Biblical Hebrew Forum

[fred burlingame <tensorpath AT gmail.com>]

Hello George:

I can agree with your comments.

Let's not assign "evil" as the meaning of "ra" here.

Let's look at context of the word; immediate context, overall context.

Isaiah 45:5-6, recites not triviality, but rather appears to assert the
ultimate claim of reality; namely, that this Person identified in hebrew
as יהוה , not only is God, but is also the only God Who exists.

Whether true, or false, or a nice fairy tale, that claim becomes the
central message of the Tanakh. The remainder of the masoretic text fleshes
out the Who and What of this Person.

And so we see;

in Job 1:12-22 that the שטן takes marching orders from this Person; that the
deaths of Job's children and servants result from this Person;
in Numbers 31:17 Moshe received orders from this Person to kill the children
of Midian;
in Deuteronomy 32:39 יהוה again described as the Person Who puts to death,
and Who gives life;

in 1 Samuel 2:6 Hannah confirms that יהוה sends down to שאול and brings up
from there;

in Ezra 1:1, this Person regulates the thoughts of the great king and enemy
of Yisrael ... Cyrus;

in Isaiah 10:5-15, Assyria, enemy of Yisrael, acts but as the servant of
this Person;

in Amos 3:3-6 this Person יהוה again becomes described as the ultimate
Author of all "ra" everywhere at all times;

and finally, returning to Isaiah 45:9, this Person becomes described as the
Potter; and man identified as but the pot, without free will at all.

It seems beyond doubt, that whatever the english meaning of "ra," it
represents part of the inclusion of all human thoughts, words and deeds
(good and evil), under the direct control of this Person. So, if "shalom"
means whole or complete here, then "ra" means incomplete or not whole here.

But whatever the idiomatic meaning of "ra" in this particular verse, the
message of the story changes not; which is: יהוה regulates all thoughts, all
words and all deeds of all things and persons, at all times, both positive
and negative.

regards,

fred burlingame

On Wed, Oct 27, 2010 at 3:21 PM, George Athas 
<George.Athas AT moore.edu.au>wrote:

> No Fred, your analysis is a little too narrow. The word רע has a very broad
> semantic range. The best word that captures it in English (if you can
> possibly capture it in a single word) is ‘bad’. In some instances it conveys
> the sense of a disaster, misfortune, ugliness, or just plain not nice. Take
> Gen 41.20, for instance. It’s not making a moral statement about cows. It’s
> just saying that the cows were in ‘bad’ shape. On other occasions, however,
> it does appear to involve a moral quality and, as such, could be rendered
> ‘evil’ (eg. Gen 6.5).
>
> You seem to be committing the common fallacy of totality transfer: taking
> one meaning within a semantic range and applying it across the board to all
> instances of a particular word.
>
> Isa 45.7 has to be taken within context. Since שׁלום doesn’t always have a
> moral quality to it, I don’t think we must demand that רע (it’s parallel
> opposite) should either. In the context, it is a statement that Yahweh
> controls the forces that affect human life. I don’t think it’s a
> philosophical statement about the origin of evil. I can see how you might
> take it that way, but in my opinion that divorces it from the surrounding
> context and, as the old saying goes, if you take a text out of context,
> you’re left with a con.
>
>
> GEORGE ATHAS
> Moore Theological College (Sydney, Australia)
> www.moore.edu.au
>
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