Origin of Evil in the Bible: From the Serpent to Satan and the Fall of the Angels

The nāḥāš: Etymology and Function in the Text

The etymology of nāḥāš reveals significant polysemy: the verbal root denotes both "serpent" (noun) and "to practice divination" (verb, Gen 44:5; Num 23:23). The serpent in Eden does not act as an independent cosmic adversary but as the vehicle of an inversion of the divine Word — a temptation that exploits the yetzer ha-ra, the impulse toward evil inherent in the human heart (Berakhot 61a). According to the Babylonian Talmud, God himself created in the human being two inclinations: the yetzer tov and the yetzer ha-ra — both present in the heart, both part of the good creation (Berakhot 61a).

The sacred author constructs a deliberate wordplay between Gen 2:25 (ʿărûmmîm, "naked": Adam and Eve) and Gen 3:1 (ʿārûm, "shrewd": the serpent). Primordial innocence and the tempter's cunning are expressed by the same lexical root — a narrative irony that anticipates the passage from innocent nakedness to conscious shame. The midrashic tradition of Bereishit Rabbah 19:1 links the Fall to the envy aroused by Adam's greatness in the garden, a motif also echoed in the aggadah of Sanhedrin 59b (Adam in the garden).

The Protoevangelium and Human Responsibility

The origin of evil in the Bible, according to the Masoretic Text, is not resolved through the immediate identification of the serpent with Satan: this explicit identification appears only in Revelation 20:2, which recognizes in the "ancient serpent" the devil. Sin in Eden arises from a free human choice that yields to the deception of the nāḥāš — not from a cosmic dualism between symmetric forces (Gen 1:31 affirms the absolute goodness of creation). The Jerusalem Talmud captures the principle: "the power of evil, if divided, falls" (Yerushalmi Sanhedrin 10:6, 30b; Bereishit Rabbah 38:6).

• The question "where does evil come from?" receives in the Bible an answer involving both creaturely freedom and external deception
• The serpent in the Bible acts by inverting the Word of God (Num 22:22: the term šāṭān indicates a function of "obstacle," not yet a proper name)
• The curse of Gen 3:14-15 establishes a lasting conflict between the seed of the woman and the serpent, not a victory already consummated

Hêlēl ben Šāḥar: The Masoretic Text and Its Context

The question of the origin of evil in the Bible reaches a critical turning point in Isaiah 14:12–15, where the prophet pronounces a māshāl (מָשָׁל, a mocking taunt — Is 14:4) against the king of Babylon. The term hêlēl ben šāḥar (הֵילֵל בֶּן-שַׁחַר, "morning star, son of the dawn") is a hapax legomenon in the Masoretic Text: it appears nowhere else in the Hebrew Bible. Within the historical-grammatical context of the eighth century BCE, the text describes the king's swift downfall through the metaphor of a Canaanite solar myth — the star that rises and sets (cf. KTU 1.6.II, the Baal–Mot cycle). The original meaning is political and poetic, not yet angelological.

The king's arrogant declaration — "I will ascend to heaven... I will make myself like the Most High" (Is 14:13–14) — stands in stark contrast to the axiom of rabbinic wisdom: "Who is mighty? One who conquers his impulse" (Avot 4:1). The pride of hêlēl is the exact antithesis of mastery over the yetzer — the failure of self-restraint that precipitates the fall.

The Patristic Reception: From Hêlēl to Lucifer

Lucifer's fall from heaven (Is 14:12) becomes, in the patristic reception, the scriptural foundation for the doctrine of the fallen angel. The Eastern patristic tradition — with Irenaeus of Lyon (Adv. Haer. III.23.7) as its authoritative witness — insists, however, that evil does not originate in God but in the creature's free choice: Satan is a fallen creature, not a co-equal and co-eternal principle (Jude 6). The absolute goodness of creation remains the indispensable starting point of biblical theodicy (Gen 1:31).

• The Targum Jonathan on Is 14:12 retains the original reading: the text refers to the king of Babylon, not to an angelic being — a pre-patristic philological distinction
• Ezekiel 28:12–19 is the parallel text used alongside Is 14 by the Fathers: the "guardian cherub" expelled from the garden of God for pride
• 1 Enoch 6–11 provides the intertestamental framework of the Watchers (bene ha-elohim of Gen 6:2), a tradition of angelic rebellion predating patristic systematization; the bridge from the Old Testament to the New is completed in Rev 12:9, where the "ancient serpent" is explicitly identified as the diabolos and Satan ("the dragon, the ancient serpent, who is the devil and Satan")

Ez 28:11–19: The Prophet's nĕhî and the Exegetical Question

Ezekiel 28 poses a fundamental question about the origin of evil in the Bible: who is the subject of the funeral lament (nĕhî) in Ez 28:11–19? The answer conditions the entire interpretation of the fall of the angels in the Western tradition. Ez 28:1–10 establishes the subject without ambiguity: "son of man (ʾādām), say to the prince of Tyre" — a human being, the Phoenician king of the sixth century BCE, accused of declaring himself "like a god" (Ez 28:2). The lament then employs cosmic-paradisiacal imagery — "every precious stone adorned you... in the garden of God" (Ez 28:13), the "guardian kĕrûb with outspread wings" (Ez 28:14–16) — as metaphors for the sovereign's divine pretension, not as a literal description of a celestial being.

The rabbinic tradition offers a revealing parallel: the kĕrûbîm in the Temple of Jerusalem were embracing figures, symbols of the union between YHWH and Israel (Yoma 54b). In Hebrew biblical demonology, the serpent and the hybrid beings of prophetic visions belong to the register of cultural imagery — not to an autonomous angelic ontology.

Competing Readings: Human Subject or Fallen Cherub?

The question "where does evil come from?" has produced two distinct interpretive traditions on Ez 28:11–19:

Cyril of Jerusalem devotes Catechesis 23 precisely to refuting the Gnostic reading: the Valentinian cosmogony — in which Sophia generates the devil from her tears — is rejected as "impiety" incompatible with the goodness of creation. The origin of evil in the Bible is not an autonomous cosmic principle but a creaturely failure.

The Patristic Reception and the Limits of Analogy

The fall of the angels, read through Ez 28, reaches its hermeneutical boundary in the very verse that opens the chapter: the subject of the nĕhî is a human being seized by pride, not a fallen heavenly cherub. The midrashic tradition (Sanhedrin 38b) describes the creation of Adam across twelve hours — from dust to the naming of living creatures — emphasizing the greatness of humanity that aroused the envy of the cosmic powers. The analogy with Ez 28 is typological: the king of Tyre embodies the same pride that the patristic tradition attributes to Lucifer's fall from heaven, but the text of Ezekiel alone does not provide scriptural proof of the angelic fall.

• Ez 28:11–19 uses images of Eden, precious stones, and a cherub as metaphors for the king of Tyre's pretended royalty
• The patristic reading (Irenaeus, Adv. Haer. III.23.7; Cyril of Jerusalem, Cat. 16) is secondary and historically contextualized, not equivalent to the original meaning of the text; it interprets the Tyrian royal imagery as a mirror of the angelic fall through ὑπερηφανία
• Gnostic cosmogony (Sophia–devil) is heterodox: the orthodox tradition, rooted in Jude 6 and 2 Pet 2:4, explicitly refutes the notion of a co-eternal principle of evil as incompatible with the goodness of creation (Gen 1:31)

From ha-Satan to Diabolos: The New Testament Development of the Origin of Evil

The question of where evil comes from finds in the New Testament an answer that brings to fulfillment, without contradicting, Old Testament theology. The term ha-Satan in the Hebrew Bible designates an accuser in the heavenly court, a subordinate official of YHWH; the New Testament brings this office to completion in diabolos ("the divider, the accuser"), without introducing ontological dualism: evil remains creaturely, not co-eternal with God.

John 8:44 offers the central Christological diagnosis of the origin of evil in the Bible: Satan is ἀνθρωποκτόνος ἀπ' ἀρχῆς ("a murderer from the beginning") and ψεύστης καὶ ὁ πατὴρ αὐτοῦ — "a liar and the father of lies" (Jn 8:44). The Gospel of John establishes a retro-projective connection toward Gen 3, but without explicitly naming the nāḥāš: it is a Christological inference, not a direct identification. The first and only explicit identification of the serpent in the Bible as the devil and Satan occurs only in Rev 12:7–9, where Michael casts the dragon (ὁ ὄφις ὁ ἀρχαῖος, the ancient serpent) from heaven (Rev 12:7–9). The origin of evil in the Bible therefore cannot be retro-projected onto Is 14 or Ez 28 — texts historically referring to human sovereigns, not to the figure of Lucifer fallen from heaven as an angelic being identified with Satan.

Jude 6 documents the fall of the angels as a past and definitive event: the angels who "did not keep their own domain" are held in eternal chains awaiting the judgment of the great day (Jude 6). Cyril of Jerusalem teaches that Satan drew many apostate angels after him, continuing to inflame human concupiscence — the fall of the angels as a process open within history, not as a parity cosmic principle but as creaturely rebellion subject to divine sovereignty.

Yetzer and Freedom: The Rabbinic Perspective on the Origin of Evil

Resh Lakish teaches that a human being sins only "when a spirit of folly (ruach shtut) enters into him" (Sotah 3a): the tempter operates as a catalyst of corrupted freedom, not as an autonomous principle. The serpent in the Bible, in Tannaitic reception, becomes a metaphor for the yetzer ha-ra, an interior inclination:

• The yetzer ha-ra sits between the two chambers of the heart like a fly — an interior parasite, not an entity co-equal with God (Kiddushin 30b)
• The Torah is prescribed as sam tam (an efficacious remedy) against the yetzer (Kiddushin 30b)
• Hillel warns: "Do not trust yourself until the day of your death" — permanent vigilance against the tempter (Avot 2:4)

The origin of evil in the Bible is not a cosmogonic myth but the history of creaturely freedom turned in upon itself: the serpent in the Bible emblematizes not a co-eternal principle but a choice — angelic and human — against the order of the Creator.

Gen 6:1–4 and the Three Interpretive Traditions

The question of where evil comes from in the antediluvian experience finds its exegetical crux in Gen 6:1–4: the bene ha-Elohim ("sons of God") who unite with the daughters of men. Psalm 82:1 uses the same expression for beings of the heavenly court — "God stands in the divine assembly; in the midst of the elohim he judges" (Ps 82:1) — opening three historical interpretations of the pericope:

• Fallen angels (apocalyptic reading): the Watchers (Ir, pl. Irin — Aramaic, not Hebrew) unlawfully unite with women; the Qumran tradition preserves fragments of the Book of Giants in Aramaic (4Q531–533).
• Descendants of Seth (Julius Africanus, 3rd c.): the righteous line of Seth versus the daughters of Cain — a reading that avoids angelic sexuality.
• Kings and tyrants (in late-antique Targums on Gen 6:2): bene Elohim = nobles and the powerful.

Azazel, Watchers, and the Judgment of the Dor ha-Mabul

The apocryphal tradition of 1 Enoch develops the fall of the angels with an angelological precision absent from the canonical Tanakh. Azazel/Asael teaches women metallurgy, the use of weapons, and cosmetics — an etiology of cultural evil within the intertestamental framing of the origin of evil in the Bible. Related to this tradition is the figure of the "angel of hostility" or Mastemah in the Book of Jubilees (cf. Hos 9:8), a text that some scholars trace to a primitive stage of the Essenes at Qumran. The figure of Azazel returns, liturgically codified without explicit angelology, in the Mishnah Yoma: the two goats of Yom Kippur — one "for the Lord" and one "for Azazel" — establish a ritual distinction (Mishnah Yoma 6:1–2).

The generation of the Flood is in the Mishnah the paradigmatic figure of self-exclusion: "The dor ha-mabul has no share in the world to come, nor does it stand in judgment" (Mishnah Sanhedrin 10:3). The origin of evil in the Bible is not the cosmology of a Lucifer fallen from heaven as a co-eternal principle, but the history of creatures — angelic and human — who bend freedom against the Creator. The Tannaitic midrash Sanhedrin 59b attributes the fall to envy: Adam in the garden was served by angels, and this greatness stirred in the serpent the desire to expel him.

Jude 14–15 explicitly quotes 1 En 1:9 — the only citation of an apocrypha in the canonical New Testament — associating the fall of the angels with a definitive judgment (Jude 14–15). 2 Pet 2:4 takes up the tradition: "God did not spare the angels who sinned, but cast them into chains of darkness to be held for judgment" (2 Pet 2:4). Only Revelation accomplishes the explicit identification: "the ancient serpent, who is the devil and Satan" (Rev 20:2) — the first and only biblical text to connect the serpent in the Bible from Gen 3 with Satan, investing with juridical reality what in 1 Enoch was apocryphal narrative.

Akavya ben Mahalalel provides the Tannaitic framework of creaturely responsibility: "Whence do you come? From a fetid drop. Before whom will you render account? Before the King of kings, the Holy One blessed be He" (Avot 3:1).

Privatio Boni and Patristic Anti-Dualism

The origin of evil in the Bible — from the serpent in Gen 3 to the eschatological mystery — receives in patristic theology a unanimous answer: evil has no substance of its own but is the privation of the good. Irenaeus of Lyon demonstrates in the Adversus Haereses (III.23.7) that God is not the author of evil: creation came forth from the hands of the Creator entirely good (Gen 1:31), and evil enters as a defection of creaturely free choice, designated in Greek as ἀποστασία — a withdrawal, an apostasy from the contemplation of the Good. Wisdom confirms: "God did not make death" (Wis 1:13); evil is not a co-eternal principle but an absence, a lack of being.

Cyril of Jerusalem refutes the Valentinian system in which the devil is generated by Wisdom through tears: "How can Wisdom generate the devil, the Intellect evil, Light darkness?" Anti-dualism is not a secondary theological option but a condition of the sovereignty of the one Creator. The Manichean Mani postulated two uncreated principles — Light-soul versus Darkness-matter — a system that the great patristic tradition rejected as self-contradictory.

Job, Yetzer, and the Mysterium Iniquitatis

Rabbinic thought draws a precise distinction: ha-Satan as kategor in the heavenly bet din (Job 1:6–12) does not coincide with the interior yetzer ha-ra. Bereishit Rabbah 9:7 declares the yetzer ha-ra part of the "very good" creation — without it, no one would build a house or beget children. The origin of evil is not a cosmological force but a creaturely faculty that can be oriented.

Job is the paradigmatic text: YHWH does not answer the causal question of where evil comes from, but reveals himself from the whirlwind (Job 38:1), showing that divine sovereignty transcends all rational theodicy. The New Testament maintains the tension: "The mystery of lawlessness is already at work" (2 Thess 2:7) — evil is an active reality, not a co-eternal one. Rom 8:28 offers the definitive response: God works all things together for good — even what appears as evil — without determinism.

The positions converge on three verifiable points:

• Evil has no substance co-eternal with the Good (anti-dualism)
• Creaturely freedom — angelic and human — is the locus of evil's entry
• The divine response is redemption: "the God of peace will soon crush Satan under your feet" (Rom 16:20)