Maimonides Intrusion Of Satan Among The Sons Of God

Maimonides has given about the first intrusion of Satan among the sons of God. Maimonides describes this intrusion as “without having been for his own sake the object of an intention or having been sought for his own sake.” Privation is in itself, a lack that does not exist in itself and neither is it intended in itself. It is never the object of an act. It always exists in a material subject and is the principle of corruption in the physical world. On the other hand, we have good reason to think just like some modern thinkers, that Satan in the second part of the intrusion represents some other sort of angel, this time, the imagination. This is in semantic agreement with the description given by Maimonides that even though the sons of God and Satan appear in the same entourage before God, nevertheless they do not share the same identity and while the former are “more permanent and lasting,” the latter, “has a certain portion below them, in what exists.” Our
acceptance of this second meaning will become increasingly clearer when Maimonides, in the later appearances and involvement of Satan in the sufferings of Job, exposes the other significations of this mythic figure and justifies this choice of the imagination by the rational authority of the Sages and the contextual placement of the texts. We shall also realize that this Satan is also an “angel” inasmuch as he is found in the crowd of the sons of God thus, giving justification to Maimonides’s division of angels into permanent and perishable ones.
Against our interpretation that this second intrusion is the force of imagination, is the view of our contemporary interpreter of Job in medieval philosophy, Robert Eisen. According to Eisen, “the identity of privation and Satan also explains Maimonides’s reading of the description of Satan’s second arrival in which he comes along with the divine beings who present themselves before God.” To argue his point, Eisen quotes the second passage where Maimonides notes that ‘Satan “also has a certain portion” below the divine beings “in what exists,” though his status is not identical to theirs.’ Eisen again buttresses his point by calling attention to Maimonides’s view that matter, though it is the concomitant of privation entailing death and all evils, is good since it is the proper object of the act of
God. In this way, privation indirectly plays a positive function in bringing about God’s purpose for the perpetuation of being. It is as if privation has now become the direct object of God’s act. Hence, Eisen concludes and justifies his interpretation by noting that: