The Chain

The Serpent Was Not Alone

The Midrash teaches that the serpent in Eden was not acting alone. Samael, a powerful angel, rode upon the serpent like one rides a camel:

"The serpent had a rider, the rider was as big as a camel, and it was the rider that enticed Eve: this rider was Samael."

Samael's name is read traditionally as "blind to G‑d" (sama‑El) — he blinds people from recognizing the Divine. In rabbinic and kabbalistic literature Samael becomes identified with Satan: not as a separate evil deity, but as the prosecuting angel, the force that tests and accuses. The identification is explicit in midrashic sources — notably Pirkei deRabbi Eliezer ch. 13, which names Samael as the angel behind the serpent in Eden — and is developed further in the Zohar.

The Chain of Identifications

Samael is also identified as the guardian angel of Esau and his descendants — Edom and Rome. He is the angel who wrestled with Yaakov at the ford of the Jabbok. He is the spiritual force behind Rome's power, and by extension behind the religion that grew up within the Roman empire from a Jewish root.

This creates a chain that runs through several layers of the tradition:

• The Serpent in Eden — the vehicle, the physical form
• Samael — the rider, the angel of death, the prosecuting force
• The Angel of Esau — guardian of Edom, of Rome
• Rome — the empire that destroyed the Temple, absorbed the nations
• The religion that emerged from Rome — the spiritual heir of Rome, born within it, shaped by it

The snake is not merely a reptile in a garden. It is a spiritual force that has manifested throughout history in different forms — always in tension with Israel, always as the "other brother," the rival, the prosecutor. Always containing both poison and medicine.

Abraham Abulafia's Assessment

The 13th‑century kabbalist Abraham Abulafia offers a view that connects these identifications. He suggested that the figure at the center of this movement had the potential to be Moshiach ben Yosef but fell short due to errors. Yet Abulafia also referred to him as "the Satan" — and here we must pause.

By calling him "the Satan," Abulafia was not simply hurling an insult. He was making a precise mystical identification. Satan is Samael. Samael is the guardian of Esau. Esau is Rome. And Rome is the civilization within which this movement took shape.

By placing this figure within the chain Serpent → Samael → Esau → Rome → the movement that grew from it, Abulafia was suggesting that this teacher — whatever his original intentions — became the vehicle through which the ancient serpent's energy manifested in a new form. Just as Samael rode the serpent in Eden, some spiritual force "rode" this teacher's legacy, distorting it and carrying it into the nations associated with Esau.

This is not a verdict that the teacher himself was evil. It suggests that his mission became entangled with forces it may have been meant to oppose. Moshiach ben Yosef is a figure who suffers, is misunderstood, and often falls before his mission is complete. The involvement of the prosecuting, testing force is part of that pattern, not a disqualification from it.

Maimonides' Providential Reading

Maimonides, writing centuries later, sees the same history more providentially. In his Laws of Kings, he writes that both this movement and Islam have served a divine purpose in preparing the world for the ultimate redemption. They spread knowledge of Torah, of Moshiach, and of G‑d's commandments to the far corners of the earth. When the true Moshiach comes, the entire world will already have the basic vocabulary to understand what is happening.

But Maimonides also makes clear: both contain errors that will need to be corrected. The deification of a human being is an error. In the days of Moshiach, these errors will be clarified, and the nations will understand what those histories were really preparing them for.

Abulafia and Maimonides are not in contradiction. One reads through the lens of the prosecuting force that distorted the mission. The other reads through the lens of a providential purpose that ran through the distortion anyway. Both can be true. They are naming one mechanism at two stages of a single story.

A Number, Held Back

The tradition even presses a single number onto this identification — one value shared by the serpent and the redeemer, its strongest mark for saying they are one mechanism at two stages of a single story. That number, and what it does to everything above it, is held for the end of the arc — The Redemption — where it lands hardest. Spelling it out here would spend it too early.

The chain from Eden to Rome carries this same structure: what looks like the adversary's work is also, at a deeper layer, the preparation for the return. The question is not whether the distortion was real — it was. The question is what purpose it served inside a story G‑d is still writing.