ABSTRACT
For every monotheism the existence of evil constitutes, potentially, a problem: why, after all, should an omnipotent god tolerate suffering and evil-doing in his creation? But not every monotheism gives equal attention to the problem, and the religion of the ancient Hebrews seems to have given very little. Almost throughout the Old Testament, God is shown as responsible for all happenings, good and evil: 'I form the light, and create darkness: I make peace and create evil: I the Lord do all these things' (Isaiah 45:7). Misfortunes are simply punishments for those who transgress God's commandments; and for the fact that men do so transgress, no metaphysical explanation is offered. The Satan who appears in the prologue to the Book of Job has none of the functions that were later to be attributed to the Devil; on the contrary, he is shown as a courtier in the court of God, and his achievement is that he induces God himself to inflict suffering on a blameless man. To find any hint of a power systematically working against God one has to turn to the story of the numbering of Israel and Judah: 2 Samuel 24 tells how the Lord tempted David to carry out a census of the people, and then punished him for doing so by sending a plague to reduce their numbers; after which the Lord himself 'repented him of the evil'. The same story is told in 1 Chronicles 21, and in exactly the same words - except that here the responsibility for tempting David is transferred from God to Satan. This seems to be the one instance in the whole of the Old Testament that in any way suggests that Satan exists as a principle of evil, a power that tempts men to sin against God.
