Bible Synapse
Is the devil chained, or free to roam?
Hard question · Acts and the letters · raised by 1 of the lists sceptics circulate
See the passages joined in the interactive mapThe passages
God “spared not the angels that sinned”, but cast them down to Tartarus and “delivered them into chains of darkness, to be reserved unto judgment”.
For if God spared not the angels that sinned, but cast them down to hell, and delivered them into chains of darkness, to be reserved unto judgment;
Angels who left their own habitation are kept “in everlasting chains under darkness unto the judgment of the great day”.
And the angels which kept not their first estate, but left their own habitation, he hath reserved in everlasting chains under darkness unto the judgment of the great day.
“Your adversary the devil, as a roaring lion, walketh about, seeking whom he may devour.”
Be sober, be vigilant; because your adversary the devil, as a roaring lion, walketh about, seeking whom he may devour:
Satan comes before the Lord “From going to and fro in the earth, and from walking up and down in it”.
And the Lord said unto Satan, Whence comest thou? Then Satan answered the Lord, and said, From going to and fro in the earth, and from walking up and down in it.
An angel lays hold on the dragon, “which is the Devil, and Satan, and bound him a thousand years”.
And I saw an angel come down from heaven, having the key of the bottomless pit and a great chain in his hand. And he laid hold on the dragon, that old serpent, which is the Devil, and Satan, and bound him a thousand years, And cast him into the bottomless pit, and shut him up, and set a seal upon him, that he should deceive the nations no more, till the thousand years should be fulfilled: and after that he must be loosed a little season.
The objection
Second Peter and Jude say that the angels who sinned are held in chains of darkness until the judgment. Yet Job shows Satan roaming the earth, and First Peter warns that the devil walks about like a roaring lion, looking for someone to devour. Is the devil chained or free?
The answer
Neither 2 Peter 2:4 nor Jude 6 mentions the devil. They speak of “the angels that sinned” and “the angels which kept not their first estate”, and say that God holds them in darkness until the judgment. The passages that speak of the devil himself all show him active. In Job he has been “going to and fro in the earth” (Job 1:7; 2:2); Paul calls him “the prince of the power of the air”, at work in the disobedient (Ephesians 2:2); and Peter warns that he “walketh about, seeking whom he may devour” (1 Peter 5:8). Scripture speaks of the devil’s own binding as still to come (Revelation 20:1–3). Peter, who wrote of the chained angels in his second letter, wrote of the prowling devil in his first, so he did not see the two as opposed.
Who, then, are the angels in chains? Christians give two answers. Many think of a particular group whose sin was especially gross. Jude goes straight on to Sodom and Gomorrah, which “in like manner” went “after strange flesh” (Jude 7), and this has led many, from the early church to today, to link these angels with the ‘sons of God’ of Genesis 6:1–4. On that view these angels are imprisoned, while Satan and other evil spirits are free for a time. Others, like Barnes, take the chains as a picture: darkness holds the fallen angels as if in chains, under God’s sentence, and even the devil and the spirits who tempt men can act only within the bounds God allows, as Job 1–2 shows. Either way the passages agree: some fallen angels are held fast, the devil still roams for now, and all are kept for judgment.
Still open
Which angels 2 Peter 2:4 and Jude 6 mean, and whether they are connected with Genesis 6:1–4, is debated among Christian scholars.
From the classic commentators
This representation that the mass of fallen angels are confined in "Tartarus," or in hell, is not inconsistent with the representations which elsewhere occur that their leader is permitted to roam the earth, and that even many of those spirits are allowed to tempt men.Albert Barnes, Notes on the Bible, on 2 Peter 2:4 (1847)