God sends evil spirits?!

My Sunday School class is working through Max Lucado's Facing Your Giants Bible Study.  We're early into the study (Chapter 2), which talks about when Samuel goes to Bethlehem to search for a new king to replace Saul and finds the young David, who God anoints as the next King (1 Samuel 16). The study itself focuses on the first half of 1 Samuel 16, but I continued reading the second half of the chapter, which is where David becomes a part of Saul's service as a lyre player:

14 Now the Spirit of the Lord had departed from Saul, and an evil spirit from the Lord tormented him.15 Saul’s attendants said to him, “See, an evil spirit from God is tormenting you. 16 Let our lord command his servants here to search for someone who can play the lyre. He will play when the evil spirit from God comes on you, and you will feel better.”

I feel like these are verses that I've read many many times and just kind of glossed over. But tonight, verse 14 really caught my attention. An evil spirit from the Lord tormented him. Wait, what? God sent an evil spirit to Saul? God has evil spirits??? I was confused. I was stopped in my tracks. I needed to understand this deeper.

Since I'm at work, I didn't have my Bible with its handy dandy foot notes and references. (sigh). So I turned to Google (which admittedly can be very dangerous) and came across an excellent resource that helped explain this to me: Apologetics Press


They brought up a few excellent points:

- God is the ultimate judge and is capable of and justified in punishing people who have done wrong. So it is possible that God was punishing Saul for his consistent refusal to obey God. "(God) uses evil to chastise evil." 
         We focus so much on the loving God, that sometimes we forget that God is our only judge and jury, and that he is also an angry God, one who destroyed mankind and his own creation with the Great Flood as a punishment to long standing patterns of improper behavior.  Often times I think we focus on punishment being doled out primarily after death (going to Hell), and forget that God is perfectly capable of punishment during this time on Earth.

- God may not have actually sent the evil spirit to Saul, but rather permitted it to happen (think about when God permitted Satan to tempt/torture Job), again as a consequence of Saul's disobedience.

- The authors also more closely analyze the ancient Hebrew words that were translated into this verse, and note the two main words used for "evil spirit" were ruach (spirit, life breath, disposition of mindset/attitude) and ra'a (bad, unhappy, sad of heart/mind). So while these two words used together can certainly refer to an evil spirit, they could also be referring to Saul's own bad attitude or being plagued with depression!
         Which makes insane sense to me when Saul's attendants suggest a lyre player to help Saul feel better when the "evil spirit" were to come around and affect Saul. Music therapy is a historically well known method to combat depression/anxiety/mental instabilities!


I think I am most intrigued by the concept that Saul suffered from mental instability/depression due to my own struggles with anxiety and mild depression. And when you're in the thick of an "attack," it indeed feels like an evil spirit tormenting you.

So interesting!!