Satan’s Answer: Adam Was the Cause of Satan being Expelled from Heaven

Satan seemed eager to give Eve an answer to her question: “Why do you harbor such hate toward Adam and me?” “O Adam,” Satan responded, “every ounce of my enmity, my envy, my sorrow is due to you! Because of you I am expelled from heaven and deprived of the glory I once had as one of the angels. Because of you I am now exiled to earth.” Confused, Adam queried, “How so? What did I do to you?”

Indeed, Adam could not have known Satan’s account detailed what had happened before Adam was created: Before God created Adam, God had dismissed Satan from his presence, allowing only selected angels to be present. God blew his life breath into you, Adam. After creating you in his own image, God instructed Michael to see that each of us angels worship the image of God. Michael immediately complied, the first to do so. Michael then summoned Satan, as the second highest angel, and commanded him to worship the image of the Lord God. “I will not worship Adam,” Satan haughtily replied. “I will not worship one inferior and subsequent to me. I am prior to him in creation; before he was made, I was already created. He ought to worship me!”

Michael continued to pressure Satan, charging that he would surely incur the wrath of God. Satan hastily shot back, “Should he (attempt to) inflict his wrath upon me, I will set my throne above the stars and will be like the Most High.” Mistaking arrogance for power, a band of angels under Satan’s command also joined Satan in refusing to worship. Satan and his associates quickly learned how terribly they had miscalculated the power of the Most High. Immediately they were cast out of heaven and onto the earth, deprived of their former glory. From this incident stemmed their enmity toward Adam and his wife. As Satan confessed to Adam, “We (fallen angels) were pained to see you in such bliss of delights. So with deceit I assailed your wife and caused you to be expelled through her form the joys of your bliss, as I have expelled form my glory?” (16:2-3).

Having heard the devil’s own account, Adam cried out to God for relief from the assaults of Satan. At once the devil disappeared. To Adam’s credit, he “persisted the (full) forty days standing in repentance in the water of the Jordan” (17:1-3), thereby foiling Satan’s hope for total ruin of the human couple and their descendants.