"... Who Really Was Behind the Test? With the development of and heightened interest in the doctrine of Satan, demons, and angels more generally, which we see among Jewish people beginning around 200 BCE, the question of ultimate and intermediate causes of evil things becomes a focal point for intense speculation. In the case of the Aqedah, this resulted in questioning whether God could be the immediate cause of a test, which called on Abraham to violate the law that God gave to Israel. In Jubilees 17:16–18, Abraham, not Isaac, is the focus of the story. The gap that Jubilees fills in is to explain how God could test Abraham to do such a thing. Like the righteous Job, Abraham is tested by Satan (Mastemah), who argues that Abraham loves his son more than God. It is Satan, not God, therefore, who initiates the test. Jubilees may well be following the lead of the author of Chronicles, who reinterprets his source text in 2 Samuel. In 2 Samual 24:1, Yahweh, angry with Israel, commands David to number Israel and then hands downs judgment on the nation when David obeys. Referring to this incident, in 1 Chronicles 21:1 we read, “Then Satan stood up against Israel and provoked David to number Israel.” The author of Chronicles may be explaining the intermediate cause, Satan, for David’s taking the census, rather than the ultimate cause, Yahweh. In the same way, Jubilees, by introducing Satan into the Aqedah, may be attempting to explain the intermediate rather than the immediate cause ..."

Kissling, Paul J. "The Near-Sacrifice of Isaac: Monstrous Morality or Richly Textured Theology?" in Carroll, M. Daniel, and J. Blair Wilgus (eds.) Wrestling with the Violence of God: Soundings in the Old Testament (pp. 15-30) Eisenbrauns, 2015