"And the Spirit of the LORD Came Upon Him"
Reading through the Old Testament, one will realize that God may sometimes "bend the rules" so that his people can survive or progress. One will see that there are situations in which, under normal circumstances, God's people should have been annihilated. Somewhere in these stories one will most likely see the phrase "and the Spirit of the Lord came upon him/them," followed by a swift and dramatic victory for God's chosen one/ones. These events may give rise to many questions concerning exactly what effect the "Spirit of the Lord" had on His people. Did those filled with His Spirit become invincible? Did our Almighty Creator possess them and then take over the battle? Did they physically win the battle, or did God destroy the enemy and name His chosen one/ones the victors?
An important thing that one must remember when trying to distinguish how these events actually happened is that the Lord is omnipotent and can do anything He wants in any way He wants. God could have acted in any of the ways mentioned above. Several times throughout the Bible God is referred to as having a "mighty hand." God uses His "mighty hand" to repeatedly deliver His people from bondage. Ezekiel mentions that God will rule over us "with a mighty hand." From the Scriptures, one can determine that God is (along with many other traits) mighty.
In the third chapter of Judges, the Bible says, "And the Spirit of the LORD came upon him, and he judged Israel, and went out to war: and the LORD delivered Cushan-rishathaim king of Mesopotamia into his hand; and his hand prevailed against Cushan-rishathaim." The Hebrew word for "Spirit" is ru^ach, and the entry in Strong's Concordance for this word is as follows: From H7306; wind; by resemblance breath, that is, a sensible (or even violent) exhalation; figuratively life, anger, unsubstantiality; by extension a region of the sky; by resemblance spirit, but only of a rational being (including its expression and functions): - air, anger, blast, breath, X cool, courage, mind, X quarter, X side, spirit ([-ual]), tempest, X vain, ([whirl-]) wind (-y).
From this definition we see that this spirit was one of wisdom but also of anger and even violence. Perhaps in order for a person to be used to deliver God's wrath upon an enemy, that person must be able to feel the anger that God feels toward that enemy and the discernment to know exactly how to handle the situation.
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