13. To what did Jehovah liken the Devil, and before this one is put to death what is he allowed to produce?

¹³ Such an end for the Devil was indicated when the Judge of all, Jehovah, likened him to the serpent that had been used to deceive the woman Eve into eating the forbidden fruit contrary to God’s command. Directing the words really to the symbolic Serpent, Jehovah said: “Because you have done this thing, you are the cursed one out of all the domestic animals and out of all the wild beasts of the field. Upon your belly you will go and dust is what you will eat all the days of your life.

(Genesis 3:14, 15) Thus the Devil became the one cursed of God. So it lies with God to have this cursed one put to death.

14. What did the figurative crawling on the belly mean for the Devil as the Great Serpent, and by whom was he later joined in his abasement?

¹⁴ Jehovah likened the Devil to a serpent that crawls on its belly and eats food dusted with particles of soil. Thus he indicated the deep abasement into which the cursed Devil was now thrown down. As it was the lowest station in existence, it was compared to the place that came to be called Tartarus. In course of time the Devil came to be joined in this place by other spirits, by other angels who renounced the Fatherhood of God and adopted the fatherhood of the Devil. These spirits became his “seed.”

15. What do Peter and Jude say about the angels who joined the Great Serpent in sinning?

¹⁵ In reference to this spiritual seed of the original Serpent, the Christian apostle Peter wrote: “God did not hold back from punishing the angels that sinned, but, by throwing them into Tartarus, delivered them to pits of dense darkness to be reserved for judgment.” (2 Peter 2:4) The Christian disciple Jude refers to the same angelic “seed” of the Serpent, when he writes: “The angels that did not keep their original position but forsook their own proper dwelling place he has reserved with eternal bonds under dense darkness for the judgment of the great day.”​—Jude 6.

What position he occupied in God’s original organization we do not precisely know. Many Bible students have understood the prophecy of Ezekiel 28:11-19 concerning the king of ancient Tyre to apply also to Satan the Devil, and hence they reason that the self-made Devil was originally a “cherub” among the heavenly “sons of God.” If this is so, then the degree of his abasement as the Great Serpent is all the greater.

17. In what way do rebel angels share Tartarean darkness with the Devil?

¹⁷ The other angel rebels against God, who became the “seed” of the Serpent, share the Tartarean darkness with him, like cursed serpents. They no longer have the light of God’s favor and counsel. At their rebellion God took his holy spirit away from them.