Rabbi Nico here.
I was reading Proverbs 16 this morning and came across this:
“The Lord has made all for Himself, yes, even the wicked for the day of doom.”
That’s verse 4, and it sure throws a wrench in a common Christian interpretation of the problem of evil.
When I was a kid, much of my religious learning was from Protestant churches and private schools. The answer to the question of “Why did G’d create evil?” was typically this:
“G’d didn’t so much create evil as He created good, and then the Devil twisted it into evil. Evil does not exist on its own accord so much as it is the absence of G’d’s goodness and love, just as darkness is just the absence of light and cold is the absence of heat.”
That is a very smart answer, and well thought out. I liked it for a long time. However, this verse seems to suggest otherwise. On its face, this verse seems to suggest that G’d created evil just so that He could destroy it some day.
Not going to shy away from this hard question, so let’s get into it. Let’s start with breaking down the Hebrew.
The phrase “for Himself” in “The L’rd has made all for Himself,” comes from the Hebrew word “maaneh,” which means “to answer” or “to respond.” At Proverbs 15:1, it’s the word for answer in the phrase, “A gentle answer turns away wrath.” Thus, the full word “la’maaneh’hu,” seems to mean something akin to “to answer Himself.
So, “the L’rd has made all things to answer Himself,” is another way to translate the first half of the verse. Why does G’d need an answer? Is there a question? This raises all sorts of interesting questions.
So, let’s keep looking. Let’s look at the word for “evil” in Scripture, which is “ra.” The word might be better translated to “bad” or “strife.” In Genesis 31:29, it’s translated as “harm.” In Genesis 37:33, it is used to describe a “wild beast.” So, evil in Scripture may not be the sort of “evil” that we think of.
In our culture, when we think of the term “evil” we think of “malice,” which is to say people who intentionally cause harm with horrible motivations. It’s a bit of an abstract concept in our culture, because the ethicists and moral philosophers who helped our society understand morality were a mix of Biblical thinkers and non-Biblical thinkers, and usually they had more of a Greek mindset than a Hebrew one.
However, in our culture we wouldn’t call a wild animal “evil,” because it’s just being an animal. We also wouldn’t call an ugly and/or unhealthy cow “evil,” yet the same word, “ra,” is used to describe the cows in Pharaoh’s vision at Genesis 41:4.
A lot of people would find it hard to accept that a G’d who is all good created evil as we think of it, but I don’t think that’s really what happened. It seems that the L’rd created strife, harm, and badness as possibilities. What we call “evil” in our society is the sort of thing that the L’rd saw before He sent the flood: a world full of people whose every thought and action was for making things worse.
Fascinated by this subject, I looked into Talmudic teachings about what the purpose of evil or strife is in Judaism. Here’s what I found:
“If G‑d decides He doesn’t want something, then that decision itself makes that thing exist. G‑d’s all-powerfulness means that even His not-wanting creates.
But evil doesn’t exist in the same way that goodness exists. G‑d wants goodness, so its existence is true and everlasting. Evil exists as a negative, something G‑d doesn’t want, so it exists in order to not exist. Evil is no more than an undesirable non-entity, a path not to be taken. By doing evil acts, we give evil more credit than it deserves. Our bad choices make evil into a truer existence than it really is.”
That is pretty abstract and hard to grasp, but I think I get it. By creating an area that is “the path to follow,” there is, by logical extension, an area that is “not the path.” Think of it like hiking in the woods. There’s the actual path that is intended for us to go, and we’ll stay safe as long as we stay on the path. However, there is also the wilderness around us, which is full of strife and trouble. The more we stray from the path, the more strife and trouble we find. And some places off the path are tread so often that a sort of “mock path” is formed over time.
Therefore, what we call “evil” or “wickedness” in our society could be described as continually and purposely walking off G’d’s path in order to make one’s own path through the wilderness, where we do not belong.
So, why give us the capability of straying from His path at all? Well, the choice to do good means very little if good was the only thing you were capable of doing. He’s allowing us to struggle and find the good path on our own so that when we choose it we understand what it means.
Moreover, I once read the presence of goodness and strife existing in the world in this way: when Adam and Eve ate the fruit from the forbidden tree, they had elected to learn the difference between good and evil (or goodness and strife). The only way to truly understand it is to experience it. So, much of the human experience has been the process of us learning good and evil. G’d gave us the Earth as it is so that we might learn through experience, the only way to truly know.
In that way, one might say it is like a student in a school who is told, “Just don’t sign up for that class, it’ll be too hard for you,” but that student signs up anyway. The Great Teacher of teachers, being moral and righteous, is not one to say, “No. I told you you’re not ready for this class, so you cannot enroll.” Instead, the Great Teacher of teachers says, “Alright. If you really want to learn this, I will teach you, and it’s going to be a difficult class.” Morality, therefore, is a series of tests we are constantly taking. Through Scripture, we study the correct answers to moral questions. Through talking with one another we discuss what we’ve learned and come to a better understanding. When tests and assignments come, we stress out over them, and then find out how much we learned in our studying.
Thankfully, we have a Teacher of teachers, a Rabbi of rabbis, who will not let us truly fail the class. As long as we keep learning the lessons, He will keep teaching us and giving us tests. These tests do not exist for Him to see how we are learning, but rather so that WE can see how we are learning. When we fall short, we know what sorts of mistakes we are prone to, and others will sometimes learn from our mistakes as well.
With all that in mind, let us return to the verse.
“Yes, even the wicked for the day of doom.”
Ominous.
The word translated to “the wicked” is “rasha,” which is a term used to describe criminals, or people who constantly turn to causing strife. The typical Christian approach to the existence of malicious people in the world is to say, “G’d creates free will, and allows us to do what we want with it. He can’t control these people and MAKE them behave.” First of all, if G’d really wanted to force these people to behave, He absolutely could. Second, this verse, among others, seems to suggest that the L’rd does create some people who have a tendency to cause strife on purpose.
So, what is the wicked person reserved for? The English version I quoted above says, “the day of doom,” but the word they translate to “doom” is “ra.” Strife, evil, or bad. Thus, the person who causes strife is made for the day of strife.
There are a few ways to interpret that. One could be that, yes, malicious people are created purely so that they can suffer for what they’ve done. However, I think it’s a little different. The “day of strife” may not just be a day of strife for them, but for others. Consider that G’d often set nations against Israel to reprove us and correct them when we strayed from His ways.
I propose to you, therefore, that the L’rd creates those who are prone to cause strife so that they may be like our tutors, helping to teach us right from wrong by showing us what true wrong looks like. Through experiencing the strife they cause, we learn what not to be like, and gain a greater appreciation for goodness.
Based on the text and on rabbinic teachings, I think this is the best answer I can find at this time.