of the Greek conception. Their home was the open field or wilderness, where Azazel was supposed to dwell (Lev 16:8 f.), and whither one of the birds used in cleansing cases of leprosy was let go to carry back the disease (Lev 14:7; Lev 14:53). On the contrary, the roes and the hinds of the field (Son 2:7; Son 3:5) seem to have been thought of as faun-like spirits, for whose aid a lover might hopefully plead. Under Bab. [Note: Babylonian.] influence the spirit was conceived as abstracted from any visible form, and as still capable of inflicting injury; hence the need of protection against ‘the destroyer’ of Exo 12:23. In Greek thought there took place a development partly parallel. The word used by Hesiod for the blessed soul of a hero becomes with Plato an abstract influence sometimes beneficent and helpful, but emerges in the orators and tragedians as descriptive of baleful genii, who bring misfortune and even revel in cruelty.

2. Later Judaism.—Under these various influences the demonology of later Judaism became somewhat elaborate. The conception of demon or devil was used to embrace three species of existences. (1) It included the national deities, conceived as fallen, but not always as stripped of all power (Exo 12:12, Isa 19:1; Isa 24:21; cf. Isa 14:12). (2) It covered such of the angels as were thought to have been once attendants upon the true God, but to have fallen (2Pe 2:4, Jud 1:6, Ethiop. Enoch chs. 6, 7). For a variety of personal spirits were interposed between God as mediating agencies according to Bab. [Note: Babylonian.] and Persian views, or, according to the strict Jewish view, as ministers of His will. (3) To these were added—a survival with modification of the primitive animism—the spirits of the wicked dead (Josephus, Ant. VIII. ii. 5, BJ VII. vi. 3), who were supposed to haunt the tombs, or at least to cause the men they possessed to do so (Mat 8:28). The devils of later Judaism accordingly are thought of as invisible spirits, to whom every ill, physical or moral, was attributed. Their relation to God was one of quasi-independence. At times they do His bidding and are the ministers of His wrath, but in this sense are not classed in Scripture as devils; e.g., the demon of pestilence is the destroying angel or even ‘the angel of the Lord’ (2Sa 24:16, 2Ki 19:35, Isa 37:36, Psa 78:49). Yet they were thought to reside in the lower world in an organized kingdom of their own (Job 18:14; cf. Rev 9:11, Ethiop. Enoch 54:6, Mat 12:24-27); though the kingdom is not entirely outside the sovereign rule of Jehovah, who is the Lord of all spirits and of the abyss in which they dwell (Enoch 40, Deu 32:22, Job 11:8, Psa 139:8, Luk 16:24).

3. In the NT.—In the period of the NT the belief in devils as spirits, evil and innumerable, was general amongst the nations, whether Jewish or Gentile; but in Jesus and His disciples the cruder features of the belief, such as the grotesqueness of the functions assigned to these spirits in the literature of the second century, do not appear. The writers of the Gospels were in this respect not much in advance of their contemporaries, and for Jesus Himself no theory of accommodation to current beliefs can be sustained. The Fourth Gospel is comparatively free from the demonic element. Possession is thrice alluded to (Joh 7:20; Joh 8:40; Joh 10:28) as a suggested explanation of Christ’s work and influence; but evil generally is traced back rather to the activity of the devil (Joh 6:70, where ‘a devil’ is not a demon, but the word is used metaphorically much as ‘Satan’ in Mat 16:23, Joh 13:2; Joh 13:27), whose subordinates fall into the background. The Synoptics, especially Lk., abound in references to demons, who are conceived, not as evil influences resting upon or working within a man, but as personal spirits besetting or even possessing him. The demon was said to enter into a man (Luk 8:30) or certain animals (Mat 8:32), and to pass out (Mat 17:18, Luk 11:14) or be cast out (Mat 9:34). This demoniacal possession is referred to as the cause of various diseases, the cases being preponderantly such as exhibit symptoms of psychical disease in association with physical (see Possession). St. Paul and the other writers in the NT evidently shared the views underlying the Synoptics. Possession so called is a familiar phenomenon to them, as it continued to be in the early years of the Church, though there is a marked disposition towards the Johannine view of a central source of evil. St. Paul speaks of doctrines emanating from devils (1Ti 4:1, where the word should not be taken metaphorically). The devils of 1Co 10:20 were demigods or deposed idols. St. James recognizes the existence of a number of devils (Jas 2:19), whose independence fit God is not complete. The Apocalypse (Rev 9:20; Rev 16:14; Rev 18:2) similarly speaks of a diverse and manifold activity, though again its derivation from a common source is frequent. In all these books the conception of devils seems to be giving way to that of the devil; the former gradually lose any power of initiative or free action, and become the agents of a great spirit of evil behind them.

In the OT this process has advanced so far that the personal name Satan (wh. see) is used in the later books with some freedom, Asmodæus occurring in the same sense in Tob 3:8; Tob 3:17. But in the NT the process is complete, and in every part the devil appears as a personal and almost sovereign spirit of evil, capable of such actions as cannot be explained away by the application of any theory of poetic or dramatic personification. It is he who tempted Christ (Mat 4:1 ff., Luk 4:2 ff.), and in the parables sowed the tares (Mat 13:39) or snatched up the good seed (Luk 8:12; cf. ‘the evil one’ of Mat 13:19); and for him and his angels an appropriate destiny is prepared (Mat 25:41). According to Jn., the devil prompted the treason of Judas (Joh 13:2), and is vicious in his lusts, a liar and a murderer (Joh 8:44), a sinner in both nature and act (1Jn 3:8; 1Jn 3:10). He prolongs the tribulation of the faithful who do not yield to him (Rev 2:18); after his great fall (Rev 12:9) he is goaded by defeat into more venomous activity (Rev 12:12), but eventually meets his doom (Rev 20:10). Jud 1:9 preserves the tradition of a personal encounter with Michael; and St. Peter represents the devil as prowling about in search of prey (1Pe 5:8), the standing adversary of man, baffled by Jesus (Act 10:38). To St. James (Jas 4:7) the devil is an antagonist who upon resistance takes to flight. If ‘son of the devil’ (Act 13:10) is metaphorical, St. Paul considers his snare (1Ti 3:7, 2Ti 2:26) and his wiles (Eph 6:11) real enough. To give opportunity to the devil (Eph 4:27) may lead to a share in his condemnation (1Ti 3:6). Death is his realm (Heb 2:14, Wis 2:24), and not a part of the original Divine order; though not inflicted at his pleasure, he makes it subservient to his purposes, and in its spiritual sense it becomes the fate of those who accept his rule. Such language, common to all the writers, and pervading the whole NT, allows no other conclusion than that the forces and spirits of evil were conceived as gathered up into a personal bead and centre, whose authority they recognized and at whose bidding they moved.

This opinion is confirmed by the representation of the devil’s relation to men and to God, and by many phrases in which he is referred to under other names. He is the moral adversary of man (Mat 13:39, Luk 10:19, Eph 4:27, 1Pe 5:8), acting, according to the OT, with the permission of God (cf. Job 1:9-12), though with an assiduity that shows the function to be congenial; but in the NT with a power of origination that is recognized, if watched and restrained. Hence he is called the ‘tempter’ (Mat 4:3, 1Th 3:5), and the ‘accuser’ of those who listen to his solicitation (Rev 12:10). In hindering and harming men he stands in antithesis to Christ (2Co 6:15), and hence is fittingly termed the evil and injurious one (Mat 6:13; Mat 13:18, Joh 17:15, Eph 6:16, 2Th 3:3, 1Jn 2:13 f., 1Jn 3:12; 1Jn 5:18 f.—but in some of these passages it is open to contend that the word is not personal). Bent upon maintaining and spreading evil, he begins with the seduction of Eve (2Co 11:3) and the luring of men to doom (Joh 8:44). Death being thus brought by him into the world (Rom 5:12, Wis 2:24), by the fear of it he keeps men in bondage (Heb 2:14). He entices men to sin (1Co 7:5), as he enticed Jesus, though with better success, places every woful obstacle in the way of their trust in Christ (2Co 4:4), and thus seeks to multiply ‘the sons of disobedience’ (Eph 2:2), who may be rightly called his children (1Jn 3:10). In the final apostasy his methods are unchanged, and his hostility to everything good in man becomes embittered and Insatiable (2Th 2:9 f., Rev 20:7 f.).

In regard to the devil’s relation to God, the degree of independence and personal initiative is less in the OT than in the NT, but nowhere is there anything like the exact co-ordination of the two. The representation is not that of a dualism, but of the revolt of a subordinate though superhuman power, patiently permitted for a time for wise purposes and then peremptorily put down. In Job 1:6 the devil associates himself with ‘the sons of God,’ and yet is represented as not strictly classed with them; he has the right of access to heaven, but his activity is subject to Divine consent. Another stage is marked in 1Ch 21:1, where the statement of 2Sa 24:1 is modified as though the devil worked in complete and unshackled opposition to God. In the Book of Enoch he is the ruler of a kingdom of evil, over which kingdom, however, the Divine sovereignty, or at least suzerainty, stands. The NT preserves the conception in most of its parts. God and the devil are placed in antithesis (Jas 4:7); so ‘the power of darkness’ and ‘the kingdom of the Son of his love’ (Col 1:13), as though the two were entirely distinct. The devil is the prince and personal head of the demons (Mar 3:22). According to Jn., he is ‘the prince of this world’ (Joh 12:31), and Jesus is contrasted with him (Joh 8:42; Joh 8:44, Joh 18:36), and outside the sphere of his influence (Mar 14:30). St. Paul expresses similar views; the devil is ‘the god of this world’ or age (2Co 4:4), ‘the prince of the power of the air’ (Eph 2:2), ruling over the evil spirits who are located in the sky or air (Luk 10:18, Rev 12:9; cf. ‘heavenly places,’ Eph 6:12), and who are graded in orders and communities much like the spirits of good (Eph 1:21). The dualism is so imperfect that Christ has but to speak and the demons recognize His superior authority. He is the stronger (Luk 11:22), and can even now, under the limitations of the moral probation of men, frustrate the devil’s designs (Luk 22:32), and destroy his works (1Jn 3:8), and will eventually bring him to nought (Heb 2:14). Already the triumph is assured and partially achieved (Joh 16:11, 1Jn 4:4), and Christians share in it (Rom 16:20). It becomes complete and final at the Parousia (1Co 15:26, Psa 110:1).

The personality of the devil must consequently be regarded as taught by Scripture. He is not conceived as the original or only source of evil, but as its supreme personal representative. His existence, like that of evil itself, may be ascribed to the permissive will of God, with analogous limitations in each case. The psychical researches of recent years have tended to confirm the belief in spiritual existences, good and bad, and thereby to reduce a fundamental difficulty, which would otherwise attach also in a degree to the belief in the Holy Spirit. And the tradition of a revolt and fall of angels has this in its favour, that it fits in with the belief in devils and the devil, and provides a partially intelligible account of circumstances under which such a belief might take shape. It supplies the preceding chapters in the history, and enables the career to be traced from the first stage of moral choice through the process of hardening of purpose and increasing separation from God to the appropriate abyss at the close. The devil thus becomes a type of every confirmed evil-doer: and the patience and the righteousness of God are alike exemplified.

R. W. Moss.

(Greek: diabolos, slanderer, accuser, or traducer)

The word is used as a name for a fallen angel or evil spirit, especially for the chief of the rebellious angels, Lucifer or Satan (Matthew 25). In both the Old and the New Testament he is represented as a personal being cast off by God and hostile to men, going about like "a roaring lion seeking whom he may devour" (1 Peter 5). Adorned at his creation with sanctifying grace, he sinned by pride, and with many other heavenly spirits was denied the’ beatific vision. His abode is hell, and he cannot enjoy the benefits of the Redemption. Yet he remains a rational spirit, possessed of the knowledge he had before the fall, and in the administration of the universe is permitted, for God’s own purposes, to exercise some influence upon animate and inanimate creatures. Cases of diabolic obsession, possession, and infestation are numerous. Christ drove out devils, and empowered the Apostles to do so. In the Church the institution of the order of exorcists testifies to belief in a personal devil.

(Greek diabolos; Lat. diabolus).The name commonly given to the fallen angels, who are also known as demons (see DEMONOLOGY). With the article (ho) it denotes Lucifer, their chief, as in Matthew 25:41, "the Devil and his angels".It may be said of this name, as St. Gregory says of the word angel, "nomen est officii, non naturæ"--the designation of an office, not of a nature. For the Greek word (from diaballein, "to traduce") means a slanderer, or accuser, and in this sense it is applied to him of whom it is written "the accuser [ho kategoros] of our brethren is cast forth, who accused them before our God day and night" (Apocalypse 12:10). It thus answers to the Hebrew name Satan which signifies an adversary, or an accuser.Mention is made of the Devil in many passages of the Old and New Testaments, but there is no full account given in any one place, and the Scripture teaching on this topic can only be ascertained by combining a number of scattered notices from Genesis to Apocalypse, and reading them in the light of patristic and theological tradition. The authoritative teaching of the Church on this topic is set forth in the decrees of the Fourth Lateran Council (cap. i, "Firmiter credimus"), wherein, after saying that God in the beginning had created together two creatures, the spiritual and the corporeal, that is to say the angelic and the earthly, and lastly man, who was made of both spirit and body, the council continues: "Diabolus enim et alii dæmones a Deo quidem naturâ creati sunt boni, sed ipsi per se facti sunt mali." ("the Devil and the other demons were created by God good in their nature but they by themselves have made themselves evil.") Here it is clearly taught that the Devil and the other demons are spiritual or angelic creatures created by God in a state of innocence, and that they became evil by their own act. It is added that man sinned by the suggestion of the Devil, and that in the next world the wicked shall suffer perpetual punishment with the Devil. The doctrine which may thus be set forth in a few words has furnished a fruitful theme for theological speculation for the Fathers and Schoolmen, as well as later theologians, some of whom, Suarez for example, have treated it very fully. On the other hand it has also been the subject of many heretical or erroneous opinions, some of which owe their origin to pre-Christian systems of demonology. In later years Rationalist writers have rejected the doctrine altogether, and seek to show that it has been borrowed by Judaism and Christianity from external systems of religion wherein it was a natural development of primitive Animism.As may be gathered from the language of the Lateran definition, the Devil and the other demons are but a part of the angelic creation, and their natural powers do not differ from those of the angels who remained faithful. Like the other angels, they are pure spiritual beings without any body, and in their original state they are endowed with supernatural grace and placed in a condition of probation. It was only by their fall that they became devils. This was before the sin of our first parents, since this sin itself is ascribed to the instigation of the Devil: "By the envy of the Devil, death came into the world" (Wisdom 2:24). Yet it is remarkable that for an account of the fall of the angels we must turn to the last book of the Bible. For as such we may regard the vision in the Apocalypse, albeit the picture of the past is blended with prophecies of what shall be in the future: And there was a great battle in heaven, Michael and his angels fought with the dragon, and the dragon fought and his angels: and they prevailed not, neither was their place found any more in heaven. And that great dragon was cast out, that old serpent, who is called the devil and Satan, who seduceth the whole world; and he was cast unto the earth, and his angels were thrown down with him. (Apocalypse 12:7-9)To this may be added the words of St. Jude: "And the angels who kept not their principality, but forsook their own habitation, he hath reserved under darkness in everlasting chains, unto the judgment of the great day" (Jude 1:6; cf. 2 Peter 2:4).In the Old Testament we have a brief reference to the Fall in Job 4:18: "In his angels he found wickedness". But to this must be added the two classic texts in the prophets: How art thou fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, who didst rise in the morning? how art thou fallen to the earth, that didst wound the nations? And thou saidst in thy heart: I will ascend into heaven, I will exalt my throne above the stars of God, I will sit in the mountain of the covenant, in the sides of the north. I will ascend above the height of the clouds, I will be like the most High. But yet thou shalt be brought down to hell, into the depth of the pit. (Isaiah 14:12-15)This parable of the prophet is expressly directed against the King of Babylon, but both the early Fathers and later Catholic commentators agree in understanding it as applying with deeper significance to the fall of the rebel angel. And the older commentators generally consider that this interpretation is confirmed by the words of Our Lord to his disciples: "I saw Satan like lightning falling from heaven" (Luke 10:18). For these words were regarded as a rebuke to the disciples, who were thus warned of the danger of pride by being reminded of the fall of Lucifer. But modern commentators take this text in a different sense, and refer it not to the original fall of Satan, but his overthrow by the faith of the disciples, who cast out devils in the name of their Master. And this new interpretation, as Schanz observes, is more in keeping with the context.The parallel prophetic passage is Ezekiel’s lamentation upon the king of Tyre: You were the seal of resemblance, full of wisdom, and perfect in beauty. You were in the pleasures of the paradise of God; every precious stone was thy covering; the sardius, the topaz, and the jasper, the chrysolite, and the onyx, and the beryl, the sapphire, and the carbuncle, and the emerald; gold the work of your beauty: and your pipes were prepared in the day that you were created. You a cherub stretched out, and protecting, and I set you in the holy mountain of God, you have walked in the midst of the stones of fire. You were perfect in your wave from the day of creation, until iniquity was found in you. (Ezekiel 28:12-15) There is much in the context that can only be understood literally of an earthly king concerning whom the words are professedly spoken, but it is clear that in any case the king is likened to an angel in Paradise who is ruined by his own iniquity.Even for those who in no way doubt or dispute it, the doctrine set forth in these texts and patristic interpretations may well suggest a multitude of questions, and theologians have not been loath to ask and answer them. And in the first place what was the nature of the sin of the rebel angels? In any case this was a point presenting considerable difficulty, especially for theologians, who had formed a high estimate of the powers and possibilities of angelic knowledge, a subject which had a peculiar attraction for many of the great masters of scholastic speculation. For if sin be, as it surely is, the height of folly, the choice of darkness for light, of evil for good, it would seem that it can only be accounted for by some ignorance, or inadvertence, or weakness, or the influence of some overmastering passion. But most of these explanations seem to be precluded by the powers and perfections of the angelic nature. The weakness of the flesh, which accounts for such a mass of human wickedness, was altogether absent from the angels. There could be no place for carnal sin without the corpus delicti. And even some sins that are purely spiritual or intellectual seem to present an almost insuperable difficulty in the case of the angels. This may certainly be said of the sin which by many of the best authorities is regarded as being actually the great offense of Lucifer, to wit, the desire of independence of God and equality with God. It is true that this seems to be asserted in the passage of Isaiah (14:13). And it is naturally suggested by the idea of rebellion against an earthly sovereign, wherein the chief of the rebels very commonly covets the kingly throne. At the same time the high rank which Lucifer is generally supposed to have held in the hierarchy of angels might seem to make this offense more likely in his case, for, as history shows, it is the subject who stands nearest the throne who is most open to temptations of ambition. But this analogy is not a little misleading. For the exaltation of the subject may bring his power so near that of his sovereign that he may well be able to assert his independence or to usurp the throne; and even where this is not actually the case he may at any rate contemplate the possibility of a successful rebellion. Moreover, the powers and dignities of an earthly prince may be compatible with much ignorance and folly. But it is obviously otherwise in the case of the angels. For, whatever gifts and powers may be conferred on the highest of the heavenly princes, he will still be removed by an infinite distance from the plenitude of God’s power and majesty, so that a successful rebellion against that power or any equality with that majesty would be an absolute impossibility. And what is more, the highest of the angels, by reason of their greater intellectual illumination, must have the clearest knowledge of this utter impossibility of attaining to equality with God. This difficulty is clearly put by the Disciple in St. Anselm’s dialogue "De Casu Diaboli" (cap. iv); for the saint felt that the angelic intellect, at any rate, must see the force of the "ontological argument" (see ONTOLOGY). "If", he asks, "God cannot be thought of except as sole, and as of such an essence that nothing can be thought of like to Him [then] how could the Devil have wished for what could not be thought of?--He surely was not so dull of understanding as to be ignorant of the inconceivability of any other entity like to God" (Si Deus cogitari non potest, nisi ita solus, ut nihil illi simile cogitari possit, quomodo diabolus potuit velle quod non potuit cogitari? Non enim ita obtusæ mentis erat, ut nihil aliud simile Deo cogitari posse nesciret). The Devil, that is to say, was not so obtuse as not to know that it was impossible to conceive of anything like (i.e. equal) to God. And what he could not think he could not will. St. Anselm’s answer is that there need be no question of absolute equality; yet to will anything against the Divine will is to seek to have that independence which belongs to God alone, and in this respect to be equal to God. In the same sense St. Thomas (I:63:3) answers the question, whether the Devil desired to be "as God". If by this we mean equality with God, then the Devil could not desire it, since he knew this to be impossible, and he was not blinded by passion or evil habit so as to choose that which is impossible, as may happen with men. And even if it were possible for a creature to become God, an angel could not desire this, since, by becoming equal with God he would cease to be an angel, and no creature can desire its own destruction or an essential change in its being. These arguments are combated by Scotus (In II lib. Sent., dist. vi, Q. i.), who distinguishes between efficacious volition and the volition of complaisance, and maintains that by the latter act an angel could desire that which is impossible. In the same way he urges that, though a creature cannot directly will its own destruction, it can do this consequenter, i.e. it can will something from which this would follow.Although St. Thomas regards the desire of equality with God as something impossible, he teaches nevertheless (loc. cit.) that Satan sinned by desiring to be "as God", according to the passage in the prophet (Isaiah 14), and he understands this to mean likeness, not equality. But here again there is need of a distinction. For men and angels have a certain likeness to God in their natural perfections, which are but a reflection of his surpassing beauty, and yet a further likeness is given them by supernatural grace and glory. Was it either of these likenesses that the devil desired? And if it be so, how could it be a sin? For was not this the end for which men and angels were created? Certainly, as Thomas teaches, not every desire of likeness with God would be sinful, since all may rightly desire that manner of likeness which is appointed them by the will of their Creator. There is sin only where the desire is inordinate, as in seeking something contrary to the Divine will, or in seeking the appointed likeness in a wrong way. The sin of Satan in this matter may have consisted in desiring to attain supernatural beatitude by his natural powers or, what may seem yet stranger, in seeking his beatitude in the natural perfections and reflecting the supernatural. In either case, as St. Thomas considers, this first sin of Satan was the sin of pride. Scotus, however (loc. cit., Q. ii), teaches that this sin was not pride properly so called, but should rather be described as a species of spiritual lust.Although nothing definite can be known as to the precise nature of the probation of the angels and the manner in which many of them fell, many theologians have conjectured, with some show of probability, that the mystery of the Divine Incarnation was revealed to them, that they saw that a nature lower than their own was to be hypostatically united to the Person of God the Son, and that all the hierarchy of heaven must bow in adoration before the majesty of the Incarnate Word; and this, it is supposed, was the occasion of the pride of Lucifer (cf. Suarez, De Angelis, lib. VII, xiii). As might be expected, the advocates of this view seek support in certain passages of Scripture, notably in the words of the Psalmist as they are cited in the Epistle to the Hebrews: "And again, when he bringeth in the first-begotten into the world, he saith: And let all the angels of God adore Him" (Hebrews 1:6; Psalm 96:7). And if the twelfth chapter of the Apocalypse may be taken to refer, at least in a secondary sense, to the original fall of the angels, it may seem somewhat significant that it opens with the vision of the Woman and her Child. But this interpretation is by no means certain, for the text in Hebrews 1, may be referred to the second coming of Christ, and much the same may be said of the passage in the Apocalypse.It would seem that this account of the trial of the angels is more in accordance with what is known as the Scotist doctrine on the motives of the Incarnation than with the Thomist view, that the Incarnation was occasioned by the sin of our first parents. For since the sin itself was committed at the instigation of Satan, it presupposes the fall of the angels. How, then, could Satan’s probation consist in the fore-knowledge of that which would, ex hypothesi, only come to pass in the event of his fall? In the same way it would seem that the aforesaid theory is incompatible with another opinion held by some old theologians, to wit, that men were created to fill up the gaps in the ranks of the angels. For this again supposes that if no angels had sinned no men would have been made, and in consequence there would have been no union of the Divine Person with a nature lower than the angels.As might be expected from the attention they had bestowed on the question of the intellectual powers of the angels, the medieval theologians had much to say on the time of their probation. The angelic mind was conceived of as acting instantaneously, not, like the mind of man, passing by discursive reasoning from premises to conclusions. It was pure intelligence as distinguished from reason. Hence it would seem that there was no need of any extended trial. And in fact we find St. Thomas and Scotus discussing the question whether the whole course might not have been accomplished in the first instant in which the angels were created. The Angelic Doctor argues that the Fall could not have taken place in the first instant. And it certainly seems that if the creature came into being in the very act of sinning the sin itself might be said to come from the Creator. But this argument, together with many others, is answered with his accustomed acuteness by Scotus, who maintains the abstract possibility of sin in the first instant. But whether possible or not, it is agreed that this is not what actually happened. For the authority of the passages in Isaiah and Ezekiel, which were generally accepted as referring to the fall of Lucifer, might well suffice to show that for at least one instant he had existed in a state of innocence and brightness. To modern readers the notion that the sin was committed in the second instant of creation may seem scarcely less incredible than the possibility of a fall in the very first. But this may be partly due to the fact that we are really thinking of human modes of knowledge, and fail to take into account the Scholastic conception of angelic cognition. For a being who was capable of seeing many things at once, a single instant might be equivalent to the longer period needed by slowly-moving mortals.This dispute, as to the time taken by the probation and fall of Satan, has a purely speculative interest. But the corresponding question as to the rapidity of the sentence and punishment is in some ways a more important matter. There can indeed be no doubt that Satan and his rebel angels were very speedily punished for their rebellion. This would seem to be sufficiently indicated in some of the texts which are understood to refer to the fall of the angels. It might be inferred, moreover, from the swiftness with which punishment followed on the offense in the case of our first parents, although man’s mind moves more slowly than that of the angels, and he had more excuse in his own weakness and in the power of his tempter. It was partly for this reason, indeed, that man found mercy, whereas there was no redemption for the angels. For, as St. Peter says, "God spared not the angels that sinned" (2 Peter 2:4). This, it may be observed, is asserted universally, indicating that all who fell suffered punishment. For these and other reasons theologians very commonly teach that the doom and punishment followed in the next instant after the offense, and many go so far as to say there was no possibility of repentance. But here it will be well to bear in mind the distinction drawn between revealed doctrine, which comes with authority, and theological speculation, which to a great extent rests on reasoning. No one who is really familiar with the medieval masters, with their wide differences, their independence, their bold speculation, is likely to confuse the two together. But in these days there is some danger that we may lose sight of the distinction. It is true that, when it fulfils certain definite conditions, the agreement of theologians may serve as a sure testimony to revealed doctrine, and some of their thoughts and even their very words have been adopted by the Church in her definitions of dogma. But at the same time these masters of theological thought freely put forward many more or less plausible opinions, which come to us with reasoning rather than authority, and must needs stand or fall with the arguments by which they are supported. In this way we may find that many of them may agree in holding that the angels who sinned had no possibility of repentance. But it may be that it is a matter of argument, that each one holds it for a reason of his own and denies the validity of the arguments adduced by others. Some argue that from the nature of the angelic mind and will there was an intrinsic impossibility of repentance. But it may be observed that in any case the basis of this argument is not revealed teaching, but philosophical speculation. And it is scarcely surprising to find that its sufficiency is denied by equally orthodox doctors who hold that if the fallen angels could not repent this was either because the doom was instantaneous, and left no space for repentance, or because the needful grace was denied them. Others, again, possibly with better reason, are neither satisfied that sufficient grace and room for repentance were in fact refused, nor can they see any good ground for thinking this likely, or for regarding it as in harmony with all that we know of the Divine mercy and goodness. In the absence of any certain decision on this subject, we may be allowed to hold, with Suarez, that, however brief it may have been, there was enough delay to leave an opportunity for repentance, and that the necessary grace was not wholly withheld. If none actually repented, this may be explained in some measure by saying that their strength of will and fixity of purpose made repentance exceedingly difficult, though not impossible; that the time, though sufficient, was short; and that grace was not given in such abundance as to overcome these difficulties.The language of the prophets (Isaiah 14; Ezekiel 28) would seem to show that Lucifer held a very high rank in the heavenly hierarchy. And, accordingly, we find many theologians maintaining that before his fall he was the foremost of all the angels. Suarez is disposed to admit that he was the highest negatively, i.e. that no one was higher, though many may have been his equals. But here again we are in the region of pious opinions, for some divines maintain that, far from being first of all, he did not belong to one of the highest choirs--Seraphim, Cherubim, and Thrones--but to one of the lower orders of angels. In any case it appears that he holds a certain sovereignty over those who followed him in his rebellion. For we read of "the Devil and his angels" (Matthew 25:41), "the dragon and his angels" (Apocalypse 12:7), "Beelzebub, the prince of devils"--which, whatever be the interpretation of the name, clearly refers to Satan, as appears from the context: "And if Satan also be divided against himself, how shall his kingdom stand? Because you say that through Beelzebub I cast out devils" (Luke 11:15, 18), and "the prince of the Powers of this air" (Ephesians 2:2). At first sight it may seem strange that there should be any order or subordination amongst those rebellious spirits, and that those who rose against their Maker should obey one of their own fellows who had led them to destruction. And the analogy of similar movements among men might suggest that the rebellion would be likely to issue in anarchy and division. But it must be remembered that the fall of the angels did not impair their natural powers, that Lucifer still retained the gifts that enabled him to influence his brethren before their fall, and that their superior intelligence would show them that they could achieve more success and do more harm to others by unity and organization than by independence and division.Besides exercising this authority over those who were called "his angels", Satan has extended his empire over the minds of evil men. Thus, in the passage just cited from St. Paul, we read, "And you, when you were dead in your offenses and sins, wherein in times past you walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of this air, of the spirit that now worketh on the children of unbelief" (Ephesians 2:1-2). In the same way Christ in the Gospel calls him "the prince of this world". For when His enemies are coming to take Him, He looks beyond the instruments of evil to the master who moves them, and says: "I will not now speak many things to you, for the prince of this world cometh, and in me he hath not anything" (John 14:30). There is no need to discuss the view of some theologians who surmise that Lucifer was one of the angels who ruled and administered the heavenly bodies, and that this planet was committed to his care. For in any case the sovereignty with which these texts are primarily concerned is but the rude right of conquest and the power of evil influence. His sway began by his victory over our first parents, who, yielding to his suggestions, were brought under his bondage. All sinners who do his will become in so far his servants. For, as St. Gregory says, he is the head of all the wicked--"Surely the Devil is the head of all the wicked; and of this head all the wicked are members" (Certe iniquorum omnium caput diabolus est; et hujus capitis membra sunt omnes iniqui.--Hom. 16, in Evangel.). This headship over the wicked, as St. Thomas is careful to explain, differs widely from Christ’s headship over the Church, inasmuch as Satan is only head by outward government and not also, as Christ is, by inward, life-giving influence (Summa III:8:7). With the growing wickedness of the world and the spreading of paganism and false religions and magic rites, the rule of Satan was extended and strengthened till his power was broken by the victory of Christ, who for this reason said, on the eve of His Passion: "Now is the judgment of the world: now shall the prince of this world be cast out" (John 12:31). By the victory of the Cross Christ delivered men from the bondage of Satan and at the same time paid the debt due to Divine justice by shedding His blood in atonement for our sins. In their endeavours to explain this great mystery, some old theologians, misled by the metaphor of a ransom for captives made in war, came to the strange conclusion that the price of Redemption was paid to Satan. But this error was effectively refuted by St. Anselm, who showed that Satan had no rights over his captives and that the great price wherewith we were bought was paid to God alone (cf. ATONEMENT).What has been said so far may suffice to show the part played by the Devil in human history, whether in regard to the individual soul or the whole race of Adam. It is indicated, indeed, in his name of Satan, the adversary, the opposer, the accuser, as well as by his headship of the wicked ranged under his banner in continual warfare with the kingdom of Christ. The two cities whose struggle is described by St. Augustine are already indicated in the words of the Apostle, "In this the children of God are manifest and the children of the devil: for the devil sinneth from the beginning. For this purpose the Son of God appeared, that He might destroy the works of the devil" (1 John 3:8). Whether or not the foreknowledge of the Incarnation was the occasion of his own fall, his subsequent course has certainly shown him the relentless enemy of mankind and the determined opponent of the Divine economy of redemption. And since he lured our first parents to their fall he has ceased not to tempt their children in order to involve them in his own ruin. There is no reason, indeed, for thinking that all sins and all temptations must needs come directly from the Devil or one of his ministers of evil. For it is certain that if, after the first fall of Adam, or at the time of the coming of Christ, Satan and his angels had been bound so fast that they might tempt no more, the world would still have been filled with evils. For men would have had enough of temptation in the weakness and waywardness of their hearts. But in that case the evil would clearly have been far less than it is now, for the activity of Satan does much more than merely add a further source of temptation to the weakness of the world and the flesh; it means a combination and an intelligent direction of all the elements of evil. The whole Church and each one of her children are beset by dangers, the fire of persecution, the enervation of ease, the dangers of wealth and of poverty, heresies and errors of opposite characters, rationalism and superstition, fanaticism and indifference. It would be bad enough if all these forces were acting apart and without any definite purpose, but the perils of the situation are incalculably increased when all may be organized and directed by vigilant and hostile intelligences. It is this that makes the Apostle, though he well knew the perils of the world and the weakness of the flesh, lay special stress on the greater dangers that come from the assaults of those mighty spirits of evil in whom he recognized our real and most formidable foes--"Put you on the armour of God, that you may be able to stand against the deceits of the devil. For our wrestling is not against flesh and blood; but against principalities and powers, against the rulers of the world of this darkness, against the spirits of wickedness in the high places . . . Stand therefore, having your loins girt about with truth, having on the breastplate of justice, and your feet shod with the preparation of the gospel of peace; in all things taking the shield of faith, wherewith you may be able to extinguish all the fiery darts of the most wicked one" (Ephesians 6:11, 16).-----------------------------------W.H. KENT Transcribed by Rick McCarty The Catholic Encyclopedia, Volume IVCopyright © 1908 by Robert Appleton CompanyOnline Edition Copyright © 2003 by K. KnightNihil Obstat. Remy Lafort, CensorImprimatur. +John M. Farley, Archbishop of New York

dev´’l. See DEMON; SATAN.

(äéÜâïëïò)

In this article the conception of the Evil One in the apostolic writings and of the various names used to describe him will be considered; for the passages in English Version where ‘devil’ represents äáéìüíéïí see Demon.

1. The name äéÜâïëïò.-(a) It is used as a common noun or as an adjective to denote ‘a slanderer’ or ‘slanderous’ (NT in Pastoral Epistles only), as in 1Ti_3:11 (women not to be slanderers), 2Ti_3:3, Tit_2:3; and so in Septuagint of Haman (Est_7:4; Est_8:1; Heb. öָø, öøַã, Vulgate hostis and adversarius). The corresponding verb is used of accusation, where the charge is not necessarily false, as in Luk_16:1 (äéåâëÞèç) of the unjust steward, though probably a secret enmity is inferred; and Papias (ap. Historia Ecclesiastica (Eusebius, etc.)III. xxxix. 16) uses the verb (unless it is Eusebius’ paraphrase) with reference to the ‘woman accused of many sins before the Lord.’ It is noteworthy in this connexion that the devil’s accusations against man, though undoubtedly hostile, are not always untrue.

(b) As a proper name äéÜâïëïò is constantly used in the NT, usually with the article, but occasionally it is anarthrous (Act_13:10, 1Pe_5:8, Rev_12:9; Rev_20:2). It is explicitly identified in Rev_12:9; Rev_20:2 with the Heb. name Satan, and, like that name, it is not used in the NT in the plur. (except in the primary sense of ‘slanderer’ as above), and is not applied to Satan’s angels, as we apply the word ‘devils’ to them. It is curious that we never in English use ‘Devil’ as a proper name without the article, while we always use ‘Satan’ in this way. Hence the title does not convey to our ears quite the same idea as it conveyed to the Jews. Conversely we should do well if we did not always treat ‘Christ’ as a proper name, but sometimes used it as a title or attribute, ‘the Christ,’ as occasionally in Revised Version (e.g. Luk_24:26). In the OT ‘Satan’ (from ùָׂèַï, ‘to hate,’ ‘to be an enemy to,’ the root idea being the enmity between the serpent and the seed of the woman, Gen_3:15) is generally used with the article, word äַùָׂèָï, as denoting the adversary: in 1Ki_5:4 it is used without the article, as denoting any adversary (Septuagint ἐðßâïõëïò, Vulgate Satan). The name ‘Satan,’ however, had not been transliterated into Greek till shortly before the Christian era, for we never find it so rendered in the Septuagint , but always ὁ äéÜâïëïò. The latter is used as a proper name in the Septuagint of Job_1:6 f., Zec_3:1 (Vulgate Satan), and Wis_2:24 (Vulgate Diabolus); and so often in the NT. There we have, as frequently, ὁ Óáôáíᾶò, almost always with an article, but in 2Co_12:7 we have Óáôᾶí or Óáôáíᾶ without the article; some cursives in Rev_20:2 have Óáôáíᾶò anarthrous. The transliteration ‘Satan’ is found 34 times in the NT, of which 14 cases are in the Gospels.

(c) We find in the apostolic writings some paraphrases of the name ‘Satan.’ ‘The Evil One’ (ὁ ðïíçñüò) is used in Eph_6:16, 1Jn_2:13 f; 1Jn_3:12; 1Jn_5:18 f.; this designation is also found 5 times in the Gospels, and, in addition, probably in the last clause of the Lord’s Prayer. In the Apocalypse ‘the dragon’ is frequently used as a synonym for Satan, ὁ äñÜêùí probably meaning ‘the sharp-seeing one,’ from äÝñêïìáé.* [Note: The word äñÜêùí in the LXX renders three Hebrew words: tannin (Job_7:12), nahash (Job_26:13), livyathan (Job 40:25).] It is used in Rev_12:3 ff; Rev_13:2; Rev_13:4; Rev_13:11; Rev_16:13; Rev_20:2 as denoting a large serpent (as in classical Greek), explicitly identified with the ‘old serpent’ of Genesis 3 in Rev_12:9; Rev_20:2. This identification is perhaps implied in Rom_16:20, 2Co_11:3 (cf. Wis_2:24). Satan is also called ‘the Accuser’ and ‘the Destroyer’ (see below, § 2). For other names see Adversary, Air, Belial.

2. Apostolic doctrine about the devil or Satan.-The apostles, like their Jewish contemporaries, taught that Satan was a personal being, the prince of evil spirits or demons (Rev_12:7; Rev_12:9, Eph_2:2; cf. Mat_25:41, Mar_3:22, but the name ‘Beelzebub’ is not found in the NT outside the Gospels), and therefore one of the ‘angels which kept not their own principality’ (Jud_1:6, 2Pe_2:4). In accordance with the conception of Wis_2:24, that his malignity towards man is caused by envy (for Jewish ideas see Edersheim, LT [Note: T Life and Times of Jesus the Messiah (Edersheim).] 4, 1887, i. 165), he is represented as pre-eminently the adversary of man (1Pe_5:8), and as accusing him to God (Rev_12:10 êáôÞãïñïò or êáôÞãùñ; the reference seems to be to Job and Joshua the high priest). He has power in this world, though only for a while (Rev_12:12), and therefore is called the ‘god of this world’ or ‘age’ (áἰþí) who ‘hath blinded the thoughts (íïÞìáôá) of the unbelieving’ (2Co_4:4; cf. Joh_14:30; Joh_16:11 ‘the prince of the [this] world’). This ‘power of Satan’ is contrasted with ‘God’ as ‘darkness’ with ‘light’ in the heavenly vision at St. Paul’s conversion (Act_26:18). ‘The devil’ has ‘the power of death’ (Heb_2:14), not that he can inflict death at will, but that death entered into the world through sin (Rom_5:12) at his instigation (Wis_2:24). As Westcott remarks (on Heb_2:14), death as death is no part of the Divine order, but is the devil’s realm; he makes it subservient to his end. He must, therefore, almost certainly be identified with ‘the Destroyer’ who appears as Apollyon (ἀðïëëýùí) or Abaddon (àֲáַãּåֹï, lit. [Note: literally, literature.] ‘destruction’; see Abaddon) in Rev_9:11, the king of the locusts who has power to injure men for five months-the name is akin to ‘Asmodaeus’ of To 3:6 (àַùְׁîְãַé, from ùָׁîַã, ‘to destroy’), but not with the ‘Destroyer’ of 1Co_10:10 (see Angels, 5 (b)).

The devil uses his power to seduce man to sin; he tempts Ananias to lie to the Holy Ghost (Act_5:3); he deceives the whole world (Rev_12:9; Rev_20:8; Rev_20:10); he is pre-eminently ‘the tempter’ (1Th_3:5, 1Co_7:5); he tempts with wiles and devices and snares (Eph_6:11, 2Co_2:11, 1Ti_3:7, 2Ti_2:26); he uses evil men as his instruments or ministers, who ‘fashion themselves as ministers of righteousness’ even as he ‘fashioned himself into an angel of light’ (2Co_11:14 f.). A passage in the Pastoral Epistles (1Ti_3:6) suggests that the fundamental temptation with which Satan seduces men is pride. The Christian ἐðßóêïðïò must not be puffed up with pride lest he fall into the condemnation (êñßìá) into which the devil fell (i.e. when cast out of heaven; this seems to be the most probable interpretation, not ‘the judgment wrought by the devil’; cf. Joh_16:11 ‘the prince of this world hath been judged,’ êÝêñéôáé). Satan is far from being omnipotent; man can resist him, and he will flee (Jam_4:7); man must not ‘give place to’ him, i.e. not give him scope to work (Eph_4:27). Not that man can resist by his own strength, but only by the indwelling power of the Holy Spirit, who helps his infirmity (Rom_8:26, 1Co_3:16, and in St. Paul’s Epistles passim; cf. Mat_12:28); the Holy Spirit is man’s Helper or Paraclete against the Evil Spirit.

The devil is described as instigating opposition to Christian work* [Note: In this sense Peter is called ‘Satan’ in Mat_16:23.] and persecution; whether by blinding the minds (lit. [Note: literally, literature.] thoughts) of the unbelieving (2Co_4:4), or directly by suggesting opposition, as when he ‘hindered’ St. Paul’s return to Thessalonica (1Th_2:18), perhaps (as Ramsay thinks [St. Paul, 1895, p. 230f.]) by putting into the minds of the politarchs the idea of exacting security for the leading Christians of that city (Act_17:9). Similarly in Rev_2:10 the devil is said to be about to cast some of the Smyrnaean Christians into prison; and Pergamum, the centre of the Emperor-worship which led to the persecution described in the Apocalypse, is called Satan’s throne (Rev_2:13). No phrase marks more clearly than this the difference of attitude towards the Roman official world between the Seer on the one hand and St. Paul and St. Luke on the other, or (as it seems to the present writer) the interval between the dates of writing. The Seer looks on the Emperor and his officials as closely allied with Satan, while St. Paul and St. Luke look upon them as Christ’s instruments (Rom_13:4, etc.; and note the statements about Roman officials in Acts). In close connexion with the above passages, the persecuting Jews are called a ‘synagogue of Satan’ (Rev_2:9; Rev_3:9).

3. The conflict with Satan.-Michael and his good angels are represented as at war in heaven with the devil and his angels (Rev_12:7) as a direct result of the spiritual travail of the Christian Church (Rev_12:2-6). Satan is cast down to the earth and persecutes the Church (Rev_12:13). But he is bound by the angel for a thousand years, i.e. for a long period, and cast into the abyss that he may no longer deceive (Rev_20:2 f.). This period of binding synchronizes with Christ’s reign of a thousand years (see Rev_12:7), when the triumph is shared by the martyrs (Rev_12:4-6); this is the ‘first resurrection,’ and is best interpreted as taking place in the present life, and as referring to the cessation of the persecution, which was to last for a comparatively short time-3½ days (Rev_11:9; Rev_11:11) as compared with 1000 years (Rev_20:2; Rev_20:4), and to the establishment of a dominant Christianity. But the reign of Christ is not said to be ‘on earth.’ The reign of the martyrs was not to be an earthly one; they ‘would live and reign with Christ as kings and priests in the hearts of all succeeding generations of Christians, while their work bore fruit in the subjection of the civilized world to the obedience of the faith.… The age of the martyrs, however long it might last, would be followed by a far longer period of Christian supremacy’ (Swete, extending and adapting Augustine, de Civ. Dei, xx. 7ff.). In other words, Satan’s power for evil now is not to be compared with his power at the beginning of our era. This conception of an anticipatory victory over Satan may be compared with Rom_16:20, 1Jn_3:8; 1Jn_5:18.

After the thousand years the devil will be released (Rev_20:3); there will be a great activity of all the powers of evil before the Last Day; but he will be finally overthrown (v. 10), and Christ’s triumph will be complete. This is the great message of the Apocalypse. The struggle between the Church and the World will end in Satan being vanquished for ever.

4. Satan dwelling in men.-This subject is considered in article Demon; but certain NT phrases may be noticed here.

(a) Wicked men are called ‘children of the devil’ (Act_13:10, Elymas; 1Jn_3:10); and in Rev_2:24 the ‘mysteries’ of the false teachers at Thyatira are called ‘the deep things of Satan, as they say,’ as opposed to the ‘deep things of God’ of which St. Paul speaks (1Co_2:10; cf. Rom_11:33, Eph_3:18; i.e. ‘the deep things as they call them, but they are the deep things of Satan.’ In these wicked men and teachers Satan is conceived as dwelling; but pre-eminently he dwells in the man who is his representative, and who is endowed with his attributes, ‘the lawless one’ (Antichrist) who works false miracles and has his Parousia even as Christ has (2Th_2:9, where see Milligan’s note).

(b) Delivering unto Satan.-This phrase is found in 1Co_5:4 f. and 1Ti_1:20, and is perhaps based on Job_1:12; Job_2:6, where the patriarch is delivered to Satan to be tried by suffering. In St. Paul the phrase seems to denote excommunication, the excommunicate becoming a dwelling-place for the Evil One. It is, indeed, thought by some that the phrase ‘destruction of the flesh’ in 1Co_5:5 means the infliction of death, as in the case of Ananias and Sapphira (Alford, Goudge, etc.). But in 1 Tim. death cannot be intended, for the object of the discipline is that the offender may be taught not to blaspheme; and in 1 Cor. the balance of probability perhaps lies with the opinion that the offender is the same as the man who was received back into communion in 2Co_2:7; 2Co_7:12 (for the contrary view see A. Menzies, Second Corinthians, London, 1912, p. xvii ff.). Ramsay thinks that the phrase was an adaptation of a pagan idea in which the punishment of an offender is left to the gods. Undoubtedly excommunication in the early Church was a severe penalty; bodily sufferings are not impossibly referred to, for these are attributed to Satan in the NT (Luk_13:16, the woman whom Satan had bound), and St. Paul calls his ‘stake in the flesh,’ whatever form of suffering that might have been, ‘a messenger of Satan to buffet me’ (2Co_12:7). Yet this discipline is intended to bring about repentance, ‘that the spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord Jesus.’

Literature.-H. St. J. Thackeray, The Relation of St. Paul to Contemporary Jewish Thought, 1900, p. 142ff. (esp. p. 170f.); E. B. Redlich, St. Paul and his Companions, 1913, index, s.v. ‘Satan’; A. Nairne, The Epistle of Priesthood, 1913, pp. 57, 267ff.; T. J. Hardy, The Religious Instinct, 1913, p. 151ff.; T. Haering, The Christian Faith, Eng. translation , 1913, i. 481f. See article Demon. For the Apocalypse passages see especially H. B. Swete’s admirable Commentary, London, 1906.

A. J. Maclean.

Job 1:6 (a) (Satan). As a mighty commander-in-chief of all evil forces Satan was and is permitted to come before GOD to accuse the believers. (See also Rev 12:10).

Mat 12:24 (a) (Beelzebub). This name describes a false leader who is occupied with a clean-up campaign of the soul. Under this name the devil seeks to get his followers to put away evil habits and wicked ways and became a clean, upright, moral person. This person remains a lost sinner, although the devil has enabled him to put away many evil characteristics.

Mat 12:29 (b) (Strong Man). Here the Lord JESUS refers to the devil as one who has mighty power and is able to hold his followers firmly a prisoner in his grasp. He does this by tradition, by fear, by wrong teaching, and by ignorance.

2Co 11:14 (a) (Angel of Light). The devil is very clever at presenting various and sundry religions to deceive human hearts. He brings about a new religion which claims to give light to those who believe and follow the teachings of that false leader. The devil seems to be a heavenly person in this role. He presents a method of living that is clean, upright, moral and attractive, but which eliminates CHRIST JESUS and Calvary.

Eph 2:2 (a) (Prince). As a prince the devil seeks to obtain the throne of the heart and become a king. He wants to rule this world and render no account to GOD. Somehow the GOD of Heaven has permitted Satan to have pretty much his own way in the lives of individuals and in the affairs of nations.

1Pe 5:8 (a) (Lion). Under this title the devil is presented as one who is fierce, strong, malicious and cruel. In this character he is contrasted with the angel of light in 2Co 11:14. The lion character may be seen emanating from Moscow. The angel of light character may be seen emanating from Mrs. Eddy at Boston.

Rev 9:11 (b) (Apollyon). This word and the Hebrew word Abaddan describe the devil as being the sovereign ruler over sin, and able to deceive the world, whereby many are sent down to hell.

Rev 12:9 (a) (Dragon). The devil is presented in this horrible character as one who has no regard whatever for the lives nor the property of those with whom he comes in contact. This characteristic of the devil is perfectly exhibited in the history of the Roman Catholic Church.

Rev 12:9 (a) (Serpent). The cunning of the devil and his clever subtlety is compared to the snake. By beautiful phraseologies and clever manipulation of the Scriptures he entices many to follow his wicked ways, thus deceiving them into hell.

» See: Satan

—New Believer’s Bible Glossary

Greek is "diabolos," which means accuser. The greatest of all the fallen angels. He opposes God and is completely evil. He is often called Lucifer which is a Latin translation of "light bearer" found in Isa 14:12, and also the accuser of the brethren in (Rev 12:10), dragon (Rev 12:9), the devil (Mat 4:1), the tempter (Mat 4:3), the accuser (Rev 12:10), the prince of demons (Luk 11:15), the ruler of this world (Joh 12:31), See Isa 14:12-15 for a description of the fall of the devil. Upon Jesus’ return, the Devil will be vanquished -- depending on the eschatological position. His future is the eternal lake of fire.