What Eden Tells Us About Satan
The contrasts of good versus evil and life versus death were never more pronounced than in Scripture’s portrayal of the first defection from God’s will. I speak here of the fall (Gen 3).
We tend to think of that episode primarily in human terms. That’s understandable, since the fall affected the entirety of the human race.
But behind the decisions of Adam and Eve to violate God’s command about the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, there was another created being, supernatural in nature, who had decided his own will was preeminent.
WHO IS SATAN?
Most readers will acknowledge that the serpent (Heb. nāḥāš) was not simply a member of the animal kingdom. This conclusion seems obvious, since the New Testament identifies the serpent as Satan or the devil (Rev 12:9).
The devil is certainly not a zoological specimen (2 Cor 11:14; cf. Matt 4:1–11; John 8:44). Put simply, if we agree with the New Testament that a supernatural being (Satan) tempted Eve in Eden, then by definition the serpent must be more than a mere animal. We can only oppose this conclusion if we reject the New Testament assessment.
Ancient readers—without the New Testament—would be able to draw the same conclusion, though they didn’t necessarily use the same vocabulary. They of course knew that animals did not talk, and so when that sort of thing was encountered in storytelling, they knew supernatural power was at play or a divine presence had taken center stage.
WHAT WAS EDEN LIKE?
Ancient readers would have thought about Eden in such a way that the supernatural nature of the serpent would have been conspicuous. We think of the garden of Eden like we think of earthly gardens. We know God was there, but a garden is a garden; Eden was a perfect garden, but, at the end of the day, it was just a garden.
“People from the biblical period would have had a different perception, one that was more transcendent.”
People from the biblical period would have had a different perception, one that was more transcendent. They would have thought of Eden as a temple. After all, temples are where gods live. Eden was the abode of God, “an earthly archetype of the heavenly reality.” “Because Adam communed with God in Eden,” Wenham adds, “the latter was the temporal analog for the celestial archetype.”
The archetypal nature of Eden as the house-temple of God is why Eden is described as a well-watered garden (Gen 2:6, 8–9, 10–16; Ezek 28:2, 13) and a holy mountain (Ezek 28:14). There is no contradiction. An ancient reader would have embraced both descriptions. Both were common characterizations for divine dwellings.
The motif of the garden as an abode of the gods is common in ancient Near Eastern literature. Several Old Testament passages depict rivers flowing from God’s dwelling in Jerusalem to water the desert (Ezek 47:1–12; Zech 14:8; Joel 3:18). Wallace notes that “the main feature of the garden of God theme is the presence of the deity. The divine council meets there and decrees of cosmic importance are issued.”
Wallace’s observation that the cosmic dwelling (garden or mountain) was also home to the divine council would have been expected by an ancient reader. The scholarly literature on the divine council and the meeting place of the council as a garden or a mountain is extensive.
WHAT’S THE DIVINE COUNCIL?
The divine council, the assembly of the heavenly host, was perceived as an administrative bureaucracy. In biblical thought, the members of the divine council participate in issuing and executing divine decrees. Just as a king has a court, God was his own administration. Where he lives, he conducts business.
Genesis 2–3 portray Eden as a divine garden and mountain. But what indication do we have from Genesis 3 that there is a group of divine beings (a council) in Eden? In Genesis 3:5, the serpent told Eve, “God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God [ʾelōhı̂ m], knowing good and evil.”
We discover that ʾelōhı̂ m in this verse should actually be read as a plural when we reach Genesis 3:22, where God—speaking not to Adam, Eve, or the serpent—says, “Behold, the man has become like one of us in knowing good and evil. Now, lest he reach out his hand and take also of the tree of life and eat, and live forever.” The violation resulted in Adam and Eve becoming like “one of us,” which obviously requires plurality.
The fact that their sin did indeed result in knowing good and evil tells us the serpent did not lie in that component of his deception. God himself confirmed the result in verse 22. This means the ʾelōhı̂ m of verse 5 points to a group—God’s heavenly council.
SATAN’S (TEMPORARY) SUCCESS
The implication of seeing Eden through ancient Near Eastern eyes is that God was not the only divine being.
God had created humankind as his imagers and tasked them with bringing the rest of the world outside Eden under control—in effect, expanding Eden through the rest of creation.
God’s will was disrupted when an external supernatural tempter, acting autonomously against God’s wishes, succeeded in deceiving Eve.
Taken from Demons: What the Bible Really Says About the Powers of Darkness by Michael S. Heiser, Lexham Press, 2020, lexhampress.com.
Michael S. Heiser is the academic editor for Logos Bible Software, Bible Study Magazine, and Faithlife Study Bible. He is the coeditor of Old Testament Greek Pseudepigrapha with Morphology and Semitic Inscriptions: Analyzed Texts and English Translations; he is also the Hebrew instructor for Learn to Use Hebrew for Logos Bible Software. He is the author of several books, including the best-selling The Unseen Realm. He earned his PhD in Hebrew Bible and Semitic languages and holds an MA in ancient history and Hebrew studies. In addition, he was named the 2007 Pacific Northwest Regional Scholar by the Society of Biblical Literature.