Judges 9:23 – But God sent an evil spirit between Abimelech and the lords of Shechem; and the lords of Shechem dealt treacherously with Abimelech.
See also I Samuel 16:14-23, 18:10, 19:9 for similar instances.
First of all, What is an “evil spirit” of God? I do not buy into the Gnostic’s idea of Demiurge, but from verses like these I can sometimes see how they come to that conclusion. I have been writing a book on exorcism and possession for sometime now and first when I came across the passage and the ones in I Samuel my first thought was okay this is a demon, but again “a demon of God” presents a problem maybe even a bigger one than the original one. Plus I had to remember the Old Testament has very little if any mention of demons. So I was back to square one. What is this evil spirit of God and why would God have an evil spirit? Some might say that it was just a pissed off Holy Spirit, okay I could buy into that, but the Hebrew bible makes no explicit mention of the other two members of the Christian Trinity so we have to be very careful with that in any case. Like last blog I don’t have a lot to say on the matter , mostly because I do not have the definitive answer, but I do have a proposal as to what this is. For scriptures II we are reading Job and I cam across 20:23 which says, “God will send his fierce anger into them . . .” This got me thinking that maybe this “evil spirit” of God is a very fancy and scary way of saying “God’s fierce anger” It is of course the much more safer route in this otherwise dangerously hard to understand passage. No answer as I said, but something very much to think about, especially for all those inerrancy nuts out there.
Kalos Elpis
Kelly M. Doolittle
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