Isaiah chapter 31 seems like it's really part of the prophecy in chapter 30, because we're still talking about it being a bad thing to go to Egypt for help. Also, the SAB doesn't have much to say about this chapter, with one real important exception.
What the Bible says about evil is actually, I'm sure, far from an exhaustive lost of verses of the Bible that deal with evil; it's really a rather large collection of verses that say evil comes from God. Now, I could make an argument here about how the word translated "evil" in verse two has nuance (most other translations seem to render it "disaster"), because there's definitely something to be said there, but really, I'm sure there are many Hebrew words translated "evil" by the KJV, and it would take days to unpack them all, and I have little desire to go down that road. I think it suffices to say that according to the plain English of the KJV, God is definitely a source of evil. Does that present a theological problem? Certainly for most people. Really, there's the classic theological "Problem of Evil", which I think I have discussed in my other blog, that struggles with the question of "How can there be evil if God is good?" but what if God is the source of some of the evil in the world? That's a tough one! Furthermore, while it is tempting to say that whatever "evil" God inflicts is only upon evil people to correct them towards greater good, even the Bible itself once again shows us that sometimes God inflicts "evil" on good people, notably in the book of Job. While you can say technically it was Satan who attacked Job, he did so with God's seal of approval. So yeah, if you take the KJV at face value in this matter, it's something deep to grapple with. It's deeper than I want to go in a blog post here, but perhaps I'll explore it more in the comments or in my other blog?
Tuesday, January 23, 2024
Behold, this evil is of the LORD (Isaiah 31)
Labels:
Bible,
Biblical interpretation,
evil,
God,
Isaiah,
prophecy,
Skeptics Annotated Bible
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4 comments:
While I didn't do an exhaustive word study in the Hebrew for words translated "evil" I wondered what would be a likely candidate for unequivocally being "evil" and thought of the first time the word appears in the Bible: Genesis 2:9. It's the same Hebrew word as in Isaiah 31:2. Interesting...
I checked my other blog and the most in-depth post on the Problem of Evil is Moralists Anonymous. It doesn't really answer the question posed here, but may approach the concept nonetheless.
The word "evil" appears over 450 times in the Old Testament KJV. The Hebrew word used in Genesis 2:9 is the vast majority of of them.
The Problem of Evil and God
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