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I'm homeschooling my son and during our bible time this week we were reading 1 Samuel 19. Verse 9 says "Then an evil spirit from the Lord came upon Saul..." I've checked several translations of the scripture, plus the original Hebrew and there doesn't seem to be any getting around it: the evil spirit was sent from the Lord. How can this be when God can having no part with evil? There is no evil in Him. Yet here it says God sent the evil spirit. This would imply that God not only allows, but sends, evil into the lives of people. Can anyone enlighten me on this?
Thank you
Susan Scott

Hi, Susan! Welcome to the forum, and thank you for the question.

Bob Deffinbaugh addresses your question very briefly here and in the context of his sermon on The Designation of David as King.

My own answer is that God is perfectly holy and never does evil, but that does not mean he cannot use evil or evil persons. Consider the story of Joseph, for example. His brothers hated him so much they wanted to kill him, but Reuben restrained them and they settled on selling him into slavery (Gen 37:12-36). What his brothers did to Joseph was evil, and they were evil for doing it. Yet many years later Joseph told them, "As for you, you meant to harm me, but God intended it for a good purpose, so he could preserve the lives of many people, as you can see this day" (Gen 50:20). Later in Israel's history God used the evil nations of Assyria and Babylon to punish his people because of their own sins. Clearly, God does use evil persons to accomplish his purposes.

Although spirits are not human, they are intelligent beings and are persons with a moral will. It is therefore no different for God to use a spirit (good or evil) to accomplish his purpose than it is for him to use a man or group of men. In the story of Job, we see God using Satan in just that way. When Satan appeared before God in chapter 1, apparently to gloat over the sinfulness of mankind, the Lord pointed out his faithful servant Job. When challenged, God gave Satan permission to afflict Job. In the end, Job was faithful to the Lord and the Lord blessed him with more than he had before.

Saul, like Job, was under the Lord's protection and no evil spirit could touch him without God's permission. When Saul rebelled and disobeyed the Lord, it is likely that an evil spirit sought permission to afflict him in the same way that Satan had done in Job's case. Therefore the spirit was said to be sent by the Lord because he could not have acted without the Lord's permission.

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It must be noted that the traditional translation of "evil" for the Hebrew רָעָ֖ה ra'a is far wider in meaning than moral evil. It can mean "distress, misery, injury, trouble, crime or mischief" as well as the ethical/moral "evil" (see BDB and Holladay's lexicon). According to the Theological Wordbook of the OT:

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Thank you for taking the time to respond and share those links with me. The questions and answers section will keep me busy reading for a long time!

[Part of this post has been split off and moved to forum 7a3: Systematic Theology at the author's request.]

Thank you Antipater for the quote from the Theological Wordbook. I've never heard of that reference work, but it looks very useful for getting a deeper understanding of the context behind scripture.

Gideon answered nicely, really liked the examples he used. I have always been facinated at stories where God uses, even evil people (nations, men, spirits), to accomplish his will. If you are interested I have a few more, though Gideon took the best ones..haha

Judges 9:23,

Judges 9:23 23 God sent a spirit to stir up hostility between Abimelech and the leaders of Shechem. He made the leaders of Shechem disloyal to Abimelech. Context (NET)

Which was a form of judgment on Abimelech and the men of Shechem, who strenthed Abimelech hands when he killed his 70 brothers (sons of Jerubbaal.) God turned them against one another.

1 Kings 22:19-23,

1 Kings 22:19-23 19 Micaiah said, “That being the case, hear the word of the Lord. I saw the Lord sitting on his throne, with all the heavenly assembly standing on his right and on his left. 20 The Lord said, ‘Who will deceive Ahab, so he will attack Ramoth Gilead and die there?’ One said this and another that. 21 Then a spirit stepped forward and stood before the Lord. He said, ‘I will deceive him.’ The Lord asked him, ‘How?’ 22 He replied, ‘I will go out and be a lying spirit in the mouths of all his prophets.’ The Lord said, ‘Deceive and overpower him. Go out and do as you have proposed.’ 23 So now, look, the Lord has placed a lying spirit in the mouths of all these prophets of yours; but the Lord has decreed disaster for you.” Context (NET)

Just to clarify, the prophets that the lying spirit went to were false prophets of Ahab. It was to ensure Ahabs defeat. It is a interesting story to read sometime, I would suggest reading it for a better context, as well as the one above.