When Evil Sings

Two songs. One glorifies Adolf Hitler. The other calls for hope.

One features men in animal pelts chanting “Heil Hitler.” The other features a young Israeli woman, a survivor of the October 7th massacre, singing in Hebrew, French, and English: A New Day Will Rise at the Euovision competition.

But somehow, the first is being praised, streamed, and shared. The second is being shouted down, protested, even threatened.

This isn’t just a cultural distortion. It’s a moral one.

And it’s not new.

The Bible is full of music. In moments of war and worship, grief and celebration, we find voices raised in song. But the Bible doesn’t treat all music equally. Some songs are sacred—offered with clarity and courage. Others are seductive or hollow, sung by those who have lost their way.

The first time the Bible records a full song is in Exodus 15, when the Israelites pass through the Red Sea. Pharaoh’s army has been swallowed by the waters. The people are free.

This is a song of justice. Not a celebration of violence, but of survival. Moses sings, and then Miriam picks up the tambourine. The music spreads. It is spontaneous, public, and deeply spiritual. Here, music doesn’t just accompany history—it testifies to it.

In Judges 5, Deborah, a prophetess and judge, sings after the victory over Sisera. This is not a lullaby. It is a fierce and poetic retelling of a military battle—naming names, praising courage, and calling out cowardice.

Biblical songs aren’t always gentle. But they’re always grounded. They don’t flatter—they confront. They hold a mirror to society and say: This is what God desires. This is what we must remember.

King David gives us the most sustained portrait of sacred music in the Bible. He plays the harp for Saul. He dances before the Ark. He composes psalms in caves and palaces, in triumph and in shame. Some psalms are raw cries for help. Others are theological reflections or political proclamations. Together, they offer a model: music as a form of truth-telling before God.

David doesn’t use music to escape reality—he uses it to face it. Even his darkest psalms are laced with the possibility of redemption.

But not all songs in the Bible are good.

In Exodus 32, while Moses is still on Mount Sinai, the people build the golden calf. As he descends the mountain, he hears something that sounds like victory—but it’s not.

That music wasn’t worship. It was chaos disguised as celebration. The same tools—drums, voices, joy—used days before to glorify God are now redirected toward idolatry. The melody may be stirring, but the heart is rotten.

Later, the prophet Amos delivers a sharp critique of those who misuse music for vanity:

Here, music is self-indulgent. It distracts from injustice. It entertains, but it doesn’t elevate. The sin is not the singing itself—but what is missing from the song: empathy, grief, God.

In Ezekiel’s time, the prophet speaks of people who treat his words like a performance.

Even sacred content becomes meaningless when it’s consumed for pleasure alone.

So how do we tell the difference?

The Bible doesn’t give us a playlist. It gives us a pattern. The songs that endure are the ones that tell the truth. They cry out against oppression. They lift up the downtrodden. They praise justice. They don’t manipulate. They don’t mock. They don’t glorify wickedness or erase suffering.

When evil sings, it often borrows the tools of beauty. It dresses hatred in harmony. It marches to the beat of charisma. But a song that glorifies hate—even if it trends—is not music. It’s noise.

And when good songs are silenced or attacked, we should remember: this too is in the Bible. The prophets were shouted down. The psalmist was hunted. Miriam’s tambourine rang out after Egypt’s horses drowned in the sea.

The question isn’t whether music moves us. It’s whether it moves us closer to truth.

So as we listen to the sounds echoing in our world—whether from a Eurovision stage or the dark corners of social media—we return to the oldest wisdom: not all songs are created equal. Some songs bring light. Some bring shadow.

And we already know how to tell the difference. The Bible taught us how to listen.