God's Work with Planet Earth

1 Samuel 15 and 16 contain difficult passages, if you’re just surface reading. It’s similar to God hardening Pharaoh’s heart, which we already examined in: https://godsworkwithplanetearth.blog/2025/05/31/false-gods-and-hard-hearts/

We need to understand what’s really going on here. Because if God gave commandments which say don’t covet and don’t murder, but He then sends spirits on King Saul which turn him into a jealous, raging, murderous psychopath, we have a real problem. Here’s the verse in question:

“But the Spirit of the Lord departed from Saul, and a distressing spirit from the Lord troubled him.” 1 Samuel 16:14

Context

What led up to this? Before a battle with the Philistines, Saul got anxious waiting for Samuel to arrive and offered a sacrifice to God himself, as if he were a priest. This was against the ceremonial laws God had given Moses. It certainly makes sense that you shouldn’t have a king dictating what he says is God’s will for his subjects.

Later, Saul was instructed by God to wipe out the Amalekites. But he disobeyed God.

Thus says the Lord of hosts: ‘I will punish Amalek for what he did to Israel, how he ambushed him on the way when he came up from Egypt. Now go and attack Amalek, and utterly destroy all that they have, and do not spare them. But kill both man and woman, infant and nursing child, ox and sheep, camel and donkey.’ ” 1 Samuel 15:2-3

This is another “problem” verse which could trip us up if we don’t know the whole background. But it reminds me of another passage:

“Because the sentence against an evil work is not executed speedily, therefore the heart of the sons of men is fully set in them to do evil. Though a sinner does evil a hundred times, and his days are prolonged, yet I surely know that it will be well with those who fear God, who fear before Him. But it will not be well with the wicked; nor will he prolong his days, which are as a shadow, because he does not fear before God.” Ecclesiastes 8:11-13

Amalek was a son of Esau, so these people were not Canaanites. Like Esau’s brother Jacob/Israel, they descended from Noah’s son Shem, not his son Ham, like the Canaanites. They were more closely related to the Israelites. Jacob followed God like his grandfather Abraham and father Isaac, but Esau went his own way, embracing Canaanite wives and culture.

Exodus 17:14-16 and Deuteronomy 25:17-19 indicate that God had planned for what He commanded Saul to do hundreds of years earlier. The Amalekites ambushed and attacked the Israelites coming out of Egypt, despite the fact both nations were descended from Isaac.

Note the difference, that immediately after this, when Israel wanted to pass through Edom (Edomites were also Esau’s descendants), Edom was ready to fight them, but Israel went the long way around to avoid a battle because Esau and Jacob/Israel were brothers.

A few hundred years later God decided the time had come for the Amalekites. Just like Ecclesiastes 8:11, the punishment wasn’t immediate, but it did come.

There may have been other reasons for their destruction, like commitment to evil pagan practices such as child sacrifice, ritual prostitution, castration to gain spiritual power, etc. We know the Israelites later fell into these practices as well, and God also punished them for it.

When Saul disobeyed God, he created an unintended ripple effect through time.

• Around 1020 BC, Saul is instructed to wipe out the Amalekites, but he saved some, including King Agag
• Around 477 BC, Haman the Agagite successfully pushes Persian King Ahasuarus (Xerxes I) to decree the death of all Jews
• So a descendant of the Amalekite King Agag became an Old Testament Hitler, and nearly wiped out the Jews, nearly 500 years before Christ was born into the tribe of Judah as Jesus.

God knows the end from the beginning. (Isaiah 46:9-10) He arranged for Esther to become a Jewish queen of the Persian Empire and worked through her and her uncle Mordecai to avert Satan’s attempt to snuff out the family line of the Redeemer. Satan succeeded in luring 10 of the 12 tribes of Israel into determined and committed idolatry, and Assyria conquered and took them away. By the time Jesus was born, only Judah and Benjamin were left. What if Haman the Agagite was successful in wiping them out too? How does God then keep His promises to Abraham, to “bless all the families of the earth” through his descendants with the Messiah and the scriptures?

Where did the spirit come from?

Back to the original question. Did God curse Saul with an evil spirit? When translating Hebrew into English, the translators had to add a lot of English words to make sense. Look at what happens if we only allow one English word for each Hebrew word:

• NKJV: “a distressing spirit from the LORD troubled him.”
• Hebrew: ra ra’ah ruach yehovah ba ath
• Word for word: evil spirit God fear

You can see what a challenge the translators are up against! There’s an evil spirit involved and God is mentioned, but it doesn’t say it came from God. It would be just as easy to take the meaning that God allowed an evil spirit to torment Saul.

The story of Job shows us that Satan had to get permission from God to bring disasters and tragedy on him. Even though fallen angels have rebelled and left their proper place (Jude 1:6, Rev. 12:7-9) of doing the jobs God gave them, they cannot take over or control someone without permission from their Creator.

From the broader perspective of the great controversy between Christ Jesus and Lucifer-turned-Satan, we know that humans have free will. God warned Adam and Eve but they chose to disobey anyway. When a human like Saul rejects the guidance of the Holy Spirit enough times, they become insensitive to His leading. But Saul was fully aware of what had happened.

“…God has departed from me and does not answer me anymore, neither by prophets nor by dreams.” 1 Samuel 28:15

Jesus called blaspheming or denying the Holy Spirit the sin that could not be forgiven in Matthew 12:31-32. Why? Because when one pushes away God’s Spirit, which is the very way God uses to reach us, then we’re no longer convicted and sorry for our sins, and we no longer desire repentance and forgiveness. If you don’t want it, God will not force it on you. And if we don’t have God’s protection and guidance, other spirits will move in to fill the void and begin to influence us.

Does it make sense that God would anoint David as the next king, then send a spirit to Saul that inspired Saul to throw javelins at David to try to kill him on two occasions, while David was just playing music in the palace? Whose intent or desire would it be to kill David, God’s or Satan’s?

“You will know them by their fruits. Do men gather grapes from thornbushes or figs from thistles?” Matthew 7:16

“For God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power and of love and of a sound mind.” 2 Timothy 1:7

“…God is light, and in Him is no darkness at all.” 1 John 1:5

I think it’s safe to say that the spirit who was harassing Saul with fear, jealousy, and rage was not OF God, but was ALLOWED by God after Saul repeatedly rejected God’s Spirit.

Here’s a final thought. You cannot treat your Creator like a genie in a bottle or lamp, and only call Him when you want something. Saul called God when he needed something, but he did not have a living, trusting, dependent relationship with Him like David did. The power of the throne corrupted both Saul and David, but David repented and Saul did not. And their stories have things to teach us because…

“For whatever things were written before were written for our learning…” Romans 15:4