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