[Gary Petty] What do you think when I say the word evil? Maybe someone who commits mass murders or who tortures children, or maybe in your mind you think immediately of terrible people like Adolf Hitler or Charles Manson. Well, there is a verse in the Bible, in Isaiah that has confused people for a long time. And this is the Old King James translation of Isaiah 45:7. And it says, and this is quoting God, "I make peace and create evil." And the question that people have asked, "How can a loving God who is good create evil?" To really understand this you have to understand what the Hebrew word that is translated evil here in English actually means, here's what it means according to a Hebrew dictionary. It can mean bad or evil in the way that we use the word evil which is either naturally or morally but it can also mean adversity, affliction, and calamity.

It's interesting, the New International Version translates this phrase as, "I love prosperity and create disaster." The New American Standard as, "Creating well being and creating calamity and the New King James, "I make peace and make calamity." When you look at this and you compare peace with calamity, then you start to realize that what God is talking about here is, He can create peace with human beings who have peace with Him or He can create disaster and calamity on those who He punishes because of the rebellion against Him. When you look at the book of Proverbs and Ecclesiastes, you see this word evil as is translated in English used in a number of different ways. Proverbs 11:19 says, "As righteousness leads life, so he who pursues evil pursues it to his own death." So, here you have evil used to mean the way we use evil, badness, moral corruptness.

But here's how Solomon who wrote that verse in Proverbs also says this in Ecclesiastes 2:21, "There is a man whose labor is with wisdom, knowledge, and skill yet he must leave his heritage to a man who has not labored for it. This also is vanity and a great evil." So, Solomon looks at a person who works hard and really amasses wealth to pass it on to someone else, it has no heir so has no one to pass it on to it. And he says, you know, "This is evil." In other words, it's a calamity, it's a disaster.

The horrors of evil empires is not created by God. God does not create evil, bad morality, but God does create calamities. So, when you look at the word evil in the Old Testament, you need to look at the context to understand what is actually being said.

This is BT Daily, join us next time.