Video from ReThinking Christianity
Who was Satan in the Book of Job? - Dr. Michael Heiser
"This is a clip taken from ReThinking Christianity Season 1 Episode 9. Full Episode: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZC-0g..." from video introduction.
"Basically, the message of Job is fairly simple, but some would say not very comforting. When Job and God have their conversation at the end of the book, God’s answer to his (and the reader’s) implicit question of why the righteous have suffered is that “I don’t owe you an answer, Job.” And, frankly, God doesn’t owe us answers. People are fond of calling the first two chapters of the book a “wager” between God and the satan. I disagree. One could very well view it as a vindication of Job — after all, we find out that God was RIGHT when he told the satan that Job would not curse him. Job never does. As to why God didn’t just tell the satan to get lost, in one sense the satan was just doing his job (you have to understand that the satan is *not* the cosmic evil enemy of God in Job 1-2).1 In another sense, God could have told him he was done for the day, but he doesn’t — and that goes back to God not owing humans an answer. That is where faith comes in. We (with Job!) need to believe that God is as sovereign as he is good as he is wise. In other words, we aren’t at the pay grade that allows us to know this kind of information. Some things belong to the province of deity, not to us. More broadly, we of course know God honored Job’s faith and restored his health and what he had lost. But the text doesn’t say Job forgot the anguish of what happened to him. How could he if he’s human?.." from the article: A Few Thoughts on Job