to ease the theological dissonance these passages elicit by appealing to secondary causes not explicitly mentioned in the text. While this approach is attractive, it fails to do justice to what the text actually says. In the case of Saul, the text does not say that God “permits” an evil spirit to torment Saul. The text clearly claims that God is directly responsible. This is not surprising given ancient Israel’s worldview, in which everything that happened, good or evil, was regarded as coming from