Who is Satan?
Short answer
Satan appears in the Bible as a real being and an opponent: the name comes from Hebrew and means accuser or adversary. In the texts he accuses, tempts and deceives, always in a subordinate position — never as a power equal to God. Horns, a pitchfork and red skin come from later art, not from Scripture.
- Written by
- Raphael Navarro Schmitt
- Reviewed by
- Maria Luisa Navarro Schmitt
- Published on
- Reading time
- 4 min read
It is worth starting with the word, because it explains much of the confusion. In Hebrew, satan is a common noun: adversary, one who opposes, and in a legal setting, the accuser. In the earliest appearances the term comes with the definite article — the adversary, the accuser — working more like an office in a courtroom scene than like a proper name. It is across the biblical writings that the term hardens into a name, and that is how the New Testament already uses it.
What he does in the texts is consistent and narrower than popular imagination suggests: he accuses, tempts and deceives. He does not create, does not know everything, is not everywhere, and in no passage acts outside limits. That detail is what separates the Bible from a dualism of two gods in balanced war: when the book of Job shows the negotiation, the adversary can only act within what he is allowed. A power that needs authorisation is not an equivalent power.
The image most people carry — horns, a tail, a pitchfork, red skin — is in no biblical text. It comes from medieval art, which borrowed features from pagan deities, and from later literature, above all Dante and Milton, who gave the character a detailed biography Scripture does not supply. The name Lucifer is a related but different case. It enters through the Latin translation of a word in Isaiah 14:12, in a poem of mockery that the chapter itself addresses to Babylon’s king — and because the edition published on this site comes from that Latin tradition, the name is printed right there in the verse, where most modern English Bibles put morning star or day star instead. Part of the Christian tradition reads a second layer in that passage, about the fall of the adversary; another part reads only the king. Both readings are ancient, and this page does not decide between them.
The tone of the New Testament on the subject is notably sober. It acknowledges the adversary, tells readers to stay alert and to resist, and moves on — no maps of hell, no hierarchies of demons, none of the fascination much of popular culture developed later. Anyone looking in the biblical text for the material of the films finds a good deal less than expected, and that too is information about the subject.
What the passages say
6But on a certain day, when the sons of God came to attend in the presence of the Lord, Satan also arrived among them.
7The Lord said to him, “Where do you come from?” Answering, he said, “I have circled the land, and walked around in it.”
The opening scene, and the most revealing about the vocabulary: the adversary appears among those presenting themselves before God, not as the sovereign of a parallel kingdom. The Hebrew here carries the definite article — the accuser exercising a function, in a setting that resembles a court — though this edition renders it as a proper name.
12Therefore, the Lord said to Satan, “Behold, everything that he has is in your hand, only do not extend your hand against him.” And Satan departed from the face of the Lord.
The limit, stated in one sentence. Everything the adversary does in the book depends on an explicit permission, with a marked boundary. It is the passage that blocks any reading of two equivalent forces contending over the world — and it sits in the very book that gives the character most room.
12How is it that you have fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, who used to rise like the sun? How is it that you have fallen to the earth, you who wounded the peoples?
The origin of the name Lucifer, which is a matter of translation: the Vulgate rendered into Latin the Hebrew word for the morning star, and the Latin term became a proper name in the later tradition. Because the primary edition here descends from that Latin, the name appears in the verse itself — worth knowing before drawing conclusions from it. Verse 4 of the same chapter says who the poem is addressed to: the king of Babylon.
9And he was thrown out, that great dragon, that ancient serpent, who is called the devil and Satan, who seduces the whole world. And he was thrown down to the earth, and his angels were cast down with him.
The text where the names converge: dragon, ancient serpent, devil and Satan appear as the same figure. This is where the identification between the serpent of Genesis 3 and the adversary comes from — a reading the Genesis chapter itself does not make, and which is consolidated only at this point in the canon.
8Be sober and vigilant. For your adversary, the devil, is like a roaring lion, traveling around and seeking those whom he might devour.
The practical New Testament instruction on the subject: sobriety and vigilance. The lion image is strong, but what is asked around it is attention, not obsession — the next verse tells readers to resist and moves straight on to the comfort of a suffering community.