(ProQuest: ... denotes non-US-ASCII text omitted.)Better to reign in Hell than serve in Heaven.-John Milton, Paradise Lost, 1.263One of the most vexing problems of the Hebrew Bible concerns its references to subordinate supernatural beings that engage in destructive activities. Modern readers cannot help but react negatively when YHWH dispatches a company of ... (messengers of evils) in Ps 78:49 that are expressions of divine wrath, indignation, and distress (...). In 2 Sam 24:16, when David is punished for taking a census, YHWH's ... is described as ... (the one who destroys), a name-if it may be called such-shared by ... in Exod 12:23, which YHWH prevents from entering the Israelites' homes. Even more disquieting is the fact that these ... act according to the wishes of the Godhead. Do these particular beings have any relation to the ... (destructive wind) of which YHWH states, according to Jer 51:1, I am about to stir up [...] against Babylon?Theologians may find it difficult to accept that a deity who is all-good can nevertheless dispatch subordinate supernatural beings who wreak havoc. According to conventional views, even though these beings may act like demons, they cannot be identified as such because YHWH directs them to act. Scholars engaged in critical biblical scholarship may similarly ponder this paradox. On the other hand, Assyriologists are free of such limitations: all Akkadian-speaking societies that generated texts depicting the activities of subordinate supernatural beings were polytheistic. Their deities were evil and capricious with little to no shred of decency among them. It stands to reason, therefore, that such malicious deities would exploit a host of demons to achieve their equally malicious ends.The aim of this essay is to demonstrate that the sharply antithetical perspective presented above is largely a construct that developed from a Judeo-Christian philosophical approach expounded by Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274) based on the works of Aristotle (384-322 BCE).1 This perspective posits a deliberate moral choice behind all actions undertaken by mortal or immortal beings. Its foundation is the concept of free will. This somewhat modern perspective has been anachronistically incorporated into the interpretation of the Hebrew Bible and ancient Near Eastern religious texts. The goal here is to discern the ancient Near Eastern understanding of these supernatural beings apart from the Judeo-Christian presuppositions entailed by the idea of demons.I will address the issue of the existence, nature, and function of subordinate supernatural beings in the Hebrew Bible through an examination of the Akkadian entity known as rabisu and its Hebrew next of kin, robes, a hapax legomenon that appears in Gen 4:7 and is typically understood to refer to a demon. After a review of the fundamental meaning of the Semitic root rbs, a survey of the activity, character, and manifestations of rabisus will bring to the fore the unique relationship these beings have with the winds produced by a governing deity. While this point may not immediately explain robes, it does inform the operation of ... (the spirit of YHWH). My hypothesis is that the ... (the evil spirit of God, 1 Sam 16:15) does not act in opposition to YHWH but, like the rabisu, is a supernatural being produced by YHWH's windy words that express his judgment against wayward human behavior. This means that the evil borne by the ... and the rabisu lemnu (evil rabisu) refers to the character of the event articulated in the divine message and not the supernatural being itself.I. A HISTORY OF THE ISSUEThe scholarly debate and the metamorphosis of the interpretation of rabisu and robes are as interesting as, if not more engaging than, the actual issue at hand. The topic marks an early intersection between Assyriology and biblical studies, with Akkadian providing insight into the meaning of a Hebrew term. …