Samael, 'the venom of God', is the great adversarial angel of rabbinic and Kabbalistic myth. In the midrash he is the accuser who prosecutes Israel and humankind before the heavenly court, the tempter, and the angel of death; it is he who, mounted upon the serpent, seduced Eve and brought mortality into the world, and who wrestled Jacob and contended with Moses. The Zohar and later Kabbalah elevate him to prince of the sitra achra, the demonic 'other side', where he rules together with Lilith as the shadow counterpart of the holy union. Sources differ on whether Samael is a fallen but still commissioned servant of God or an unequivocally evil power.