Why did Satan Murder Jesus, Knowing How angry this would make God?
The most enlightening answer that I have read on this question comes from the anthropologist Rene Girard. He answers the question in terms of the idea of scapegoating, and lays out the argument that since the time Cain formed cities, Satan has been at the centre of creating civilizations, a word whose entymology traces back to the idea of a city or city-state.
As people intermingle in close quarters, they develop admiration, and then envy for each other. It is the idea of coveting everything that is of 'thy neighbour' to the point of desiring to become thy neighour and usurp their very lives. Resentments build up to a crescendo, and the whole enterprise of civilization threatens to fall down upon itself.
The devil's antidote to this is the process of scapegoating which serves a cathartic purpose. All the resentments that the people in the city have for each other are channeled to a victim, a scapegoat, and that scapegoat is seen as the source of the discord that has been brought about through their envying of each other.
The envy that Girard refers to is termed 'mimetic desire' and he sees an example of it in the Scripture where Jesus says to Peter, "Get behind me Satan", when Peter's admiration of Jesus takes a bad turn.
Antrhopologist Girard finds this process of dealing with mimetic desire throughout history and throughout cultures and notes that it is mostly an unconscious process. The beginning of consciousness comes in the Biblical ritual of laying the sins of the community onto a goat, and driving him out into the wilderness to die.
Satan, the ruler of this world, had been using that process to allow for civilizational advancement, which started with the murderer Cain whose progeny is associated with cities and culture. That is the clue to the idea that it is Satan who is behind the process.
Normally, the victim chosen is presumed to actually be guilty and responsible for all the discord that enters into society, and the fact that the murder of the victim has the cathartic effect of restoring harmony invariably had the effect of making people believe that they acted correctly and justly. The whole process of the disruption of mimetic desire restoring order through scapegoating remained unknown, and this is what Satan assumed would happen in the scapegoating of Christ too.
biblically speaking, Girard points us to 1 Corinthians 2:8
None of the rulers of this age understood it, for if they had, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory.
If Satan would have understood the consequence of his 'business as usual' plan, he would not have dared to scapegoat Jesus. He assumed that, as always, what had been cooked up in the dark would remain in the dark, same as it always had been.
God in effect tricked Satan and exposed the social mechanism of scapegoating. When it is God himself being scapegoated with the crucifixion of the fautless innocent victim who is Jesus, people become fully aware that scapegoating is nothing more than murder. It is their own sins, their own envies, their own covetous desires, their own mimetic desires that they had been transferring onto the scapegoat all along.
Satan became apparent; he fell like lightning as the Bible relates.
Like all the rulers of this world, if he had known and truly understood it, he would not have crucified Jesus.
God in effect tricked him into showing his hand.