Now he was teaching in one of the synagogues on the Sabbath. And there was a woman who had had a disabling spirit for eighteen years. She was bent over and could not fully straighten herself. When Jesus saw her, he called her over and said to her, “Woman, you are freed from your disability.” And he laid his hands on her, and immediately she was made straight, and she glorified God. But the ruler of the synagogue, indignant because Jesus had healed on the Sabbath, said to the people, “There are six days in which work ought to be done. Come on those days and be healed, and not on the Sabbath day.” Then the Lord answered him, “You hypocrites! Does not each of you on the Sabbath untie his ox or his donkey from the manger and lead it away to water it? And ought not this woman, a daughter of Abraham whom Satan bound for eighteen years, be loosed from this bond on the Sabbath day?” As he said these things, all his adversaries were put to shame, and all the people rejoiced at all the glorious things that were done by him.
One way to deal with this is to say that Jesus (and others?) had special insight into this particular disease and knew it was a special case. I don’t find this plausible. Yes, there is real demon possession in the Gospels (if someone lives in a graveyard and can break chains when anyone attempts to bind him, you know you are dealing with something Angel might fight). But there is another level in which Satan is considered to be involved in diseases.
How?
The author of Hebrews writes:
Since therefore the children share in flesh and blood, he himself likewise partook of the same things, that through death he might destroy the one who has the power of death, that is, the devil, and deliver all those who through fear of death were subject to lifelong slavery.
Odd, isn’t it? God imposed death on the world, but somehow the power of death gets ascribed to the devil.
A couple of things to remember: the name Satan is originally from the Hebrew scriptures and means “Accuser” or “prosecuter.” The word, “devil” in koine Greek means basically the same thing. And this, I think is the key, especially since the Accuser’s power in death is said to lie in fear.
In Genesis 3 we see the first person Satan ever slandered was God.
(I take this as his Fall, by the way. I don’t see any reason to posit a previous fall into sin. God came and judged three sinners. The story doesn’t require that the serpent/angel had already been condemned. And if we have to imagine backstory, it is far easier to imagine that he entered the garden as a teacher and then decided to rebel…)
Despite the fact that Adam and Eve were surrounded by every good gift and had been graced with high position and amazing promises, with only one temporary prohibition, Satan portrayed God as a selfish seeker of his own glory at the expense of others. And once Adam and Eve (sinfully!) believed this evil about God they themselves acted in a self-seeking way.
So, now we have a great many more prohibitions, an innate sinful proclivity to distrust God, and a lot of bad things in the world that God has put there because of our sin. If Satan could convince Adam and Eve that they were hated by God how much more can Satan make that case now–when there is real wrath against sin on God’s part?
So, my hunch is that Satan’s oppression of the woman’s disfigurement wasn’t necessarily that he caused it in some way, but that he used it as a way of keeping her imprisoned in shame and fear. We all know that “health and wealth” teachers are wrong, but we are fooling ourselves if we think that we are truly above such superstitions. Everyone feels more right with God when he is well-supplied and healthy than he does otherwise. It is simply human nature and fits in with the coming exaltation we are hoping for, even though it is mostly exploited by the accuser now.
By the way, this view makes a lot of sense to me in light of the way Paul writes about a trial he suffered:
Though if I should wish to boast, I would not be a fool, for I would be speaking the truth. But I refrain from it, so that no one may think more of me than he sees in me or hears from me. So to keep me from becoming conceited because of the surpassing greatness of the revelations, a thorn was given me in the flesh, a messenger of Satan to harass me, to keep me from becoming conceited. Three times I pleaded with the Lord about this, that it should leave me. But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me. For the sake of Christ, then, I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities. For when I am weak, then I am strong.
The only way the passive makes any sense (“was given to me”) is as a divine passive. God gave him the thorn, and yet the thorn can still be called a messenger from Satan.
And this shows us the antidote, since God does not always liberate us physically from these afflictions. The power of Satan’s messages is broken in these trials by the message of the Gospel. While Jesus ended the sufferings of others as a sign and token of God’s deliverance, he himself went all the way to death, and was mocked as he suffered on the cross by those who were certain he must be cursed by God. But the curse became a means to glory for Jesus, ending in his public vindication by the Spirit. And if we believe that, then we have a concrete demonstration that “for those who love God all things work together for good.”
Satan was lying when, in the midst of blessing, he told Adam and Eve that God did not love for them. And Satan is lying now when he tempts us to think the same thing in the midst of different forms of the curse.