1 Samuel 16: From Lyre to Ai
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Paul Whitehorn
OBST830: Prophets I
March 8, 2026
 
 
 
 
 

Contents

 
Introduction..................................................................................................................................... 1
I. Background.................................................................................................................................. 4
A. Literary and Historical Context............................................................................................ 3
B. Music in the Ancient Near East............................................................................................ 5
II. Interpretive Issues....................................................................................................................... 8
A. Theological Language.......................................................................................................... 8
B. Ritual Context and Causality.............................................................................................. 10
III. Theological Themes................................................................................................................ 13
A. Divine Sovereignty in Hannah's Song................................................................................ 13
B. Providence and Human Agency......................................................................................... 16
C. Mediated Sovereignty......................................................................................................... 18
IV. Conclusion............................................................................................................................... 27
Bibliography.................................................................................................................................. 29
Appendix A................................................................................................................................... 34
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Introduction

The narrative of 1 Samuel refuses to locate spiritual power in created instruments, demonstrating through the episode of David's lyre and Saul's torment that Yahweh alone acts as the decisive agent in the spiritual realm: a truth that should govern the church's use of every tool, including artificial intelligence, in worship and ministry.
1 Samuel presents a theological world where Yahweh alone governs the spiritual realm. This concept of His absolute control over the universe is radically monotheistic in a polytheistic world. That is, unlike the other gods of the Ancient Near East (ANE), whose power was often thought to respond to properly executed ritual performance, Yahweh acts with singular and total sovereignty.[1]Yes, it is clear that He works through human agents, historical circumstances, and even the unseen realm, yet He alone remains the decisive actor behind every event. In view of this, the narrative of 1 Samuel refuses to portray history as some kind of detached human drama where its deity occasionally drifts in. Instead, the book presents a world in which Yahweh never steps offstage and is always running the show.[2] This theological conviction serves as the engine that drives not only the interpretive grammar of the entire work but also foreshadows the Gospel: establishing the premise that God's children can indeed fail, be rejected because of that disobedience, and even be replaced (1 Sam. 13:14; 15:23, 28; 16:1, 14). This appears at the very outset of the book in Hannah's song, where Yahweh is described as the one who kills and makes alive, who brings down to Sheol and raises up, who makes poor and makes rich, and who humbles and exalts (1 Sam. 2:6–7).[3] This reversal of roles is seen clearly in 1 Samuel 16, which will be the focus of this work. In it, Samuel secretly anoints David, and the text declares that "the Spirit of the LORD rushed upon David from that day forward" (1 Sam. 16:13). Immediately afterward, the narrative records the corresponding movement in Saul's life: "the Spirit of the LORD departed from Saul, and a harmful spirit from the LORD terrified him" (1 Sam. 16:14). The juxtaposition is deliberate. The divine presence that once empowered Saul now rests upon David, while Saul experiences a troubling affliction that the text itself attributes to Yahweh.[4] This statement has long raised interpretive questions. How can a harmful spirit be said to come from Yahweh? Does the passage describe a literal spiritual being sent by God, a psychological disturbance interpreted through theological language, or a narrative device meant to dramatize Saul’s downfall and David’s ascent? Regardless, the language of the passage has caused a great deal of concern because at first glance it appears to make Yahweh the primary actor in an activity that is beneath Him. Yet it cannot be taken in isolation from the broader theological vision of 1 Samuel. Saul's torment and David's empowerment appear side by side precisely because they belong to the same theological moment, one in which Yahweh orchestrates everything and the players on the stage are expected to respond in obedience. When they do not, they can and will be replaced. The only crown that ultimately matters is God's favor, and all other allegiances and positions are temporary.[5]
This study examines the account of Saul’s torment within the broader theological framework of 1 Samuel. Rather than treating the passage as an isolated difficulty, the episode must be interpreted within the worldview that the book itself constructs. 1 Samuel consistently portrays Yahweh as sovereign over Israel’s history, its kingship, and the unseen forces that influence human life. The discussion will therefore proceed in four stages. First, the paper will examine the historical and literary background of 1 Samuel in order to establish the narrative framework in which the story unfolds. Second, it will address the major critical interpretive issues surrounding the statement that a “harmful spirit from Yahweh” tormented Saul. Third, the study will explore the theological themes that emerge from this episode, particularly the sovereignty of Yahweh and the transfer of divine favor from Saul to David. Finally, the paper will conclude by reflecting on how these themes may be appropriated within a contemporary ministry context. Seen within the larger structure of the book, Saul’s torment does not undermine the theological vision of 1 Samuel but reinforces it. The narrative insists that even the unseen forces affecting Israel’s king remain under the authority of Yahweh, whose purposes continue to unfold through both judgment and blessing.
 
 
 

I. Background
A. Literary and Historical Context

In the Hebrew canon, 1 Samuel belongs to the Former Prophets, situated between Judges and 2 Samuel running from Joshua through Kings. This placement is not incidental. The Former Prophets function as theological history, interpreting Israel’s national experience through the lens of covenant fidelity and ultimately a failure like Saul to keep that agreement. Unlike the English canonical arrangement, which groups these books as “Historical Books,” the Hebrew designation emphasizes their prophetic character.[6] These writings are not merely chronicles of events but prophetic testimony explaining why those events took place in the way that they did. The division between 1 Samuel and 2 Samuel is a later development, likely introduced in the Septuagint for practical reasons related to scroll length.[7] In the Hebrew tradition Samuel originally circulated as a single work. Therefore, in its intended form the story from Hannah’s barrenness to David’s rise is intended to be seen as a single unified theological argument concerning divine sovereignty and kingship in Israel.[8] Having said that, the question of authorship remains difficult. The book bears Samuel’s name, yet Samuel dies in 1 Samuel 25 long before the narrative concludes. Jewish tradition preserved in the Babylonian Talmud attributes authorship primarily to Samuel, with the remaining material completed by the prophets Nathan and Gad.[9] Modern scholarship generally situates 1 Samuel within what is commonly called the Deuteronomistic History, a broader literary and theological work extending from Joshua through Kings and shaped by themes drawn from the theology of Deuteronomy.[10] Historically the narrative reflects the transitional period from the judges to the early monarchy during the eleventh century BC. When Israel faced both internal instability and external pressure: Philistine military strength threatened Israelite territory and culminated in the capture of the ark and ongoing conflict during Saul’s reign (1 Sam. 4–6). Internally, priestly leadership associated with Eli’s household had completely collapsed, and tribal unity remained fragile. Within this context the people’s demand for a king “like all the nations” becomes more understandable (1 Sam. 8:5). The story therefore portrays Samuel as a spiritual hero standing between two eras of Israel’s history, functioning simultaneously as prophet and kingmaker.[11]

B. Music in the Ancient Near East

Archaeology cannot restore the sound of David’s lyre, but it can confirm that instruments and musicians were widespread throughout the ANE during the period of 1 Samuel: Iron Age I and the early phases of Iron Age II. This is a period where Israel’s social organization and emerging political structures developed alongside continued interaction with surrounding Levantine cultures.[12] Iconographic and archaeological evidence from across the Levant consistently attests the widespread presence of stringed instruments, percussion instruments, and organized musical performance. [13] These forms of musical activity appear in both cultic celebrations and royal court settings, providing an important cultural backdrop for the musical episode in 1 Samuel 16. Annie Caubet’s survey of ancient instruments demonstrates that complex chordophones such as lyres and harps were long established throughout the eastern Mediterranean and the Levant, often crafted by specialized artisans and commonly employed in both ritual and courtly environments.[14]
Beyond the instruments themselves, the semantic world of sound in the ANE deserves attention. In Akkadian the term rigmu refers not only to the voice of humans, gods, and demons but also to rhetorical speech such as laments or complaints and even to undifferentiated noise or the sound of musical instruments. The term may also describe natural phenomena including thunder, wind, earthquakes, and fire, with thunder in particular often interpreted as the voice of a deity such as Adad. Similarly, the Egyptian term ḫrw denotes the voice of gods, humans, and animals and can function as a substitute for the verb “to say,” while also describing sound in general, including music, quarrelling, or natural phenomena such as thunder and wind.[15] Ugaritic usage reflects the same semantic breadth, encompassing human speech, animal sounds, and meteorological phenomena, especially thunder.[16] These linguistic patterns demonstrate that sound in the ancient world did not occupy the neutral physical category it occupies in modern thought. Instead sound belonged to the same conceptual sphere as divine speech, cosmic thunder, and spiritual power.
Within such a conceptual world it is not surprising that Saul’s court assumes music might relieve the king’s spiritual distress. As Tsumura observes, the Samuel narrative repeatedly locates causality with Yahweh rather than with ritual mechanism or human technique.[17] Egyptian iconography regularly depicts music functioning alongside religious ritual within royal courts, and Egyptian religious thought often understood music as contributing to the maintenance of maat, the divinely ordered structure of reality.[18] Mesopotamian ritual traditions display similar assumptions. Exorcistic texts and ritual instructions frequently combine spoken incantations with musical performance in order to drive away hostile spiritual forces.[19] In these traditions trained ritual specialists functioned as technicians whose authority derived from mastery of ritual forms rather than from covenant relationship with a sovereign deity. As Henshaw demonstrates in his survey of cultic personnel across the biblical world and the wider ANE, ritual experts often operated within carefully structured systems in which the correct performance of prescribed actions were believed to produce repeatable spiritual outcomes.[20] Northwest Semitic sources reinforce this same idea or pattern. Ugaritic texts associate song and ritual speech with divine kingship, seasonal renewal, and cosmic conflict, suggesting that sound itself could function as a channel through which divine power entered the human sphere.[21]
This cultural backdrop helps explain why Saul's advisors immediately turn to music as a solution to the king's torment. From the perspective of the ANE the proposal seems entirely reasonable: find the right musician, and the right sounds will drive the hostile force away. The Samuel narrative, however, does not simply reflect that logic. The spirit troubling Saul originates from Yahweh, and the narrative's treatment of music elsewhere in the book confirms this pattern. The victory song of the women in 1 Sam. 18 reshapes public perception of Saul and David and contributes to the shifting political landscape of the narrative. Yet even here the Samuel traditions evaluate leadership not according to popular acclaim but according to covenant fidelity. Music may shape public imagination, but it does not determine divine favor. Yahweh alone raises and humbles kings. Music functions within the story, but it never operates as an autonomous spiritual force. This background matters because it sets the interpretive stakes for everything that follows. The ANE world treated sound as spiritual technology; the question the next section must answer is whether 1 Samuel simply reflects that assumption or deliberately dismantles it.
 

II. Interpretive Issues
A. Theological Language

Several expressions in 1 Samuel can appear theologically confusing if they are read too quickly or interpreted through modern assumptions rather than the language and thought world of the ANE. One example appears in the description of David when the text states that he was “ruddy” (1 Sam. 16:12). The Hebrew term אַדְמוֹנִי “admoni” comes from the root אָדֹם “adom”, meaning red or reddish.[22] Modern readers sometimes imagine this as a reference to bright red hair, but that would not necessarily be how an ancient Israelite reader understood the phrase. More likely the word refers to a healthy reddish complexion, suggesting youth and vitality, especially for someone who lived and worked outdoors. While reddish hair is not impossible, the text itself does not mention hair at all, and ancient readers probably did not immediately picture what modern Western readers associate with red hair. The description simply communicates that David had a distinctive and vigorous appearance, reinforced by the additional note that he had beautiful eyes and was handsome (1 Sam. 16:12). A similar issue appears in the theological language surrounding Saul. Samuel declares that “rebellion is as the sin of divination, and presumption is as iniquity and idolatry” (1 Sam. 15:23). At first glance this might sound like an exaggerated or even strange comparison. Yet Samuel is not claiming that Saul literally practiced sorcery. Rather, he is exposing the deeper spiritual posture behind Saul’s disobedience. By placing his own judgment above the command of God, Saul effectively sought guidance apart from God’s revealed word, which mirrors the same underlying impulse found in divination. The comparison is meant to expose the seriousness of rebellion, not to equate every detail of the actions themselves.
Another statement that can be misunderstood occurs at the end of the same chapter, where the narrative says that the LORD regretted making Saul king (1 Sam. 15:35). Read superficially, this could suggest that God made a mistake or changed His mind in the way human beings do. However, Scripture often uses anthropopathic language, describing God in human terms so that readers can grasp His genuine response to human actions within history. The statement communicates God’s real displeasure with Saul’s persistent rebellion, not a failure of divine foreknowledge or sovereignty. These interpretive challenges help illuminate another difficult passage later in the narrative where the text states that an “evil spirit from the LORD” troubled Saul (1 Sam. 16:14). On a first reading, some might conclude that God is directly producing evil or sending a demon in a morally corrupt sense. Yet when read alongside the examples above, it becomes clear that the language reflects the theological framework of the narrative rather than a claim that God is the author of evil. In the biblical worldview, God remains sovereign over all events, including the removal of His protective presence. Saul’s rebellion results in divine judgment, and the troubling spirit represents the consequence of that judgment rather than God creating moral evil. Just as the language about David’s appearance, Saul’s rebellion, and God’s regret must be understood within the linguistic and theological context of the text, so also the description of the spirit afflicting Saul should be interpreted carefully within that same framework.

B. Ritual Context and Causality

The account of Saul’s torment in 1 Samuel 16 raises a number of significant interpretive questions. One of the most important concerns the broader ritual world of the ANE and whether the narrative assumes or rejects those patterns of spiritual mediation. ANE ritual systems frequently embedded spiritual efficacy within structured incantation traditions. A well known example is the Marduk–Ea incantation formula, in which authority was understood to flow along a divine chain that ultimately culminated in the trained human specialist whose correct ritual performance was expected to produce reliable spiritual results.[23] Within these traditions, ritual speech, musical sound, and prescribed actions were integrated into carefully structured systems designed to heal spiritual affliction. Texts such as the Maqlû incantation series illustrate this ritual logic with particular clarity. In these materials, spoken formulas, ritual gestures, and musical elements operate together within an elaborate exorcistic procedure intended to counteract demonic forces.[24] Similarly, the Gudea Cylinders describe the introduction of sacred instruments such as the balaĝ specifically for the purpose of pacifying divine anger and restoring harmony between the deity and the community.[25] In such systems sacred sound was not treated as a neutral phenomenon. No, it participated directly in divine communication and appeasement. This means that correct technique by the human musician was the deciding factor of success or failure. Having said that, there are some outliers. The Babylonian work Ludlul bēl nēmeqi, for example, portrays a sufferer who remains faithful in ritual observance yet still experiences profound suffering.[26] The text repeatedly laments that even when proper forms are observed the purposes of the deity may remain hidden. The point is that while structured ritual systems clearly existed, the divine realm was not always portrayed as bound by them. The comparative background must therefore avoid oversimplification. ANE theology frequently combined highly developed ritual structures with an acknowledgment that divine beings retained ultimate freedom.
Against this broader cultural backdrop, the central interpretive question becomes whether 1 Samuel deliberately relocates spiritual agency away from ritual performance or whether the narrative simply reflects common assumptions of its world. The episode in 1 Samuel 16 contains several features that help answer this question. Saul is tormented by a harmful spirit “from the LORD” (1 Sam. 16:14). His attendants recommend finding a musician who can play the lyre so that the king may find relief (1 Sam. 16:16). David plays, Saul experiences relief, and the spirit departs (1 Sam. 16:23). On the surface the sequence resembles patterns familiar throughout the ANE, in which musical sound participates in spiritual mediation. Yet the narrative itself lacks many of the ritual elements normally associated with such practices. No incantation is spoken. No ritual formula appears. No exorcistic specialist or temple authority is involved. Instead the spirit both originates and departs within the same theological frame: the sovereignty of Yahweh. For this reason the narrative intentionally relocates agency from ritual technique to divine action. The absence of ritual infrastructure is not accidental but theological. The spirit originates from Yahweh, and its departure likewise occurs under Yahweh's authority rather than through human manipulation.[27] While it is possible that such conclusions may overstate the contrast. Silence within the narrative does not necessarily imply rejection of cultural assumptions. Having said that, it is possible that the author simply assumes that music could function as a therapeutic or spiritual aid while still presenting the entire episode within a theological framework emphasizing divine sovereignty. Tsumura, for example, notes that reliance upon music for relief from emotional or spiritual distress was widely attested in the ancient world, yet the narrator of 1 Samuel consistently frames Saul’s condition and relief theologically by emphasizing that both the departure of the Spirit and the activity of the harmful spirit occur “from Yahweh.”[28] From this perspective David’s musical skill may participate in Saul’s relief as a secondary means while remaining subordinate to divine agency.
A final interpretive issue concerns the status of the instrument itself and whether the narrative grammar attributes causal power to David's music. The Hebrew text of 1 Samuel 16:14–23 repeatedly uses the verb סוּר to describe the movement of the spirit. The Spirit of Yahweh "departed from Saul" (v. 14), and the harmful spirit likewise "departed from him" when David played (v. 23). Importantly, neither David nor the lyre ever functions as the grammatical subject of that action. The departure of the spirit is simply described as occurring. As Snijders notes in his lexical discussion of סוּר, the verb in the qal stem commonly carries the sense of turning aside or departing from a position, with the point of departure marked by the preposition מִן or מֵעַל. This grammatical pattern reinforces the theological framework already established by Hannah. The spirit moves, but the text does not attribute that movement to musical technique or instrumental power. Instead, the grammar attributes spiritual causality to Yahweh. David is not the main actor in the story. The main actor is the Spirit of God within him and God working outside of him to affect Saul. The text itself repeatedly situates the movement of the spirit within the sovereign activity of Yahweh. Whether the narrative intentionally contrasts itself with surrounding traditions or simply reframes them within Israel's theology remains a matter of discussion. What remains clear, however, is that the story refuses to attribute autonomous spiritual power to music itself. Human actions participate within the narrative, but divine agency remains outside of human manipulation. The interpretive conclusion matters not merely as a point of textual grammar but as the foundation for the theological themes the text constructs. Once it is established that 1 Samuel withholds causal power from the instrument, the next question is what the text puts in its place, and the answer is the sovereign character of Yahweh himself, announced already in Hannah’s song long before David ever touched a string.
 

III. Theological Themes
A. Divine Sovereignty in Hannah's Song

The grammar of 1 Samuel leaves little ambiguity about who rules the world. In Hannah’s song the narrator announces the book’s theological thesis: Yahweh alone acts decisively in matters of life, death, humiliation, and exaltation. Everything that follows is, in a sense, commentary upon what she declares in those opening verses. In 1 Samuel 2:6–8, יהוה is consistently placed in the emphatic subject position, with the poetry structured around active participles and finite verbs that point to God as the singular agent. The sequence "יְהוָה מֵמִית וּמְחַיֶּה" shows that Yahweh is the one who causes both life and death. The Hiphil participles מֵמִית and מְחַיֶּה do not describe isolated interventions but standard action, and the parallel clause "מוֹרִיד שְׁאוֹל וַיָּעַל" reinforces this reality. That is, descent to Sheol and ascent from it are both divine operations, not in any way human achievements.[29] The Hiphil participles מוֹרִישׁ and מַעֲשִׁיר, then מַשְׁפִּיל and מְרוֹמֵם, are gnomic. They do not describe what God did once. They describe what God does. He makes poor and he makes rich. He brings low and he lifts up. That is who he is. He blesses and curses as he pleases, and no one asks him why.[30] Put simply, the grammar of 1 Samuel permits no rival agent. From first to last, Yahweh is the one acting, and the text leaves no room to suppose that anything in between escapes his governance. When v.8 adds "מֵקִים מֵעָפָר דָּל" and "מֵאַשְׁפֹּת יָרִים אֶבְיוֹן," the infinitive construct לְהוֹשִׁיב further reveals this purpose: he alone is the one who raises the poor in order to seat them with nobles.[31] Furthermore, the verb יַנְחִלֵם is inheritance language. It is covenant language. In the Hiphil stem נחל is what God does when he gives Israel the land.[32]  He causes them to possess it. They do not take it. He gives it. Here the word is the same but the gift is different. It is not land. It is a throne of glory. The poor receive it. They could not have taken it on their own: that is the point.
When all of it is considered against the whole, from the broad imagery down to the smallest grammatical and structural choices, the author produces a cumulative force that has no grey area. The repetition of יהוה as subject of every structure makes it clear that all roads indeed selfishly lead to יהוה. And since this sovereignty is the continuous foundation on which every verb in the narrative rests, 1 Samuel refuses to cast history as a human drama in which God makes the occasional cameo appearance. No, He is not a guest in his own story: humanity is. That is, from its opening poetry, the book insists that life and death, humiliation and exaltation, all pass through the hands of a God who never steps offstage. This is the lens through which the reader must approach Saul's torment, David's anointing, and the musical episode in chapter 16.
This sovereignty is immediately tested by Israel's most persistent temptation: the desire to harness God through sacred objects or techniques (cf. Ps. 78:56–61). The ark narrative in 1 Samuel 4–6 exposes that instinct with almost brutal clarity. Israel assumes that bringing the ark into battle will guarantee deliverance (1 Sam. 4:3). The result is catastrophe. The ark is captured, and Israel discovers what it should have known all along: Yahweh cannot be manipulated. Yet in Philistine territory, his sovereignty is displayed without a single Israelite lifting a finger (1 Sam. 5:1–12). Dagon falls on his face (1 Sam. 5:3). The Philistines suffer plagues (1 Sam. 5:6). The ark returns because Yahweh wills it, not because Israel learned a better technique (1 Sam. 6:3–12). The point is not that sacred objects are meaningless, but that sacred objects are not masters (1 Sam. 4:3–5; 5:7–8): the Lord is (1 Sam. 7:3–4, 10). This anti-mechanistic theology has effects that reach well beyond this one issue. It is, in fact, the interpretive key to everything that follows in the story of Saul. After all, here is a man who receives every advantage one could ask for: anointing, spiritual empowerment, public confirmation. And still he refuses to wait for Samuel (1 Sam. 13:8–14). He dresses up disobedience in the clothing of piety (1 Sam. 15:22–23). So why does his kingship fail? Is it because of a lack of personal magnetism or military competence? No. It collapses because Saul treats Yahweh as an asset to be managed rather than as the Lord to whom obedience is owed (1 Sam. 13, 15, 28). That is a very modern error.
David's music in 1 Samuel 16 is therefore not a healing story standing in isolation from the narrative that surrounds it. Saul's torment is not random misfortune, nor is the relief he experiences reducible to the right soundwaves in the right order.[33] The Spirit departs because covenant fidelity has been broken, and a harmful spirit comes for the same reason (1 Sam. 16:14). The episode advances the book's central and unrelenting claim: Yahweh cannot be managed. Rightness with God does not endure through ritual, aesthetics, or skill. The God who grants authority is the same God who removes it. In that light, the lyre is not a mechanism that compels divine action but an instrument through which God may freely choose to work. It participates in providence. It does not generate it. This applies equally to contemporary tools. Artificial intelligence, like the lyre, is a created instrument within the order God sustains. If God can use it is not in question. The question is not whether he can use it but whether the Church should.

B. Providence and Human Agency

The relationship between divine sovereignty and human agency is not an abstract philosophical puzzle but is the bedrock of how God relates to Saul and David. On one side stands Yahweh, utterly sovereign. On the other stand two men, both real agents, each capable of obedience or rebellion. Their decisions are not mechanical inevitabilities flowing from a fixed decree, but genuine possibilities open before them. Saul might have obeyed; David might have hardened himself. The narrative assumes authentic alternative possibilities. Regardless, Saul refuses (1 Sam. 15:13). David, though totally flawed, does not (2 Sam. 12:13). Yet even Saul’s refusal does not frustrate the divine will. Again, God does not depend on human cooperation to accomplish his purposes, though he graciously invites it. Saul’s disobedience becomes the very means by which David is brought forward (1 Sam. 15:23). This does not imply that God coerced Saul’s rebellion, nor that he reacted in surprise. Rather, before the foundation of the world, God knew what Saul would freely do under those covenantal conditions. In his middle knowledge he comprehended every counterfactual of creaturely freedom, and he sovereignly chose to actualize a world in which Saul’s refusal and David’s obedience would unfold precisely as they did. God remains primary. Human action, whether faithful or faithless, operates as a secondary cause within this providence. These secondary causes are not accidents within history but elements of a world God intentionally selected. Providence is not divine reaction but divine selection among possible histories, each containing the free decisions of real agents.
Music belongs squarely within that category. God knew that in the circumstances of Saul’s torment, David would freely play, and that Saul would freely receive relief. The lyre functions not as a deterministic mechanism but as part of a providentially chosen network of free actions through which God accomplishes his will. It participates in God’s purposes; it does not originate them. For that reason, the doctrines of providence and divine concurrence must frame the discussion before turning to 1 Samuel 16. Scripture itself provides the clearest analogy. God speaks through human authors without ceasing to be the true author. What appears fully human is at the same time fully governed by divine initiative. Divinity marries the mundane. God meets man there. That pattern governs everything that follows.
The same structure appears wherever music surfaces in the canon. After the Lord delivers Israel at the Red Sea, Moses and the sons of Israel sing, "The LORD is my strength and my song" (Exod. 15:2). The sea parts by divine command; the song follows as human response. Deliverance is the primary cause. Singing is the secondary reaction. In Deuteronomy, Moses is commanded to compose a song that will stand as a covenant witness (Deut. 32). The covenant precedes the composition; the song preserves and transmits what God has already done. Throughout the Psalms, Israel's praise and lament and confession take musical form, yet even here the Lord "puts a new song" in the mouth of his servant (Ps. 40:3). The music is given. Divine initiative grounds human expression. Music therefore becomes a covenantal means by which Israel confesses Yahweh's kingship, rehearses his mighty deeds, and shapes the interior life of the community he has called into being. But it never reverses the order of causation. The Lord acts, and Israel sings. The Lamb is slain, and heaven responds with praise. Music is real, formative, and powerful, yet never autonomous. It is secondary causation operating within divine providence. If music in Scripture operates under divine concurrence, then technological tools, however complex, must be evaluated within the same doctrine. Agency belongs to God. Created means, whether ancient instruments or modern algorithms, remain contingent participants within his sovereign will. That is the principle that holds the entire discussion together.
 

C. Mediated Sovereignty

Theologians have long wrestled with how God relates to created causes. Some, most notably in occasionalism and articulated by Nicolas Malebranche, denied real creaturely causality altogether and treated created things as mere occasions for direct divine action.[34]  Others, especially in open theistic models, affirmed genuine creaturely powers but distanced them from God’s ongoing governance, portraying the world as operating according to built in laws after its initial creation. [35] The classical doctrine of concurrence, articulated in different ways by Thomas Aquinas, Martin Luther, John Calvin, and later Protestant orthodoxy, maintains that created agents possess real causal properties while remaining wholly dependent upon God’s sustaining and directing will. [36]  On this reading, divine sovereignty is displayed not by eliminating secondary causes but by ordaining, upholding, and governing the world in which they operate. Instruments are neither illusions nor rivals to divine agency. They are authentic means situated within a providentially ordered history.
Molinism, developed by Luis de Molina and ably defended in recent years by William Lane Craig, presses this logic further and offers what many regard as the most satisfying resolution.[37] It holds together the full sovereignty of God and the genuine freedom of his creatures without sacrificing either. It affirms libertarian freedom while grounding providence in God's middle knowledge of what free agents would do in any possible set of circumstances. God sovereignly actualizes a world in which His purposes are accomplished through, not in spite of, the free decisions of His creatures. Secondary causes within this framework are not just permitted: they are chosen. God, in his infinite wisdom, selects precisely those circumstances in which free agents will act in ways that accomplish his will. This is not divine reaction. It is divine orchestration from before the foundation of the world. Just as the lyre in 1 Samuel functions as a real instrument within circumstances God has arranged, so contemporary technologies may serve as genuine tools within the unfolding of his purposes. David was a shepherd boy, content with tending his father's flock. God is the one who stepped into that life, already knowing what it would mean not only for David but for the entire nation and ultimately for the lineage that would lead to Christ. The instruments David used, and even the failures that marked his life, did not become ultimate agents. They did not need to. God had already accounted for their place in the story.
This is why Molinism illuminates the question of artificial intelligence and worship more precisely than its theological alternatives. Occasionalism leaves no room for meaningful human contribution. Open theism leaves God responding to outcomes he did not foresee. Hard determinism renders human creativity an illusion. Molinism alone preserves the full weight of both truths: God is entirely sovereign, and human agents, along with the tools they employ, participate genuinely in the outworking of his purposes. The lyre in David's hands, the song on Israel's lips, and the technologies of the present age all find their proper place within this framework. They are real instruments in real circumstances, chosen and ordered by a God who knew from eternity what each would accomplish.
Unlike the modern world, where music is played constantly and largely for pleasure, the ANE world understood music as something totally different. It was not background noise or entertainment. It was almost always regarded as a point of contact with the gods, carrying a supernatural dimension that the ancients would never have thought to question. The accumulated weight of archaeological and textual evidence from this period converges upon a single conclusion: music was embedded within ritual systems that encompassed prophecy, divination, magic, and ecstatic performance.[38] Consider the difference. Today, if there is a funeral, it is standard for soft music to play in the background, and no one thinks twice about it. In the ancient world, instruments accompanied burial rites not to create atmosphere but to ward off hostile forces or assist the dead in their passage to the afterlife. What the modern world treats as decorum, the ancient world treated as spiritual warfare. Prophetic bands descended from high places with instruments in hand (1 Sam. 10:5). Lyres and harps were crafted by skilled artisans and performed by trained musicians in both court and cult.[39] The right kind of music was understood as a form of heightened communication, something that reached beyond ordinary language into the realm of the gods. It bears an uncomfortable resemblance to what Pentecostals today falsely claim as divine speech, though the ancient version at least had the honesty of operating within a coherent pagan framework.[40] Exorcistic texts from this period confirm the assumption. Lament, incantation, and performance were combined to produce tangible spiritual effects,[41]  and cultic personnel functioned as ritual technicians whose authority rested not in personal holiness or divine calling but in mastering these prescribed forms.[42] The technique was the power. Get the form right, and the gods would respond.
Within this context, Saul’s servants act exactly as one would expect in that world. Faced with a spiritual crisis, they seek someone who knows the right sounds. Yet 1 Samuel deliberately reframes that logic. The text describes Saul’s condition as רוּחַ רָעָה מֵאֵת יְהוָה (1 Sam. 16:14). The adjective רָעָה carries a wide semantic range, including calamity, distress, and injurious affliction, not merely moral evil.[43] Coupled with the verb בִּעֲתַתּוּ, “it terrified him,” the emphasis falls upon the tormenting effect rather than upon any suggestion that Yahweh authors moral corruption. The grammar affirms divine sovereignty over the event without imputing moral evil to God. What appears chaotic at the human level is, within the covenantal context of royal rejection, judicial disturbance under providence. Nietzsche, and many who wish to discredit Christianity, read such passages as evidence that God is a tyrant or, “the most poisonous spider,”[44] but that interpretation ignores what the Hebrew is saying here.
The narrator reinforces this point by varying the expression in 1 Samuel 16:23, referring first to רוּחַ־אֱלֹהִים and then to רוּחַ הָרָעָה. The concern is not metaphysical speculation but divine governance. The spirit “departed” after David played, using the same root that described the Spirit of the LORD departing from Saul in 1 Samuel 16:14. The repetition directs attention to Yahweh’s rule rather than to musical technique. David truly plays. Saul truly experiences relief. That is, the music is neither imaginary nor irrelevant.[45] Yet the text never credits the lyre with autonomous power. It refuses the logic of ritual mechanism. Here the doctrine of concurrence appears in narrative form. God remains the primary actor. David’s music functions as a genuine but secondary cause within divine providence. This pattern explains why music recurs at pivotal moments throughout Samuel without ever becoming metaphysical machinery: the prophets descend with instruments, women sing and jealousy ignites, David laments and shapes national memory, and he dances before the ark as kingship is redefined. Music frames and intensifies covenant realities. It participates in what God is doing. It does not manufacture divine action. 1 Samuel 16 is therefore not merely a healing account but a case study in providence. The instrument matters, but it is never ultimate. Agency belongs to the LORD. Human means remain real, powerful, and fully within his sovereign grasp.
In 1 Samuel, David’s first public service to the kingdom is not military but musical. Saul is tormented by “a harmful spirit from the LORD” (1 Sam. 16:14), and his court responds in the most predictable way possible: they seek a technical solution.[46] The irony is sharp. Saul has already forfeited his kingdom by refusing to wait upon the word of the LORD (1 Sam. 13:8–14; 15:22–23), and now, in a moment of spiritual crisis, his servants again bypass prophetic dependence in favor of practical remedy (1 Sam. 16:16). Yet in doing so they unknowingly summon the very man whom Samuel has just anointed and upon whom the Spirit of the LORD has rushed (1 Sam. 16:13). They intend to soothe a king. God intends to establish a dynasty. When David plays and Saul finds relief, the text is deliberately restrained: the spirit departs, but the narrator never credits the lyre with autonomous power (1 Sam. 16:23). The difference is decisive. If the power resides in the sound, then music becomes incantation, a mechanism for managing the spiritual realm, precisely the sort of manipulation Scripture elsewhere forbids (Deut. 18:10–12; Acts 19:13–16). The history of the bronze serpent makes the danger clear. What God once used as a means of healing became an object of misplaced trust when the means was confused with the source (Num. 21:8–9; 2 Kings 18:4). But if the power never belonged to the instrument in the first place, then the court is not handling a technique to be mastered but encountering a God who acts freely through means he has chosen. The decisive reality in 1 Samuel 16 is not musical sophistication but prior anointing. God forms the servant before he employs the instrument.
This pattern speaks directly to contemporary ministry and the rise of artificial intelligence. AI can generate worship music, draft sermons, and assist theological reflection. It is a powerful instrument. The question, however, is not whether God can use created means. He clearly does. The question is whether the instrument is mistaken for an agent. Balaam’s donkey spoke the word of the LORD, yet no one mistook the donkey for a prophet (Num. 22:28). Cyrus served as an instrument of restoration, yet he did not govern the purposes of God (Isa. 45:1). The printing press accelerated the spread of Scripture without altering the doctrine of inspiration; the medium did not become the source. In the same way, technological sophistication neither guarantees nor negates divine action. David himself settles the matter when he declares that victory belongs not to sword or spear but to the LORD (1 Sam. 17:47). Tools do not secure outcomes. Obedience does. The temptation in every age is either to absolutize the instrument or to fear it. 1 Samuel rejects both errors. God cannot be mechanized, yet he freely works through means. Worship is not validated by emotional intensity or technical novelty, nor corrupted merely by the presence of new tools. The Lord sent the spirit, and the Lord governed its departure (1 Sam. 16:14, 23). The instrument was not magic. The musician was not a technician. The episode reveals mediated sovereignty, a pattern that finds its fulfillment in the true Son of David, who delivers not by manipulation but by the authority of his word and the gift of his Spirit. For the church today, the call is simple: formed hearts, faithful obedience, communal worship, and humble trust in the God who remains free, whether he chooses to work through a lyre, a press, or a line of code.
 

IV. Conclusion

There is a temptation in every age to locate spiritual power in the mechanism rather than in the one who governs it. Israel tried it with the ark and lost it to the Philistines (1 Sam. 4:3). The ANE world built entire ritual systems around it. 1 Samuel dismantles that logic without dismantling the instruments themselves. The bronze serpent makes the danger plain: what God once used as a means of healing can become an idol. Hezekiah destroyed it not because God had never worked through it but because Israel had begun to treat the object as though the power lived inside it (2 Kings 18:4). The same instinct appears whenever the church places confidence in method over Christ. A lyre is just a tool. A digital audio workstation is just a tool. Therefore, any tool in worship music does not carry some supernatural Spirit hidden within its chord progressions. Yes, Amazing Grace may stir the heart, but it holds no more intrinsic spiritual power than a melody written by Ai yesterday. What makes any song useful to God is not its age, reputation, or production. The instrument and method bears no spiritual agency. The worshiper does, and God does.
Scripture repeatedly shows that God works through formed servants before He works through instruments. David was anointed before he ever played in Saul's court (1 Sam. 16:13). The Spirit rested upon the man before the lyre ever entered the story. The data in Appendix A offers a small illustration of this principle. A handful of songs that had previously been prayed over and used in congregational worship accounted for a disproportionate share of listener engagement even after being processed through the same technological system as the rest of the catalog. The data cannot prove theological causation, but it is consistent with the biblical pattern. Instruments participate in what God is doing, but they do not produce it. Technology therefore remains what the lyre was in David's hands: a secondary instrument within the providence of God. The servant is responsible. The instrument is contingent. The Lord alone remains sovereign.
On a personal note, this research has shaped the way I think about music and emerging technologies. While working on this paper I wrote a slow acoustic song called "True Freedom" and refined it using AI tools. The song centers on family as the place where people find genuine freedom, and while it is intentionally neutral in tone and not overtly religious, themes of faith, hope, and trust run quietly through it. On March 5, I shared a meal with my neighbor Amir Haifa, his wife, and their two daughters to break the Ramadan fast together. They are Muslims, and I brought German food for the occasion. At some point in the evening I shared the song, and it opened a conversation about faith, meaning, and what people ultimately place their trust in, a conversation that would almost certainly not have begun through direct theological argument. Experiences like this reinforce the central argument of this study. Music is only an instrument. It does not carry spiritual power within itself, and the tool that produced it carries even less. Yet in the providence of God even an ordinary song written with ordinary technology can become a powerful tool in His hands.
 
 
 
 
 

Bibliography

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Barry, John D., et al. Faithlife Study Bible. Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press, 2012.
Botterweck, G. Johannes, Helmer Ringgren, and Heinz Josef Fabry, eds. Theological Dictionary of the Old Testament. Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2004.
Briant, Pierre. “Persia and the Persians.” In The World around the Old Testament: The People and Places of the Ancient Near East, edited by Bill T. Arnold and Brent A. Strawn, 379–381. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2016.
Brown, Francis, S. R. Driver, and Charles A. Briggs. A Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1907.
Brueggemann, Walter. First and Second Samuel. Interpretation. Louisville: John Knox Press, 1990.
Caubet, Annie F. “Music.” In The Anchor Bible Dictionary, edited by David Noel Freedman, vol. 4, 469–476. New York: Doubleday, 1992.
Caubet, Annie F. “Music and Dance in the World of the Bible.” In Behind the Scenes of the Old Testament: Cultural, Social, and Historical Contexts, edited by Jonathan S. Greer, John W. Hilber, and John H. Walton, 469–471. Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2018.
Chapman, Stephen B. 1 Samuel as Christian Scripture: A Theological Commentary. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2016.
Chesnut, Owen D. “Israelite Expansion Process during Iron Age II: A Chalk Moat Perspective.” Near East Archaeological Society Bulletin 53 (2008): 36.
Congdon, David W. Rudolf Bultmann: A Companion to His Theology. Eugene, OR: Cascade Books, 2015.
Coppes, Leonard J. “אדם.” In Theological Wordbook of the Old Testament, edited by R. Laird Harris, Gleason L. Archer Jr., and Bruce K. Waltke, 11–15. Chicago: Moody Press, 1999.
Craig, Peter C. Psalms 1–50. Word Biblical Commentary 19. Dallas: Word Books, 1983.
Craig, William Lane. The Only Wise God: The Compatibility of Divine Foreknowledge and Human Freedom. Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock, 2000.
Cross, F. L., and Elizabeth A. Livingstone, eds. The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church. 3rd ed. rev. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005.
Dohmen, C., and D. Rick. “רעע.” In Theological Dictionary of the Old Testament, edited by G. Johannes Botterweck, Helmer Ringgren, and Heinz Josef Fabry, translated by David E. Green, 560–563. Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2004.
Firth, David G. Including the Stranger: Foreigners in the Former Prophets. New Studies in Biblical Theology 50. Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2019.
Gesenius, Wilhelm, and Samuel Prideaux Tregelles. Gesenius’ Hebrew and Chaldee Lexicon to the Old Testament Scriptures. Bellingham, WA: Logos Bible Software, 2003.
Gordon, Robert P. 1 & 2 Samuel. Zondervan Illustrated Bible Backgrounds Commentary. Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2009.
Henshaw, Richard A. Female and Male: The Cultic Personnel: The Bible and the Rest of the Ancient Near East. Allison Park, PA: Pickwick, 1994.
Hilber, John H. Behind the Scenes of the Old Testament: Cultural, Social, and Historical Contexts. Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2018.
Kadish, Gerald E. “Egypt, History of: Early Dynastic—First Intermediate Period.” In The Anchor Yale Bible Dictionary, edited by David Noel Freedman, 342. New York: Doubleday, 1992.
Kedar-Kopfstein, B. “קוֹל.” In Theological Dictionary of the Old Testament, edited by G. Johannes Botterweck, Helmer Ringgren, and Heinz Josef Fabry, translated by Douglas W. Stott, 577–579. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2003.
Kramer, Samuel Noah. Sumerian Mythology: A Study of Spiritual and Literary Achievement in the Third Millennium BC. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1961.
———. “The Sumerian Lamentation Priest.” Journal of the American Oriental Society 72, no. 3 (1952): 198–205.
———. The Sumerians: Their History, Culture, and Character. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1963.
Lim, Timothy H. The Formation of the Jewish Canon. Anchor Yale Bible Reference Library. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2013.
Luther, Martin. Martin Luther on the Bondage of the Will. Translated by Edward Thomas Vaughan. London: T. Hamilton and T. Combe, 1823.
Macchia, Frank D. “The Struggle for Global Witness: Shifting Paradigms in Pentecostal Theology.” In The Globalization of Pentecostalism: A Religion Made to Travel, edited by Murray W. Dempster, Byron D. Klaus, and Douglas Petersen, 19. Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock, 2011.
Malebranche, Nicolas. See entry in Cross and Livingstone, Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church.
Martin, David. Tongues of Fire: The Explosion of Protestantism in Latin America. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1990.
McCarter, P. Kyle Jr. I Samuel: A New Translation with Introduction, Notes and Commentary. Anchor Bible 8. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2008.
Molina, Luis de. On Divine Foreknowledge: Part IV of the Concordia. Translated by Alfred J. Freddoso. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1988.
Neusner, Jacob, trans. and ed. The Babylonian Talmud: A Translation and Commentary. Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 2011.
Nietzsche, Friedrich. On the Genealogy of Morals. Translated by Walter Kaufmann. New York: Vintage Books, 1967.
Pritchard, James B., ed. Ancient Near Eastern Texts Relating to the Old Testament. 3rd ed. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1969.
Sanders, John. The God Who Risks: A Theology of Divine Providence. 2nd ed. Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2007.
Tsumura, David Toshio. The First Book of Samuel. New International Commentary on the Old Testament. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2007.
van der Merwe, Christo H. J., Jacobus A. Naudé, and Jan H. Kroeze. A Biblical Hebrew Reference Grammar. 2nd ed. London: Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2017.
Walton, John H. Zondervan Illustrated Bible Backgrounds Commentary. Vol. 5. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2009.
Wright, David P. “Music and Dance in 2 Samuel 6.” Journal of Biblical Literature 121 (2002): 203–210.
Youngblood, Ronald F. “1, 2 Samuel.” In The Expositor’s Bible Commentary, revised edition, vol. 3, edited by Tremper Longman III and David E. Garland. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2009.
 
 

Appendix A

First 60 days: Music Streaming Data

I created an Ai Band named ispress.de. Five songs in the catalog were not assembled through short AI compositional cycles alone but carried a prior history with use in the Church. These were "Risen," "Holy Name," "Lifted," "We See The Lord," and "Death." Each had been written years earlier, prayed over, sung in live congregational worship before being processed through the same AI production framework as the rest of the catalog. The remaining forty-five songs were composed and released within compressed generative five hour cycles and did not undergo communal use. It’s also important to note that the technological medium remained constant across all fifty songs. That is, I took live songs and then regenerated them with Ai so they could not be identified. The only meaningful variable was the Spirit.
Also, the data presented below reflects Spotify streaming only. It does not include approximately 40,000 plays recorded on SoundCloud or approximately 5,000 plays recorded on Apple Music. Those additional platforms reflect the same distributional pattern: historically formed songs account for a disproportionately high percentage of listener engagement relative to their numerical representation in the catalog. The figures below therefore represent a single platform snapshot within the first few weeks, but it may be too early to tell.

Total Spotify Streams Across Catalog: 13,710
Full Spotify Streaming Data with Exact Percentages
Shaded rows indicate historically formed songs.

 


*Unless otherwise noted, English biblical quotations in this paper are taken from the New American Standard Bible (La Habra, CA: The Lockman Foundation, 2020), and the Hebrew text is drawn from Francis I. Andersen and A. Dean Forbes, The Hebrew Bible: Andersen Forbes Analyzed Text (Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press, 2008).
[1] Mesopotamian ritual and mythological texts frequently show music and lamentation rites as capable of calming divine distress. One of the comparative example to the David/Saul narrative appears in a balag composition associated with tablet BM 29616 and discussed by Kramer, in which the god Enki fashions the gala lamentation priest and equips him with laments and percussion instruments to soothe the troubled heart of the goddess Inanna and restore cosmic stability. See Samuel Noah Kramer, Sumerian Mythology: A Study of Spiritual and Literary Achievement in the Third Millennium BC (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1961), 72–76; Samuel Noah Kramer, “The Sumerian Lamentation Priest,” Journal of the American Oriental Society 72, no. 3 (1952): 198–205.
[2] Robert P. Gordon, 1 & 2 Samuel, Zondervan Illustrated Bible Backgrounds Commentary (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2009), 179.
[3] On the semantic range of שְׁאוֹל (Sheol), see John D. Barry et al., Faithlife Study Bible (Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press, 2012, 2016), s.v. "Sheol." The term may refer either to the physical grave or to the cosmic underworld. Both the righteous and wicked are said to enter Sheol (Gen. 37:35; Job 21:13), yet several passages hint at divine deliverance from its power (1 Sam. 2:6; Ps. 49:15; Prov. 15:24). In 1 Samuel 2:6, the paired verbs "brings down to Sheol" and "raises up" proves that even the realm of death lies under Yahweh's sovereign authority.
[4] Joyce G. Baldwin, 1 and 2 Samuel: An Introduction and Commentary, Tyndale Old Testament Commentaries (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1988), 131–132.
[5] Stephen B. Chapman, 1 Samuel as Christian Scripture: A Theological Commentary (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2016), 145–147.
[6] Timothy H. Lim, The Formation of the Jewish Canon, ed. John J. Collins, Anchor Yale Bible Reference Library (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2013), 6.
[7] Ronald F. Youngblood, “1, 2 Samuel,” in The Expositor’s Bible Commentary: 1 Samuel–2 Kings, rev. ed., ed. Tremper Longman III and David E. Garland, vol. 3 (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2009), 23.
[8] David G. Firth, Including the Stranger: Foreigners in the Former Prophets, New Studies in Biblical Theology 50 (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2019), 25–30.
[9] Baba Bathra 14b–15a in The Babylonian Talmud: A Translation and Commentary, trans. and ed. Jacob Neusner (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 2011), 53.
[10] P. Kyle McCarter Jr., I Samuel: A New Translation with Introduction, Notes and Commentary, Anchor Yale Bible 8 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2008), 23–26.
[11] Walter Brueggemann, First and Second Samuel, Interpretation (Louisville: John Knox Press, 1990), 12–16.
[12] Pierre Briant, “Persia and the Persians,” in The World around the Old Testament: The People and Places of the Ancient Near East, ed. Bill T. Arnold and Brent A. Strawn (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2016), 379–381; Owen D. Chesnut, “Israelite Expansion Process during Iron Age II: A Chalk Moat Perspective,” Near East Archaeological Society Bulletin 53 (2008): 36
[13] David P. Wright, "Music and Dance in 2 Samuel 6," Journal of Biblical Literature 121 (2002): 203–210.
[14] Annie F. Caubet, “Music and Dance in the World of the Bible,” in Behind the Scenes of the Old Testament: Cultural, Social, and Historical Contexts, ed. Jonathan S. Greer, John W. Hilber, and John H. Walton (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2018), 469–470.
[15] W. von Soden, Jan Bergman, and M. Sæbø, “יוֹם,” in Theological Dictionary of the Old Testament, ed. G. Johannes Botterweck and Helmer Ringgren, trans. David E. Green, vol. 6 (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1990), 10.
[16] B. Kedar-Kopfstein, “קוֹל,” in Theological Dictionary of the Old Testament, ed. G. Johannes Botterweck, Helmer Ringgren, and Heinz Josef Fabry, trans. Douglas W. Stott (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2003), 577–579.
[17] David Toshio Tsumura, The First Book of Samuel, New International Commentary on the Old Testament (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2007), 445–447.
[18] Gerald E. Kadish, “Egypt, History of: Early Dynastic—First Intermediate Period,” in The Anchor Yale Bible Dictionary, ed. David Noel Freedman (New York: Doubleday, 1992), 342.
[19] James B. Pritchard, ed., Ancient Near Eastern Texts Relating to the Old Testament, 3rd ed. with supplement (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1969), 268–269; 329–331.
[20] Richard A. Henshaw, Female and Male: The Cultic Personnel: The Bible and the Rest of the Ancient Near East (Allison Park, PA: Pickwick, 1994), 45–47.
[21] John H. Hilber, Behind the Scenes of the Old Testament: Cultural, Social, and Historical Contexts (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2018), 211.
[22] Leonard J. Coppes, “אדם,” in Theological Wordbook of the Old Testament, ed. R. Laird Harris, Gleason L. Archer Jr., and Bruce K. Waltke (Chicago: Moody Press, 1999), 11.
 
[23] James B. Pritchard, ed., Ancient Near Eastern Texts Relating to the Old Testament, 3rd ed. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1969), 268–269.
[24] Pritchard, Ancient Near Eastern Texts, 329–331.
[25] Samuel Noah Kramer, The Sumerians: Their History, Culture, and Character (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1963), 149–152.
[26] Pritchard, Ancient Near Eastern Texts, 434–437.
 
[27] P. Kyle McCarter Jr., I Samuel, Anchor Yale Bible 8 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2008), 276–284.
[28] David Toshio Tsumura, The First Book of Samuel, New International Commentary on the Old Testament (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2007), 445–447.
[29] On the semantic range of שְׁאוֹל (Sheol), see John D. Barry et al., Faithlife Study Bible (Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press, 2012, 2016), s.v. "Sheol." The term may refer either to the physical grave or to the cosmic underworld. Both the righteous and wicked are said to enter Sheol (Gen. 37:35; Job 21:13), yet several passages hint at divine deliverance from its power (1 Sam. 2:6; Ps. 49:15; Prov. 15:24). In 1 Samuel 2:6, the paired verbs "brings down to Sheol" and "raises up" proves that even the realm of death lies under Yahweh's sovereign authority.
[30] Ronald F. Youngblood, “1, 2 Samuel,” in The Expositor’s Bible Commentary, rev. ed., vol. 3, 57.
[31] Christo H. J. van der Merwe, Jacobus A. Naudé, and Jan H. Kroeze, A Biblical Hebrew Reference Grammar, 2nd ed. (London; Oxford; New York; New Delhi; Sydney: Bloomsbury; Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2017), 177.
[32] Wilhelm Gesenius and Samuel Prideaux Tregelles, Gesenius’ Hebrew and Chaldee Lexicon to the Old Testament Scriptures (Bellingham, WA: Logos Bible Software, 2003), 543; cf. Deut 1:38; 3:28; 32:8.
[33] P. Kyle McCarter Jr., I Samuel, Anchor Bible 8 (New York: Doubleday, 1980), 276–84.
[34] Nicolas Malebranche represents the classic formulation of occasionalism, denying genuine secondary causality and treating created realities as mere occasions for the immediate action of God. This is also generally true of Islam; see F. L. Cross and Elizabeth A. Livingstone, eds., The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, 3rd ed. rev. (Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press, 2005), 1031, s.v. “Malebranche, Nicolas.”
[35] John Sanders represents a contemporary model that affirms real creaturely causality while resisting strong claims of exhaustive divine determination. In his account, human beings possess libertarian freedom such that their future free acts are not settled realities until they occur. God sovereignly creates, sustains, and faithfully engages the world, yet He does not meticulously determine every event. Rather, He grants genuine freedom and responds dynamically within history. Divine foreknowledge, in this framework, includes knowledge of all possibilities and all that will in fact occur, but it does not entail that every future free act is eternally fixed by divine decree. Secondary causes are therefore real and not reducible to mere instruments of a prior deterministic will, though they remain dependent upon God as Creator and covenant Lord. See John Sanders, The God Who Risks: A Theology of Divine Providence, 2nd ed. (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2007), esp. 13–22, 187–205.
[36] Martin Luther strongly rejected any notion that creaturely powers operate independently of God’s will. While affirming that human beings truly act and remain responsible, he insisted that all events unfold under God’s sovereign governance, so that nothing occurs apart from His willing and working. For Luther, divine foreknowledge is inseparable from divine determination, and secondary causes never function outside God’s active rule. See Martin Luther, Martin Luther on the Bondage of the Will; To the Venerable Mister Erasmus of Rotterdam (1525), trans. Edward Thomas Vaughan (London: T. Hamilton; T. Combe, 1823), 59–62.
[37] Luis de Molina first articulated the doctrine of middle knowledge in his Concordia, arguing that God possesses knowledge of what any free creature would do under any possible set of circumstances, prior logically to His decree to create. On this view, God sovereignly actualizes a world in which His purposes are accomplished through genuinely free creaturely acts. William Lane Craig defends this position, describing middle knowledge as “one of the most fruitful theological ideas ever conceived,” since it explains not only divine foreknowledge but also “divine providence and predestination as well.” See Luis de Molina, On Divine Foreknowledge: Part IV of the Concordia, trans. Alfred J. Freddoso (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1988); William Lane Craig, The Only Wise God: The Compatibility of Divine Foreknowledge and Human Freedom (Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock, 2000), 127–135.
[38] While music could and did serve social functions, it was never far removed from ritual systems involving prophecy, divination, magic, and ecstatic performance. The line between the secular and the sacred, so familiar to the modern mind, would have been virtually invisible to the ancient one. Textual and iconographic sources from Mari and other Levantine sites further attest to orchestras and prophetic figures operating together in cultic ceremonies. This includes rites associated with Ishtar. Look at the prophets of Baal entering ecstatic frenzy in 1 Kings 18:19–29 and the use of a harp in prophetic consultation in 2 Kings 3:15. See John H. Walton, Zondervan Illustrated Bible Backgrounds Commentary: The Minor Prophets, Job, Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Song of Songs, vol. 5 (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2009), 276–278; Peter C. Craigie, Psalms 1–50, Word Biblical Commentary 19 (Dallas: Word, 1983), 38–39.
[39] Annie Caubet, “Music,” in The Anchor Bible Dictionary, ed. David Noel Freedman, vol. 4 (New York: Doubleday, 1992), 469–476.
[40] Frank D. Macchia, “The Struggle for Global Witness: Shifting Paradigms in Pentecostal Theology,” in The Globalization of Pentecostalism: A Religion Made to Travel, ed. Murray W. Dempster, Byron D. Klaus, and Douglas Petersen (Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 2011), 19; David Martin, Tongues of Fire: The Explosion of Protestantism in Latin America (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1990), 163.
[41] James B. Pritchard, ed., Ancient Near Eastern Texts Relating to the Old Testament, 3rd ed. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1969), 329–31.
[42] Annie F. Caubet, “Music and Dance in the World of the Bible,” in Behind the Scenes of the Old Testament: Cultural, Social, and Historical Contexts, ed. Jonathan S. Greer, John W. Hilber, and John H. Walton (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2018), 471.
[43] The Hebrew root רעע and its derivatives function as a remarkably broad negative category, covering both moral wickedness and non moral harm, adversity, calamity, and disaster. As Dohmen and Rick rightly emphasize, the semantic field draws no intrinsic lexical boundary between "bad" and "evil." The interpreter must determine the nuance from context, and this is a point worth pressing because a great deal depends upon it. Thus רַע may describe something as ordinary as defective conditions, bad water (2 Kings 2:19) or bad figs (Jer. 24:2), yet it may equally describe morally evil persons or actions (Gen. 6:5). The nominal form רָעָה carries the same breadth. It can denote concrete disaster or devastation (1 Kings 14:10; Amos 3:6), or it can denote moral and religious evil depending entirely upon context. This range supports reading רָעָה in many passages as "calamity" or "injurious affliction" rather than restricting it to moral evil, especially where the surrounding discourse concerns judgment, disaster, or suffering rather than ethical culpability. The word, in other words, follows the situation. It does not impose a meaning upon it. See C. Dohmen and D. Rick, “רעע,” in Theological Dictionary of the Old Testament, ed. G. Johannes Botterweck, Helmer Ringgren, and Heinz Josef Fabry, trans. David E. Green (Grand Rapids, MI; Cambridge, U.K.: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2004), 560–563.
[44] Friedrich Nietzsche, On the Genealogy of Morals, trans. Walter Kaufmann (New York: Vintage Books, 1967), 53.
[45] Bultmann famously argues that the NT presents a mythical world picture, including belief in supernatural interventions and spiritual agencies. His program of demythologizing seeks to interpret such language in existential rather than cosmological terms. Plainly, it means that the spirits are not real spirits, the interventions are not real interventions, and the entire supernatural framework of Scripture becomes a set of symbols for inner human experience. It is a remarkably tidy solution for the left, provided one is willing to let the text say something other than what it plainly says. See David W. Congdon, Rudolf Bultmann: A Companion to His Theology (Eugene, OR: Cascade Books, 2015), 104–107.
[46] The adjective רָעָה, feminine of רַע, possesses a wide semantic range including “bad,” “harmful,” “injurious,” “calamitous,” or “morally evil.” In 1 Samuel 16:14–23 the term modifies רוּחַ and is associated with the verb בעת, “to terrify,” which emphasizes the distressing or troubling effect upon Saul rather than moral corruption in Yahweh. The phrase מֵאֵת יְהוָה affirms divine source or sovereign authorization without specifying metaphysical mechanism. A comparable construction appears in Judges 9:23, where God “sends” a רוּחַ רָעָה to produce discord between Abimelech and the leaders of Shechem, demonstrating judicial disturbance rather than divine moral evil. The grammar therefore supports a reading of afflictive or disciplinary agency under divine providence rather than the claim that God authors moral wickedness. See Francis Brown, S. R. Driver, and Charles A. Briggs, A Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1907), 948.