The incident is significant, both on account of the prophet’s personification of the altar, and the institution of a sort of Gehenna in connection with it. The personification and the Gehenna became much more complete as time went on. The Jews originally had no Devil, as indeed had no races at first; and this for the obvious reason that their so-called gods were quite equal to any moral evils that were to be accounted for, as we have already seen they were adequate to explain all physical evils. But the antagonists of the moral Jehovah were recognised and personified with increasing clearness, and were quite prepared for connection with any General who might be theoretically proposed for their leadership. When the Jews came under the influence of Persian theology the archfiend was elected, and all the Elohim—Moloch, Dagon, Astarte, Chemosh, and the rest—took their place under his rebellious ensign.

The descriptions of the Devil in the Bible are mainly borrowed from the early descriptions of the Elohim, and of Jehovah in his Elohistic character.[2] In the subjoined parallels I follow the received English version.

Gen. xxii. 1. ‘God tempted Abraham.’Matt. iv. 1. ‘Then was Jesus led up into the wilderness to be tempted of the devil.’ See also 1 Cor. vii. 5, 1 Thes. iii. 5, James 1.13.
Exod. v. 3. ‘I (Jehovah) will harden Pharaoh’s heart;’ v. 13, ‘He hardened Pharaoh’s heart.’John xiii. 2. ‘The devil having now put into the heart Judas Iscariot, Simon’s son, to betray him.’
1 Kings xxii. 23. ‘Behold the Lord hath put a lying spirit in the mouth of all these thy prophets, and the Lord hath spoken evil concerning them.’ Ezek. xiv. 9. ‘If the prophet be deceived when he hath spoken a thing, I the Lord have deceived that prophet, and I will stretch out my hand upon him, and will destroy him from the midst of my people.’John viii. 44. ‘He (the devil) is a liar’ (‘and so is his father,’ continues the sentence by right of translation). 1 Tim. iii. 2, ‘slanderers’ (diabolous). 2 Tim. iii. 3, ‘false accusers’ (diabolo). Also Titus ii. 3, Von Tischendorf translates ‘calumniators.’
Isa. xlv. 7. ‘I make peace and create evil. I the Lord do all these things.’ Amos iii. 6. ‘Shall there be evil in a city and the Lord hath not done it?’ 1 Sam. xvi. 14. ‘An evil spirit from the Lord troubled him’ (Saul).Matt. xiii. 38. ‘The tares are the children of the wickied one.’ 1 John iii. 8. ‘He that committeth sin is of the devil; for the devil sinneth from the beginning.’
Exod. xii. 29. ‘At midnight the Lord smote all the firstborn of Egypt.’ Ver. 30. ‘There was a great cry in Egypt; for there was not a house where there was not one dead.’ Exod. xxxiii. 27. ‘Thus saith the Lord God of Israel, Put every man his sword by his side, and go in and out from gate to gate throughout the camp, and slay every man his brother, and every man his companion, and every man his neighbour.’John viii. 44. ‘He (the devil) was a murderer from the beginning.’
Exod. vi. 9. ‘Take thy rod and cast it before Pharaoh and it shall become a serpent.’ Ver. 12. ‘Aaron’s rod swallowed up their rods.’ Num. xxi. 6. ‘Jehovah sent fiery serpents (Seraphim) among the people.’ Ver. 8. ‘And the Lord said unto Moses, Make thee a fiery serpent, and set it upon a pole: and it shall come to pass, that every one that is bitten, when he looketh upon it, shall live.’ (This serpent was worshipped until destroyed by Hezekiah, 2 Kings xviii.) Compare Jer. viii. 17, Ps. cxlviii., ‘Praise ye the Lord from the earth, ye dragons.’Rev. xii. 7, &c. ‘There was war in heaven: Michael and his angels fought against the dragon.... And the great dragon was cast out, that old serpent, called the Devil, and Satan, which deceiveth the whole world.... Woe to the inhabiters of the earth and of the sea! for the devil has come down to you, having great wrath.’
Gen. xix. 24. ‘The Lord rained upon Sodom and Gomorrah brimstone and fire from the Lord out of heaven.’ Deut. iv. 24. ‘The Lord thy God is a consuming fire.’ Ps. xi. 6. ‘Upon the wicked he shall rain snares, fire and brimstone.’ Ps. xviii. 8. ‘There went up a smoke out of his nostrils.’ Ps. xcvii. 3. ‘A fire goeth before him, and burneth up his enemies round about.’ Ezek. xxxviii. 19, &c. ‘For in my jealousy, and in the fire of my wrath, have I spoken.... I will plead against him with pestilence and with blood, and I will rain upon him ... fire and brimstone.’ Isa. xxx. 33. ‘Tophet is ordained of old; yea, for the king is it prepared: he hath made it deep and wide; the pile thereof is fire and much wood; the breath of the Lord, like a stream of brimstone, doth kindle it.’Matt. xxv. 41. ‘Depart from me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels.’ Mark ix. 44. ‘Where their worm dieth not, and the fire is not quenched.’ Rev. xx. 10. ‘And the devil that deceiveth them was cast into the lake of fire and brimstone.’ In Rev. ix. Abaddon, or Apollyon, is represented as the king of the scorpion tormentors; and the diabolical horses, with stinging serpent tails, are described as killing with the smoke and brimstone from their mouths.

In addition to the above passages may be cited a notable passage from Paul’s Epistle to the Thessalonians (ii. 3). ‘Let no man deceive you by any means: for that day (of Christ) shall not come, except there come a falling away first, and that man of sin be revealed, the son of perdition; who opposeth and exalteth himself above all that is called God, or that is worshipped; so that he, as God, sitteth in the temple of God, showing himself that he is God. Remember ye not that, when I was yet with you, I told you these things? And now ye know what withholdeth that he might be revealed in his time. For the mystery of iniquity doth already work: only he who now letteth will let, until he be taken out of the way: and then shall that Wicked be revealed, whom the Lord shall consume with the spirit of his mouth, and shall destroy with the brightness of his coming: even him whose coming is after the working of Satan, with all power, and signs, and lying wonders, and with all the deceivableness of unrighteousness in them that perish; because they received not the love of the truth, that they might be saved. And for this cause God shall send them strong delusion, that they should believe a lie; that they all might be damned who believed not the truth, but had pleasure in unrighteousness.’

This remarkable utterance shows how potent was the survival in the mind of Paul of the old Elohist belief. Although the ancient deity, who deceived prophets to their destruction, and sent forth lying spirits with their strong delusions, was dethroned and outlawed, he was still a powerful claimant of empire, haunting the temple, and setting himself up therein as God. He will be consumed by Christ’s breath when the day of triumph comes; but meanwhile he is not only allowed great power in the earth, but utilised by the true God, who even so far cooperates with the false as to send on some men ‘strong delusions’ (‘a working of error,’ Von Tischendorf translates), in order that they may believe the lie and be damned. Paul speaks of the ‘mystery of iniquity;’ but it is not so very mysterious when we consider the antecedents of his idea. The dark problem of the origin of evil, and its continuance in the universe under the rule of a moral governor, still threw its impenetrable shadow across the human mind. It was a terrible reality, visible in the indifference or hostility with which the new gospel was met on the part of the cultured and powerful; and it could only then be explained as a mysterious provisional arrangement connected with some divine purpose far away in the depths of the universe. But the passage quoted from Thessalonians shows plainly that all those early traditions about the divinely deceived prophets and lying spirits, sent forth from Jehovah Elohim, had finally, in Paul’s time, become marshalled under a leader, a personal Man of Sin; but this leader, while opposing Christ’s kingdom, is in some mysterious way a commissioner of God.

We may remark here the beautiful continuity by which, through all these shadows of terror and vapours of speculation, ‘clouding the glow of heaven,’[3] the unquenchable ideal from first to last is steadily ascending.

‘One or three things,’ says the Talmud, ‘were before this world—Water, Fire, and Wind. Water begat the Darkness, Fire begat Light, and Wind begat the Spirit of Wisdom.’ This had become the rationalistic translation by a crude science of the primitive demons, once believed to have created the heavens and the earth. In the process we find the forces outlawed in their wild action, but becoming the choir of God in their quiet action:—

1 Kings xix. 11–13. ‘And he said, Go forth, and stand upon the mount before the Lord. And, behold, the Lord passed by, and a great and strong wind rent the mountains, and brake in pieces the rocks before the Lord; but the Lord was not in the wind: and after the wind an earthquake; but the Lord was not in the earthquake: and after the earthquake a fire; but the Lord was not in the fire: and after the fire a still small voice. And it was so, when Elijah heard it, that he wrapped his face in his mantle.’

But man must have a philosophical as well as a moral development: the human mind could not long endure this elemental anarchy. It asked, If the Lord be not in the hurricane, the earthquake, the volcanic flame, who is therein? This is the answer of the Targum:[4]

‘And he said, Arise and stand on the mountain before the Lord. And God revealed himself: and before him a host of angels of the wind, cleaving the mountain and breaking the rocks before the Lord; but not in the host of angels was the Shechinah. And after the host of the angels of the wind came a host of angels of commotion; but not in the host of the angels of commotion was the Shechinah of the Lord. And after the angels of commotion came a host of angels of fire; but not in the host of angels of fire was the Shechinah of the Lord. But after the host of the angels of the fire came voices singing in silence. And it was when Elijah heard this he hid his face in his mantle.’