Biblical Hebrew Forum

[CS Bartholomew <jacksonpollock AT earthlink.net>]

On 7/31/03 1:32 PM, "Jim West" <jwest AT highland.net> wrote:

> I don't understand fully how you render r'a as "displeasure".  Is it
> contextually accurate?  Further, what other occurences of r'a would merit
> such a rendering?  "evil" or "wickedness" seem to be the standard
> understanding and are a tad more forceful, it seems to me, than
> "displeasure" which sort of sounds like a softening of meaning based on a
> theological preconception about God.

The LXX renders r(  as KAKA in Isa. 45:7.

KAKOS is not a nice word,

from LEH (1st ed.)

kakos,-e,-on+    
    bad, evil, wicked  (of pers., in moral sense) ... evil, injurious,
dangerous


Theodicy is certainly a theological & philosophical topic in which OT
philology plays some part but I suspect that we are not going to solve this
problem with philology alone.

Ages ago I took some classes from a guy who was finishing up his Phd from
the U of Chicago in Philosophy and was doing his thesis on the problem of
evil. I read his thesis a decade later and concluded that he had not solved
the problem :-)))

I also read A.Plantinga's "classic" work on this and came to the same
conclusion. Recently I read with appreciation the portions of John Frame's
Doctrine of God which deal with this. Again the problem is still there

greetings,
Clay Bartholomew