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  • From: "Harold R. Holmyard III" <hholmyard AT ont.com>
  • To: b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] Evil & God
  • Date: Thu, 11 Aug 2005 12:09:37 -0500

Dear Shoshanna,

Thanks for Rabbi Tovia Singer's article, which gives food for thought and response.

http://www.outreachjudaism.org/satan.html

(skip)

Why weren't the rabbis stunned by these Jewish teachings on Satan?
Because the Hebrew scriptures explicitly declare that the Almighty
Himself places both the good and the evil that He created before
mankind in order to provide His prime creation with free will.
Deuteronomy 30:15 states,

See, I [God] have set before thee this day life and good, and death and evil.

HH: God is speaking about pleasant and unpleasant consequences, depending on their choice to follow Him or not. That is quite evident from the preceding context in Deuteronomy 30. If you go to the start of the chapter:

Deut. 30:1: When all these blessings and curses I have set before you come upon you and you take them to heart wherever the LORD your God disperses you among the nations,

HH: The blessings and curses were those promised in Deuter 27-29, blessings for obedience to the law and curses for disobedience to it. The blessings are the good and life, the curses are the death and evil. So RA( is not so much metaphysical evil as divine judgment and misfortune.

In Isaiah 45:7, the prophet describes God's creation plan when he reports that,

I form the light, and create darkness; I make peace, and create evil;
I the Lord do all these things.

HH: The contrast is really quite similar here, for "peace" is the Hebrew word shalom and also connotes prosperity and well-being. Here is part of the definition of RA( from The Hebrew and Aramaic Lexicon of the Old Testament. Note that it includes ideas such as misfortune, evil circumstances, harm, and ruin:

-4. a., but certainly not to be separated from 4 b; -i. ra¦{ misfortune 1K 228.18 (:: tˆo®b‰)/2C 187 l§ra¦{a® (:: l§tˆo®b‰a¦h), v. 17 l§ra¦{ (:: tˆo®b‰); Hab 29a Zeph 315 Ps 234 Jb 519 Pr 514 1221, ha¦ra¦{ Dt 3015 (parallel with hama¦wet×), b‰a¦ra¦{ Gn 4434; -ii. b‰§ra¦{ in the midst of evil circumstances Ex 519, into evil (misfortune) Pr 1317, lo¦}-b‰§ra¦{ protected from misfortune Ps 106, cf. Kraus BK 15:216; -iii. b‰§ra¦{a® in evil circumstances 2K 1410 2C 2519; -iv. yo®m ra¦{ the evil day, meaning the day of misfortune Am 63 (see above A 7 a), pl. y§me® ra¦{ Ps 496 9413; -b. i. ra¦{ harm Gn 4816 Is 312 457 (parallel with sûa¦lo®m), Mi 112 Ps 1217 14012 Jb 3129, ha¦ra¦{ Ps 547; l§ra{ lo® Qoh 89, l§ra{ la¦k‰em Jr 76 257 to his your harm! (see above, B 3 b); -ii. la¦ra¦{ for evil, for harm Ps 566, into ruin (REB: crime, cf. NRSV: evil) Is 597 Pr 116 2112.

The rabbi continues:

Isaiah 45:7 and Deuteronomy 30:15, however, pose a serious
theological problem for Christians who maintain that God did not
create Satan, the angel of evil.

HH: Christians affirm that God created Satan, but not that He created him
evil.

According to Christian doctrine,
Satan was the highest-ranking angel who, through his own act of
spiritual defiance and outright disobedience, became the chief
adversary and slanderer of God and the embodiment of evil in this
world. In Christian theology God never created evil; He is only the
author of righteousness and perfection, as you maintained in your
question. Therefore, God could never create something as sinister as
the devil himself. Rather, Satan's unyielding wickedness is the
result of his own spiritual rebellion.

Although this well-known Christian doctrine has much in common with
the pagan Zoroastrian Persian dualism out of which it was born,

HH: If it is a metaphysical truth, it is only reflected in Zoroastrianism. The assertion that it arose in Zoroastrianism is debatable.

it is
completely alien to the teachings of the Jewish faith and the words
of the Jewish scriptures.

HH: This is not really true. Arguments can be made for Satan's fall in Ezekiel 28, and for his malice in Job and Zechariah. The founders of the Christian faith, who composed its Scriptures, were all Jewish. We have seen that Enoch, a Jewish writing, contains the teaching of sinning angels in its earliest parts, which have pre-Christian dates. The following excerpt is from chapter 6 of 1 Enoch:
http://www.carm.org/lost/enoch.htm

6 1 And it came to pass when the children of men had multiplied that in those days were born unto 2 them beautiful and comely daughters. And the angels, the children of the heaven, saw and lusted after them, and said to one another: 'Come, let us choose us wives from among the children of men 3 and beget us children.' And Semjaza, who was their leader, said unto them: 'I fear ye will not 4 indeed agree to do this deed, and I alone shall have to pay the penalty of a great sin.'

Here is the date for that section of Enoch:
http://reluctant-messenger.com/enoch.htm

"Chaps. 1-36 The Book of the Watchers may date from the third century BCE. Parts of its text have been identified on several copies from Qumran cave 4; the earliest fragmentary manuscript (4QEnocha) dates, according to the editor J.T. Milk, to between 200 and 150 BCE. All Qumran copies are in the Aramaic language."
- James C. Vanderkam

In fact, the Christian teaching that Satan
was originally intended by God to be a good angel but, in an act of
outright defiance, ceased to function as God had intended him to,
suggests that God created something imperfect or defective.

HH: Adam was created without sin but fell. The same could happen with an angel who used his free will to sin.

For the Jewish faith, Satan's purpose in seducing man away from God
poses no problem because Satan is only an agent of God. As a servant
of the Almighty, Satan faithfully carries out the divine will of his
Creator as he does in all his tasks.

HH: Satan clearly has his own will in Job. He advocates for evil. It is his idea to bring these evils on Job.

Satan is one of the many angels mentioned in the Bible. It is worth
noting that the Hebrew word for angel is malach, meaning
"messenger." The same is true for the English word angel, derived
from the Greek word angelos, which also means "messenger."
Throughout the Bible, an angel is a messenger of God who carries out
the divine will of the Almighty. There is not one example in the
Jewish scriptures where any angel, Satan included, opposes God's will.

HH: This is highly debatable. Consider this passage in Zechariah:

Zech. 3:1 ¶ Then he showed me Joshua the high priest standing before the angel of the LORD, and Satan standing at his right side to accuse him.
Zech. 3:2 The LORD said to Satan, "The LORD rebuke you, Satan! The LORD, who has chosen Jerusalem, rebuke you! Is not this man a burning stick snatched from the fire?"

HH: Why would the Lord rebuke Satan unless he was doing something wrong, something contrary to God?

In no part of the Bible is this more evident than in the Book of
Job. In the first chapter of Job, Satan appears with other angels
before God and suggests that Job's steadfast faithfulness would not
withstand personal pain and utter destitution. Satan then requests
from God the chance to test Job's virtue. The Almighty grants this
request, but He meticulously outlines for Satan what he may and may
not do when putting Job to the test. Satan obediently follows his
Creator's instructions. Job is immediately put to the test and, by
the third chapter, begins to struggle. He questions his Maker as to
why he was created and, in a moment of despair, wishes aloud that he
had perished in his mother's womb. Still, by the end of this
unparalleled biblical narrative, Job's virtue prevails over Satan's
unyielding torment.

HH: A close reading of Job shows that Satan is a malicious, self-willed spirit. The fact that God must allow his actions, and that his actions can serve God's purposes, does not mean that he simply acts at God's behest. He instigates actions, though only with divine permission.

While in Christian terms Job's personal spiritual triumph is a
theological impossibility, in Jewish terms it stands out as the
embodiment of God's salvation program for mankind.

HH: Job was had some human sinfulness, despite being a righteous man. His trials reveal that he is not perfect. His victory is not impossible in Christian theology, for Christians believe in the possibility of spiritual victory by sinful men who trust in God. That is what Job did, though he faltered somewhat.

In Deuteronomy
30:15, the Torah attests to this principle and in Isaiah 45:7, the
prophet echoes this message when he declares that the Almighty
Himself creates evil.

HH: It is not metaphysical evil, angelic evil, that is in view in here, but harmful earthly circumstances. In Isaiah God predicts the victory of Cyrus by His help. Cyrus would break down city gates and gain hidden treasures. God would enable him to do this for the sake of Israel. He, as the only God, would summon Cyrus. Cyrus' deliverance of Israel would contribute to God's goal of all men knowing Him to be the true God (Isa 45:1-6). God is sovereign in the world, forming light and creating darkness, making good fortune and creating misfortune. Of course, God allows evil for His purposes, and moral evil can be included in the word RA( here through secondary agency. God takes responsibility for all that happens. After all, He is sovereign.

This biblical principle, however, was apparently too problematic for
the Christian translators of the NIV Bible (New International
Version). They clearly recognized that a Bible which asserts that
God creates evil calls into question one of Christendom's most
cherished teachings on salvation. How can the church insist that man
is totally depraved when his God placed him in a world where he is
free to choose good over evil?

HH: Standard teaching is that man is evil because he chose evil in Adam and Eve. By the way, these teachings of man's total depravity are found in many places in the Tanakh, among them Psalm 14:

Psa. 14:2 The LORD looks down from heaven on the sons of men to see if there are any who understand, any who seek God.
Psa. 14:3 All have turned aside, they have together become corrupt; there is no one who does good, not even one.

How can the church hold to a doctrine
of election or predestination when free will is man's to express?
How can Christians maintain that God did not create evil when the
Jewish scriptures clearly state otherwise?

HH: Genesis 3 shows human evil to be due to human choice. The doctrine of election can be understood to include human free will because of God's knowledge of all things, including the future.

Understandably, the NIV translators saw fit to alter the prophet's
words by rendering the offensive Hebrew word rah as "disaster"
instead of correctly translating it as "bad" or "evil." The NIV
Bible therefore mistranslates Isaiah 45:7 to read,

HH: As I have shown, standard lexicons allow that RA( can mean things like misfortune, ruin, and harm.

I form the light and create darkness, I bring prosperity and create
disaster; I, the Lord, do all these things.

The word "disaster" inserted by the NIV is so ambiguous that the
uninformed reader would easily come to the conclusion that it refers
to such things as earthquakes and hurricanes. This skewed
understanding created by the NIV mistranslation effectively conceals
Isaiah's original message. As mentioned above, the KJV (King James
Version) does correctly translate this verse and render the Hebrew
word rah as "evil."

HH: The fact is that RA( does includes such things as earthquakes and hurricanes. The word RA( encompasses the curses of the law, and many of the curses were such things as climate conditions:

Deut. 28:23 The sky over your head will be bronze, the ground beneath you
iron.
Deut. 28:24 The LORD will turn the rain of your country into dust and powder; it will come down from the skies until you are destroyed.

HH: Deuteronomy 28 uses RA( as an adjective to describes aspects of the curses. I capitalize the word translated for RA(:

Deut. 28:35 The LORD will afflict your knees and legs with PAINFUL boils that cannot be cured, spreading from the soles of your feet to the top of your head.
Deut. 28:59 the LORD will send fearful plagues on you and your descendants, harsh and prolonged disasters, and SEVERE and lingering illnesses.

One final point is in order here. Christians often point to Isaiah
14:12 as a biblical reference to support their teachings of the final
and complete downfall of Satan which brings to an end the long and
otherwise successful career of this fallen angel. They argue that
Isaiah's mention of the fallen "morning star" refers to Satan's
ultimate demise at the end of time when Satan will finally be cast
into a lake of fire as articulated in the twentieth chapter of the
Book of Revelation.

There are, however, two serious problems with this assertion. First,
if Christians maintain that the "morning star" is a reference to
Satan, how do they explain Revelation 22:16 where Jesus is called the
"morning star" as well? Secondly, a cursory reading of the
fourteenth chapter of Isaiah reveals that the "morning star" spoken
of in Isaiah 14:12 is referring to Nebuchadnessar, the wicked King of
Babylon, and not to Satan. In 14:4 the prophet explicitly names the
king of Babylon as the subject of the prophecy.

That thou shall take up this proverb against the king of Babylon, and
say, How hath the oppressor ceased, the golden city ceased!

Throughout this chapter and the preceding chapter of Isaiah, the
prophet foretells the rise and fall of this arrogant king who would
use his unbridled power to plunder Jerusalem and destroy its Temple
but, at the end, would suffer a cataclysmic downfall. In 14:12
Nebuchadnezzar is compared to the planet Venus whose light is still
visible in the morning yet vanishes with the rise of the sun. Like
the light of Venus, Nebuchadnezzar's reign shone brilliantly for a
short time, yet, as the prophets foretold, was eventually
overshadowed by the nation of Israel whose light endured and outlived
this arrogant nation who tormented and exiled her.

HH: But there are Ugaritic stories that resemble Isaiah 14 and speak about gods. So Isaiah can compare the king of Babylon to heavenly figures. In Isaiah 14:12 the figure is called "shining one, son of the dawn." Certainly this may refer to the morning star. But the fact that a supernatural figure, to whom the king of Babylon is compared, is called "shining one, son of the dawn," does not mean that Jesus Christ cannot much later and perhaps a different sense be called the "bright morning star" (Rev 22:16).

Yours,
Harold Holmyard
From Awohili AT aol.com Thu Aug 11 14:10:21 2005
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Harold would seem to be correct on the meaning of RA( ("evil," etc.).
Hamillon Hamaasi (Hebrew Publishing Co. 1947) includes among its meaning of
RA('
"adversity, misfortune." And Matityahu Clark's _Etymological Dictionary of
Biblical Hebrew, Based on the Commentaries of Samson Raphael Hirsch_
(Feldheim,
1999) derives the word from a trilateral root meaning basically "break into
pieces," and including both (moral) evil and adversity.

Solomon Landers

In a message dated 08/11/2005 10:11:53 A.M. Pacific Daylight Time,
hholmyard AT ont.com writes:

I form the light and create darkness, I bring prosperity and create
disaster; I, the Lord, do all these things.

The word "disaster" inserted by the NIV is so ambiguous that the
uninformed reader would easily come to the conclusion that it refers
to such things as earthquakes and hurricanes. This skewed
understanding created by the NIV mistranslation effectively conceals
Isaiah's original message. As mentioned above, the KJV (King James
Version) does correctly translate this verse and render the Hebrew
word rah as "evil."

HH: The fact is that RA( does includes such
things as earthquakes and hurricanes. The word
RA( encompasses the curses of the law, and many
of the curses were such things as climate
conditions:









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