Asmodeus — Ashmedai — is the king of demons in Jewish lore: a powerful and cunning demon-king of lust, wrath, and trickery, famous from the Book of Tobit (where he slays seven bridegrooms) and from the rich legends of his dealings with King Solomon, whom he both served and outwitted. He is one of the mightiest and most vivid of the demons of the Jewish and wider tradition.
The King of Demons
Asmodeus (Ashmedai, from a root connected to wrath or destruction, perhaps from the Persian Aeshma) is a great demon-king — in the tradition the king or chief of the demons (the shedim), a being of immense power, cunning, and knowledge. He is associated above all with lust and with wrath, the demon of carnal desire and destructive anger, but also with cunning, wisdom, and trickery. He is a figure of tremendous power and intelligence, more a mighty and crafty prince than a mere tormentor.
The Slayer of Bridegrooms
Asmodeus enters scripture in the Book of Tobit, where he is the demon who, out of lust for the maiden Sarah, slays each of her seven bridegrooms on their wedding night, one after another, before the marriage can be consummated — until the angel [raphael] (Hebrew realm) teaches the hero Tobias to drive Asmodeus away with the smoke of a fish’s heart and liver, and the demon flees to Egypt, where Raphael binds him. This tale established Asmodeus as the demon of lust and the destroyer of marriages.
Asmodeus and Solomon
Asmodeus’s richest legends concern King Solomon. In the tradition, Solomon, building the Temple, needed the shamir (a worm or substance that could cut stone without iron), and captured Asmodeus by trickery (with a magic ring bearing the divine name, and by intoxicating him) to compel his aid — the demon-king forced to labour on the Temple and to reveal his secrets. But in a famous turn, Asmodeus tricked Solomon: gaining the king’s magic ring, he flung it away and cast Solomon from his throne, taking the king’s own form and reigning in his place for a time, while Solomon wandered as a beggar — until the deception was discovered and Solomon restored. These tales made Asmodeus the archetype of the powerful, cunning demon bound to and contending with the wise king. In Asmodeus, Jewish lore gave form to the king of demons — the mighty, lustful, wrathful, and cunning demon-prince of the Book of Tobit and the Solomon legends, the slayer of bridegrooms and the trickster of the wise king, one of the greatest of all the demons of the tradition.