A Spirit of Divination and a Love of Money

A very strange event unfolded at Phillippi where Paul and Silas were preaching the word of God (Acts 16:16-19). One day, as they were going to a place of prayer, they were met by a slave girl who was possessed by a spirit of divination (Acts 16:16). Regardless of whoever this spirit was, its name was translated from the word “Python,” which was a reference to the guardian serpent at the oracle of Delphi in Greek mythological narratives.  In any case, the special power this spirit gave to the girl was being exploited by her slave owners for great commercial gain. 

What makes the event so strange is not the presence of a possessed slave girl. The bible mentions many such supernatural phenomena. What makes it strange is that this possessed slave girl recognized the status of Paul and Silas by vocally identifying them to everyone as “servants of the Most High God” (Acts 16:17). Furthermore, she told everyone that the two men were offering them the way to salvation! Paul eventually became annoyed with her and cast the evil spirit from her body in the name of Jesus Christ (Acts 16:18). 

A good textual study technique is to always look for places in the scripture to ask questions, and this passage of scripture screams for at least three questions to be asked. First, why would an inferior evil spirit affirm the status of men who serve the highest of all spiritual powers? Second, why would an evil spirit blatantly identify a way for people to be saved by The Most High God to which it was eternally at war? Third, why would Paul be annoyed by an evil spirit confirming the truth of the gospel he was preaching? The answers to those questions are difficult to discern, and we may never uncover them on this side of Heaven. One possible explanation is that the evil spirit in the girl wasn’t certifying the power of the gospel by identifying “the” way to salvation, but instead was obfuscating the gospel by pointing out that Paul and Silas were providing “a” way.  Many of the older Greek manuscript copies do not have the definite article “the” limiting the gospel way to a singular “one”.  This is why some translations present the girl as proclaiming “the way of salvation,” while others render her as proclaiming “a way of salvation” (See the NASB95 and the CSB).  If this possessed slave girl was planting in the heads of those listening to the preaching that there was more than one way to be saved, it certainly would have annoyed an Apostle of God in general, and an Apostle like Paul in particular (Acts 4:12, Galatians 1:8-9). 

We will probably never know for sure on this side of Christ’s return the reason for this odd exchange between the slave girl and Paul, but one thing is clear. The unpossessed men who were exploiting this possessed girl were not doing it because they themselves were directly compelled by an unseen spiritual oppressor.  They were doing it because they were compelled by their own personal love of money. The god of their belly and the god of their wallet was more important to them than the spiritual state of a young woman enslaved to them. And that sad fact is every bit as dark  as the evil of an antichrist spirit inhabiting the body of an unknowing human – maybe even darker. They were willfully possessed by their desires. The slave girl may not have been initially willfully possessed by demonic forces.