Tag Archives: Biblical Hebrew

It’s A Heart Thing-Part One

09 Monday Jan 2023

Posted by in Isaiah 45:7

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Hello and welcome to Renaissance Woman!  I am returning to my study of Isaiah 45:7 and, this week, am continuing to look at the words of the Lord where He says He makes peace “and creates evil.”

Simply reading those words causes a host of questions to raise in my mind.  How can a God who creates evil still be called good?  If He creates evil, how come there are passages like Psalm 34:16 which states “the face of the Lord is against those who do evil”?  Or Psalm 5:4: “For You are not a God who takes pleasure in wickedness, nor shall evil dwell with You”?  If He creates evil, why did Jesus teach us to pray “deliver us from evil?” 

These questions were based on my understanding that “create” meant “to make from nothing” and thus, whenever I read this passage, I understood it to be saying evil did not exist until God created it.  I have proven to my own satisfaction that “create” does not hold that meaning.  This study has led me to a more accurate definition of “to cause and purpose something new to come into being and grow to fulfill that purpose.”  Unwieldy, I know but that definition is the only one that fits every occurrence of the Hebrew word bara (translated by the English “create”) in the Old Testament.  As I looked up these occurrences, I saw that bara was oftentimes used in situations where the act of creating was done with material already in existence and so, there was no reason to think of God as the source of evil based on the word choice of bara/create.

I also looked up each occurrence of the Hebrew word ra translated as “evil” in my study passage.  The preponderance of the scriptures were very clear that God was not the source of evil but rather evil was rooted in the heart of mankind and flowed into the world via their doings.  And yet, every once in a while I would come across a verse like Amos 3:6: “If a trumpet is blown in a city, will not the people be afraid?  If there is calamity (ra-evil) in a city, will not the Lord have done it?”  There was no denying God did evil as well as man.

And yet, there is a clear difference in the evil of mankind and the evil of God.  Before I point it out, it’s important to take a moment and get the meaning of “evil” clear in our minds.  What we think when we hear the word “evil” is not necessarily what the scripture intended to convey.  The Hastings dictionary defines “evil” as: “…an older form of the word “ill”…the word almost invariably connotes what is either morally corrupt (see Sin) or injurious to life and happiness.”  The Strong’s Concordance has “bad” as the first meaning of ra and continues to define ra with a list of words ranging from “adversity” to “wretchedness”.  I see the same range of meaning in the New World Dictionary where “evil” is defined as “morally bad or wrong” to “causing pain or trouble” to “offensive or disgusting”.  As I looked up the scriptures containing ra, I found reading around the specific passage and sometimes entire chapters necessary to understand which meaning ought to be applied.

The actions I-and I think most people-have in mind when they think of “evil” are the harmful and oftentimes horrendous actions human beings commit against each other: like murder.  The Apostle Paul in Galatians 5:19-21 says, “the works of the flesh are evident, which are: adultery, fornication, uncleanness, lewdness, idolatry, sorcery, hatred, contentions, jealousies, outbursts of wrath, selfish ambitions, dissensions, heresies, envy, murders, drunkenness, revelries, and the like…”.  If we keep this list in mind and take a long and honest look at the world around us, the “why” of the existence of the majority of evil in the word is clear.

What then is the evil done by God?  As I looked up the various passages I found “injurious to life and happiness” to be the best definition.  I also saw the truth of Amos 3:7 where the prophet declares, “Surely the Lord God does nothing unless He reveals His secret to His servants the prophets.”  There was never an instance where God had an intention to take an action that would prove definitely injurious to life and/or happiness where He didn’t first declare it.  He also held off performing the action for a long period of time giving His people a chance to turn from their evil ways and also promising, if they did so, He would turn from the evil He had determined to do.

I found the book of Jeremiah offered up the most complete picture of what I am relating.  There are so many scriptures within this book that describe both the hearts and doings of the people of God as evil.  God declared through His prophet, “Hear, O earth!  Behold, I will certainly bring calamity (ra-evil) on this people-The fruit of their thoughts, because they have not heeded My words” (Jeremiah 6:19).  There is a fascinating passage in Jeremiah 18:7-12:

“The instant I speak concerning a nation and concerning a kingdom to pluck up, to pull down and to destroy it, if that nation against whom I have spoken turns from its evil, I will relent of the disaster that I thought to bring upon it.  And the instant I speak concerning a nation and concerning a kingdom, to build and to plant it, if it does evil in My sight so that it does not obey My voice, then I will relent concerning the good with which I said I would benefit it.  Now, therefore speak to the men of Judah and to the inhabitants of Jerusalem, saying, “Thus says the Lord: “Behold, I am fashioning a disaster and devising a plan against you.  Return now everyone from his evil way and make your ways and your doings good!” ‘“And they said, “That is hopeless!  So we will walk according to our own plans, and we will every one obey the dictates of his evil heart.”

I would have thought that would be enough for God to throw up His hands but He continues to entreat His people through His prophet saying to Jeremiah: “Stand in the court of the Lord’s house, and speak to all the cities of Judah, which come to worship in the Lord’s house, all the words that I command you to speak to them.  Do not diminish a word.  Perhaps everyone will listen and turn from his evil way, that I may relent concerning the calamity which I purpose to bring on them because of the evil of their doings” (Jeremiah 26:2-3).

This same chapter describes another man named Urijah who prophesied in the name of the Lord and issued the same warnings as Jeremiah.  King Jehoiakim sought to put him to death and did so.  Urijah fled to Egypt but was pursued, drug back to Jerusalem, killed with the sword, and his body was thrown into the graves of the common people.  Jeremiah would have been killed as well but for the fact that he had the protection of man named Ahikam.  The people of the Lord did not only want to walk according to their own plans, they were set on killing anyone who sought to persuade them otherwise.

Well, the record in scripture is clear.  Despite His promises to relent, the word of the Lord was not heeded and God did bring destruction on Jerusalem and His people.  And yet, He still issued promises and words of comfort to His people.  Jeremiah writes a letter to the people carried away into captivity in Babylon and that letter contains one of the most quoted scriptures of all time: “For I know the thoughts that I think toward you, says the Lord, thoughts of peace and not of evil, to give you a future and a hope” (Jeremiah 29:11).  The next chapters contain the promises that the captives would return and both Judah and Jerusalem would be restored.

The book of Jeremiah also records that beautiful promise of God: “They shall be my people and I will be their God, then I will give them one heart and one way, that they may fear (revere) Me forever, for the good of them and their children after them.  And I will make an everlasting covenant with them, that I will not turn away from doing them good, but will put My fear (reverence) in their hearts so that they will not depart from Me.  Yes, I will rejoice over them to do them good, and I will assuredly plant them in this land, with all My heart and with all My soul” (Jeremiah 32:38-41).

I don’t see that the people were incapable of turning their hearts to God.  Rather, I see that they would not.  The book of Jeremiah also includes a story of the men of Judah who had fled to Egypt (despite their being warned not to do so!  See Chapter 42).  Even after they had seen the destruction of the city of God and heard God still promising to care for them in the land, their answer to the prophet was; “we will certainly do whatever has gone out of our own mouth, to burn incense to the queen of heaven and put out drink offerings to her as we have done, we and our fathers, our kings and our princes, in the cities of Judah and in the streets of Jerusalem, for then we had plenty of food, were well-off, and saw no trouble.  But since we have stopped burning incense to the queen of heaven and pouring out drink offerings to her, we have lacked everything and have been consumed by the sword and famine” (Jeremiah 44: 17:18).

Could the people of God then have been so blind that they did not know evil had come upon them as a direct result of the evil of their own hearts and doings, their turning away from God, and their outright disobedience? Even so, God promises to give them one heart and one way.  That prophecy is repeated and intensified through another prophet of the Lord, Ezekiel: “I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you; I will take the heart of stone out of your flesh and give you a heart of flesh.  I will put My Spirit within you and cause you to walk in my statues, and you will keep My judgments and do them” (Ezekiel 36:26-27).

We will continue to look at this next week…

Unless noted otherwise, all Scriptures are quoted from The Holy Bible, New King James Version, Thomas Nelson Publishers, Nashville, Tennessee, 1982

References

Guralnik, David B., Webster’s New World Dictionary of the American Language, Second College Edition, William Collins + World Publishing Co., Inc., Cleveland •New York, 1972, 1974

Hastings, James, Hastings’ Dictionary of the Bible, Fifth Printing, Hendrickson Publishers, 2001, Page 247

Strong, James, LL.D., S.T.D., The New Strong’s Exhaustive Concordance of the Bible, Thomas Nelson Publishers, Nashville, Tennessee, 1990

Not Ruled By Sight

19 Monday Dec 2022

Posted by in Isaiah 45:7, Studies

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Hello and welcome to another post on Renaissance Woman where, this week, I continue my study of Isaiah 45:7 and specifically my study on the meaning of “evil”.

I recently read a teacher of biblical languages describe Greek as a very precise language and Hebrew as ambiguous.  I thought about this as I looked at both Greek words the Septuagint has in place of the Hebrew words translated “evil”.  The Greek word translated “evil” in my study passage of Isaiah 45:7 is kaka (from kakos) while the Greek word translated “evil” in Genesis 2:9 is poneros.  I’ve already shared how these two words have different meanings so won’t repeat that here but I do find it interesting that the Hebrew makes no such distinction.  The Hebrew word translated “evil” in both of these passages, as well as in many passages throughout the OT, is ra. 

Ra is a fascinating word.  For one thing it’s only two letters and the majority of Hebrew root words are three.  But then, ra is not the root.  Ra’a is the root word and ra is the masculine form of the noun, the feminine being ra’ah.  While this is interesting, I can’t say I’ve gleaned any deep insight.  Perhaps with further study.  The definition for ra found in the Strong’s is also of interest.  The Strong’s number is 7451 and ra is defined as “bad, evil, adversity, calamity, grievous harm, mischief, misery, wretchedness” etc.  Again, this is interesting and I find I can’t disagree with the translators who have rendered the latter part of Isaiah 45:7 as “I create calamity” but this is not what fascinates me.

What fascinates me about ra is that it is spelled Resh Ayin (רע).  Both of these letters are ones I’ve already looked at in previous studies and, as those studies were so very positive both in the meanings of the letters themselves and the word pictures painted, I did wonder how these same Hebrew letters could end up meaning something as negative as “evil”.  I didn’t find anything negative in the meaning of the letters themselves but the word picture was eye-opening.  The word Resh is identical to the word Rosh which means “head, leader, principal, commander, ruler, or prince.”  Resh also means “poor one” and the shape of the Resh is one bent under a burden or one bent over at the head.  The word Ayin means “eye, sight, sparkle, and gleam.”  It also means “spring” or “fountain”.  The shape of the Ayin is like two eyes on a stalk.  In the word ra we see the head bent toward the eyes.

As I began this study, I went down the list of scriptures in the Strong’s containing the word “evil” and read each one of them.  I was struck with how often the scriptures describe evil springing forth out of the hearts of mankind.  Genesis 8:21 records the Lord Himself saying “the imagination of man’s heart is evil from his youth” and the book of Jeremiah contains several references to mankind having an evil heart.  The book of Jeremiah also contains that oft quoted verse: “The heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked; who can know it?” (17:9) 

King Solomon writes an admonition: “Keep your heart with all diligence for out of it spring the issues of life” (Proverbs 4:23) and Jesus, in speaking to the Pharisees, said: “How can you, being evil, speak good things?  For out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks.  A good man out of the good treasure of his heart brings forth good things, and an evil man out of the evil treasure brings forth evil things” (Matthew 12:34-35).  I understand the importance of guarding our hearts in a way I didn’t before because, if every imagination of our hearts are evil, how can we expect the world to be any other way than it is?  How do we make sure the treasure of our hearts is good rather than evil?

The answer to why the imagination of our hearts is evil is found in the word ra itself.  Back in the garden so many eons ago, when the mother of us all “saw the tree was good for food, that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree desirable to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate.  She also gave to her husband with her and he ate” (Genesis 3:6).  Our parents partook of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil and scripture states “the eyes of both of them were opened” (verse 7).  To what?  Scripture doesn’t say they were both flooded with wisdom and knowledge but rather they knew they were naked.  Directly on the heels of their eyes being opened came the fear of the One who had made them and walked in the garden with them.  Not only was the relationship with their Creator destroyed but so was their relationship to each other. Their eyes were opened to a new way of seeing but they were now limited to the confines of the flesh. Their judgments were based on external appearances and they became darkened in their understanding.

This judging by the sight of the eyes is described in scripture. 1 Samuel 16:7 says, “For the Lord does not see as man sees; for man looks at the outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart.” Proverbs 16:2 says that “all the ways of a man are pure in his own eyes, but the Lord weighs the spirits”. 1 John 2:15-16 says, “Do not love the world or the things in the world.  If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him.  For all that is in the world-the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life-is not of the Father but is of the world.”

As Benjamin Blech says, “The eyes ought not to be our rulers…I possess a head, a mind, and an intellect that must control the desires stemming from sight” (Blech, page 77).  It is important to remember the Tree imparted the knowledge of both good and evil and I do not deny there are those who have little or no knowledge of the God and Father of Jesus Christ who still do great good in the world.  They have their own moral code or laws that they live by.  I have heard people claim to be Christians who have little use for Jesus but find Christianity to be a wondrous set of moral values to pattern one’s life by.  Scripture itself says, “Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good” (Romans 12:21).  Does that mean that’s all we have?  Try hard to keep the rules, be a good person, do what we believe is good to our fellow humans, and hope that good ends up being enough to triumph over evil?

I say a resounding no!  The life we have in Jesus, the Christian life, is so much more than rules and moral codes.  We do not have to allow our eyes to be our rulers but neither do we have any longer to fight so they will not rule over us.  “For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has made me free from the law of sin and death” (Romans 8:2).  Our eyes, the lamp of our bodies, can be so full of light that our bodies are also full of light. (See Matthew 6:22-23)  This is possible because we see Jesus.  He is the fulfillment of that glorious prophecy in Isaiah: “There shall come forth a Rod from the stem of Jesse, and a Branch shall grow out of his roots.  The Spirit of the Lord shall rest upon Him, The Spirit of wisdom and understanding, The Spirit of counsel and might, The Spirit of knowledge and of the fear of the Lord.  His delight is in the fear of the Lord, And He shall not judge by the sight of His eyes, nor decide by the hearing of His ears” (11:1-3). 

 I mentioned earlier in this post that the feminine form of ra is ra’ah.  There is another Hebrew word pronounced ra’ah.  But, whereas ra’ah meaning evil is spelled Resh Ayin Hey (רעה), the other ra’ah means “to see” and is spelled Resh Aleph Hey (ראה). In evil, the head is bent to the eyes and the sight rules.  And yet, in the word for “to see”, the Resh is bent to the Aleph.  The Aleph is the first letter of the Hebrew alphabet and thus is not only a reference to God but stands for unity with God. 

This is the truth that rules in our hearts and guides our seeing. Because of everything Jesus did by his existence as the Incarnate God in the first place, to living here on earth as one of us, to dying on the cross and all that His death accomplished, to rising from the dead and finally ascending to the right hand of the father, we are utterly free.  Because Jesus did return to the Father, that same Spirit Isaiah prophesied would rest upon Jesus is poured out in our hearts.  We are the temple of this Spirit, living stones fitted together, One with Jesus and the Father. This Spirit opens the eyes of our understanding-eyes that have been closed for so very long-that we might know what is the hope of our calling by the Father of glory (see Ephesians 1).  Because the Spirit of the living God lives in us, the very peace of Jesus Christ rules in our hearts.  Because this is so, there is no place for any other rule.  The imagination of our hearts can no longer be evil but is rather righteousness, peace, and love in the Holy Spirit.

Who the Son sets free is free indeed!  That’s us!  May our eyes be fixed on Him!

Hallelujah!

Amen  

Note: The Hebrew is read from right to left! Hence the Resh is seen bending to the Ayin in one word and the Aleph in the other.

Unless noted otherwise, all Scriptures are quoted from The Holy Bible, New King James Version, Thomas Nelson Publishers, Nashville, Tennessee, 1982

References

Bentorah, Chaim, Hebrew Word Study: Beyond the Lexicon, Trafford Publishing, USA, 2014

Blech, Benjamin, The Secrets of Hebrew Words, Jason Aronson Inc., Northvale, New Jersey, 1991

Haralick, Robert M., The Inner Meaning of the Hebrew Letters, Jason Aronson Inc., Northvale, New Jersey, 1995

Strong, James, LL.D., S.T.D., The New Strong’s Exhaustive Concordance of the Bible, Thomas Nelson Publishers, Nashville, Tennessee, 1990

When Tradition and I Part Ways

28 Monday Nov 2022

Posted by in Isaiah 45:7, Studies

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“I have to go downstairs and study ‘evil’.” 

I heard myself say those words to my family and laughed when the responses I received were “okay” and “sounds good”.  Only within the context of a Bible Study can someone announce he or she is going to study evil and no one wonders at it!

I am continuing my study of “evil” this week.  In Isaiah 45:7, God says, “I create evil”.  I’ve already posted a series of studies on the Hebrew word translated “create” in this passage-which is bara-so will not repeat myself but will say I have learned enough to question what is being said here.  “To make something out of nothing” is not an accurate definition of “create” and bara is used often enough in the OT where something new came into being out of already existing materials that we do not have to automatically assume God is saying He is the source of evil.  What is this passage saying?  In the 45th chapter of Isaiah, God is making it clear He alone is God.  There is no evil power equal to Him so-looking at this passage alone-it could be He is claiming to be the source of evil.  And yet, the text allows the equally valid interpretation that God alone is God and not even evil becomes part of the working out of His will: He will come inside it, make it new, and turn it into His good.

I cannot make a determination based on this single passage of scripture.  I hear that done so often: a single verse or at times a fragment of a verse is taken and entire doctrines are built upon it.  Any passage that refutes the established doctrine is either refuted in turn or utterly ignored.  I have seen the truth of the words spoken by the Lord Jesus Christ: “Well did Isaiah prophesy of you hypocrites, as it is written: ‘This people honors Me with their lips, But their heart is far from Me.  And in vain they worship Me, Teaching as doctrines the commandments of men.’  For laying aside the commandment of God, you hold the tradition of men-the washing of pitchers and cups, and many other such things as you do…All too well you reject the commandment of God that you may keep your tradition” (Mark 7:6-9, Isaiah 29:13). 

And so, because I do not want to keep hold of what the traditions I have been part of have told me evil is and how it came into being, I began first by checking which Hebrew word is translated “evil” in Isiah 45:7.  It is ra and the Strong’s number is 7451.  I then checked whether the word was the same in Genesis 2 for the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil and, when I saw it was, I decided to read each passage containing the word ra and see what I could see.  I had barely begun when I wondered which Greek words the Septuagint had in place of ra in both in Isaiah 45:7 and in Genesis 2:9.  I had read that it was impossible to show a difference between kakos and poneros which are the two Greek words used to translate “evil” most often in the NT, so I checked the two passages in the OT to see if the same Greek word was used both times.  It is not.  Isaiah 45:7 has kaka which is the nominative/accusative/vocative plural neuter of kakos.  Genesis 2:9 has poneros.  I had to ask myself, why use two different Greek words to translate the same Hebrew word?

I mentioned before I had read that it was impossible to differentiate between kakos and poneros.  I read that statement in the New International Dictionary of New Testament Theology.  The first paragraph in the entry for Evil, Bad, Wickedness states: “The two main NT terms for expressing the shortcomings or inferiority of a thing (i.e. bad) and the ethically negative and religiously destructive character of a person or thought (i.e. evil) are kakos and poneros.  In the NT kakos occurs 50 times and the linguistically later poneros 78 times though the LXX uses it only 50 times compared to the 300 cases of kakos.  Unlike the terms dealt with under –Good, it is impossible to show any difference between these two terms.  Both are used even for the personification of evil in the devil or men” (Brown, 561).

Is it impossible to show any difference between the two terms?  Perhaps it is so merely looking up the different passages in our English translations.  It is not impossible if we look up the meanings of the words.  The full definition the Strong’s gives kakos (G2556)is: “apparently a primary word; worthless (intrinsically whereas 4190 (poneros-addition mine) properly refers to effects) i.e. (subjectively) depraved, or (objectively) injurious-bad, evil, harm, ill, noisome, wicked.”  The Strong’s defines poneros (G4190) as: “from a derivate of 4192; hurtful i.e. evil (properly in effect of influence and thus differing from 2556, which refers rather to essential character, as well as from 4550 which indicates degeneracy from original virtue); figuratively, calamitous, also (passively) ill, i.e. diseased; but especially (morally) culpable, i.e. derelict, vicious, facinorous; neuter (singular), mischief, malice, or (plural) guilt; masculine (singular) the devil or (plural) sinners:-bad, evil, grievous, harm, lewd, malicious, wicked (-ness).”

 For the sake of clarification, the Greek word under 4550 in the Strong’s is sapros and means “rotten, worthless, bad, corrupt”.  I had to look up “facinorous” and found it means “atrociously wicked: infamous”.  I admit there isn’t a massive difference between the two definitions as I’ve shared them but I found the difference becomes more obvious as I traced kakos through its familial words and poneros to its root.  The root of poneros is ponos (G4190) and it means, “toil, anguish, pain.”  Ponos can be traced further to penes or peno (G3993) which means, “to toil for daily subsistence, starving, indigent, poor.” 

I won’t share every definition of the Greek words related to kakos: they are numbers 2549-2561 in the Strong’s concordance should anyone wish to look them up.  There isn’t a great variation in meaning which is expected.  What I found interesting is the Greek word kakωs (G2560).  This word is the adverbial form of kakos, is pronounced kakooce, and means, “badly (physically or morally), amiss, diseased, evil, grievously, miserably, sick, sore.”

I find it utterly fascinating that the Septuagint chose poneros for the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil.  In Genesis chapter 3, the ground is cursed for Adam’s sake and God says to him: “in toil you shall eat of it all the days of your life” (verse 17) and poneros has the root meaning of “toil.”  Kakos, on the other hand, has the meaning of “illness, affliction.”  It is obvious to me these two words do not mean the same thing and, if word choice by the writers of the New Testament was deliberate, the passages where these words occur were meant to be read with these definitions in mind.  What the different choices in Genesis 2:9 and Isaiah 45:7 mean is something to be looked at in upcoming weeks.

It is a difficult thing to leave tradition behind and look at the scripture without any preconceived bias and be led entirely by the Holy Spirit.  It can be uncomfortable to “test everything”.  I have already come across some difficult passages which I do not want to shrink from nor dismiss out of hand.  They have been recorded in scripture for a reason.  They are important to understand.  I do not want to continue to interpret them as I’ve always been told they ought to be interpreted and I am not satisfied to settle for the vague answers I find in some commentaries.  I want to know the truth and so I continue to pray, “Holy Spirit, Spirit of the Living God, Spirit of wisdom and revelation, continue to teach and guide me.  Renew my mind and open the eyes of my heart that I might see You, Jesus, the One who is the Truth.”

Amen.

Unless noted otherwise, all Scriptures are quoted from The Holy Bible, New King James Version, Thomas Nelson Publishers, Nashville, Tennessee, 1982

 Notes:

Whenever I have typed kakos I am referring to the Greek word spelled with an omicron: number 2556 in the Strong’s Concordance

LXX is the abbreviation for the Septuagint

References:

κακά – Wiktionary

Septuagint | biblical literature | Britannica

Facinorous Definition & Meaning – Merriam-Webster

Brown, Colin, The New International Dictionary of New Testament Theology, Volume I, Regency Reference Library, Zondervan Publishing House, Grand Rapids, Michigan, 1967, 1986, Page 561

Lanier, Gregory R., and William Ross, Septuaginta: A Reader’s Edition, Volumes I & II, Hendrickson Publishers, Peabody, Massachusetts, 2018

Strong, James, LL.D., S.T.D., The New Strong’s Exhaustive Concordance of the Bible, Thomas Nelson Publishers, Nashville, Tennessee, 1990

Adding Knowledge, Increasing Understanding

21 Monday Nov 2022

Posted by in Isaiah 45:7, Studies

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Hello!  Welcome-or welcome back-to Renaissance Woman where this week I continue my study of Isaiah 45:7 and specifically look at evil.

If you have read last week’s post, you might be wondering why write anything more on evil if I believe what I wrote is true: that we who belong to Jesus live from His life rather than live our lives determining for ourselves what is good or evil.  I do believe it but I also believe in Jesus’ warning: “Behold, I send you out as sheep in the midst of wolves.  Therefore be wise as serpents and harmless as doves” (Matthew 10:16).

It is important to me to understand exactly what the Holy Spirit meant to convey as He inspired the prophets to speak and the scribes to record.  The world system uses words as it sees fit and rarely do these meanings line up with what was intended in the scriptures.  I hear the word “evil” used to describe a person who simply disagrees with the mindset of another.  I don’t think that’s what is meant by “evil” in the Bible but I don’t know for certain.  Any dissent I may attempt will quickly fail as I have no foundational understanding to strengthen me.  And so, I continue my study.

One thing I noticed while studying “create” and bara was, bara is the only Hebrew word translated “create”.  While bara is translated with other words in other passages (to fatten, to cut down), any time you read the word “create” in the King James Version of the Bible, the corresponding Hebrew word is bara.  There will be prefixes and suffixes attached but the root is always bara.  I don’t know that I’ve gleaned any significant meaning from that but I do mention it as a matter of interest because this is rarely the case.  When I look up a word in the Strong’s concordance, I find that one English word has been used to translate several Hebrew (and Greek) words and thus variations in meaning are missing from our translations.  One such word I’ve already looked at is “darkness” and you can take a look at those previous studies if you like.

Going back to previous studies is not necessary though because “evil” in English has been used to translate several Hebrew and Greek words.  In Hebrew they are: ra, ra’a, ra’ah, roa, dibbah, beliya’al, and aven.  In Greek they are: poneros, kakos (spelled with an omicron), kakopoieo, kakia, kakologeo, kakoo, kakos (spelled with an omega), kakourgos, katalalia, katalaleo, phaulos, adikema, blasphemeo, blasphemia, and dusphemia. 

It is obvious that some of these occurrences are variations of a word rather than a different meaning: both the verb and the noun, for example.  Some of these words have only been translated “evil” in one passage so, as I continue in this study, I won’t focus on them.  These words in the Hebrew are dibbah, ra’ah, beliya’al, and aven.  Dibbah appears in Numbers 13:32 and is translated “evil report”.  The word dibbah means “slander, defaming.”  Beliya’al appears in Psalms 41:8 where it is translated “evil disease.”  The word itself means “without profit, worthlessness, destruction, wickedness.”  Aven appears in Proverbs 12:21 where it is translated “evil” as in misfortune.  The word aven means “trouble, vanity, wickedness, to come to naught”.  Ra’ah appears in Job 24:21 but, since it belongs to the same family as the word in my study passage, which is ra, I may be looking at ra’ah as well.

The Greek word adikema is translated “evil” as in “evil doing” in Acts 24:20 and that is the only time the King James Version used it so.  It might be interesting to see how its meaning contrasts with kakopoieo which means “to be a bad-doer” but I probably won’t be considering it in too much depth.  The same with dusphemia which occurs in 2 Corinthians 6:8 where it is translated “evil” as in “evil report”. 

My point of this study is not for you or me to memorize a bunch of Hebrew and Greek words so we can insert ourselves into situations and point out how much we know.  Neither is it for us to arm ourselves with an extensive vocabulary we then use to bludgeon others into silence.  My point is the importance of words.  Those who wrote both the Old and New Testaments certainly were specific in the words they chose to convey what they wanted to say.  Our English translations were less so.  Two different words are translated as “speak evil” in the New Testament: kakalogeo and katalaleo.  They don’t mean exactly the same things. Kakalogeo means “to revile, curse, speak ill of” and katalaleo means “to be a traducer, slander”.  Traduce means to “speak badly of or tell lies about someone so as to damage their reputation.” 

James speaks of the tongue as being “an unruly evil, full of deadly poison” in Chapter 3 verse 8 of his epistle.  The word for “evil” here is kakos spelled with an omicron.  Proverbs 18:21 says, “death and life are in the power of the tongue” but if I were to try and make the point that we speak out of the fullness of our hearts and attempted to use Luke 6:45 to do so, the Greek words translated evil in this passage are not kakos nor are they in any way part of the same family as kakos.  The words here in the Greek are poneros.  So, my point might be valid and I might be able to substantiate it using the English translation, but the Greek words mean different things and my point would not end up being accurate.

I think accuracy is important but it is not more important than our relationship to the Holy Spirit.  Through His indwelling us, we have the very person of Jesus Christ.  The Holy Spirit guides us into the truth that Jesus Himself is our all: our life, our wisdom, our peace, our words, our salvation.  And yet, Paul gave this admonition to Timothy: “Be diligent to present yourself approved to God, a worker who does not need to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth” (2 Timothy 2:15).  Peter writes in his epistle, we have been given exceedingly great and precious promises and that through these we may be partakers of the divine nature.  He then writes, “But also for this very reason, giving all diligence, add to your faith virtue, to virtue knowledge, to knowledge self-control, to self-control perseverance, to perseverance godliness, to godliness brotherly kindness, and to brotherly kindness love” (2 Peter 1:5-7).

Peter’s list isn’t possible without the Holy Spirit and that includes knowledge.  We can study all we like but, without the Holy Spirit revealing the truth of what we study to us, our study gives us head knowledge only and there is no life to it.  And yet, study is important.  At the beginning of this post I quoted, “be wise as serpents and harmless as doves.”  Some translations have “innocent” and others have “gentle” in place of harmless.  The Greek word is akeraios (G185) and the first meaning given in the Strong’s is “unmixed”.  I like that: I want an unmixed mind.  I want to know what these words meant by the ones who wrote them.  I do not want the world system giving me definitions because then, it will begin to interpret scripture for me and that path ends in death.  And so, in the upcoming weeks, I will look at the different words translated “evil” and their meanings.  I will look at the passages in which these words occur and see if my understanding of them changes.  My ultimate desire is that, through this study, the Holy Spirit will open my eyes and I will know the Truth.  Jesus Christ is the ultimate Truth and my prayer to the Holy Spirit is “increase my understanding that I might know Jesus in a deeper and more intimate way.”

May the Holy Spirit open our eyes that we may know Him!

Unless noted otherwise, all Scriptures are quoted from The Holy Bible, New King James Version, Thomas Nelson Publishers, Nashville, Tennessee, 1982

References

The Comparative Study Bible,  Zondervan Bible Publishers, The Zondervan Corporation, Grand Rapids, Michigan, 1984

Strong, James, LL.D., S.T.D., The New Strong’s Exhaustive Concordance of the Bible, Thomas Nelson Publishers, Nashville, Tennessee, 1990

No Matter What May Come

07 Monday Nov 2022

Posted by in Isaiah 45:7, Studies

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Good morning!  Welcome to another week and another post on Renaissance Woman.  This post will be my last on bara, the Old Testament Hebrew word most often translated by the English word “create”.  For the sake of this study anyway as there is still a great deal to learn.  As I looked up scriptures containing the word bara, I found many that stirred up questions and opened up avenues for more study.  I am staying focused on Isaiah 45:7 though and thus plan to move on to taking a look at the meaning of “evil” in upcoming weeks.

Regarding bara: I am finally ready to settle on a definition.  I have previously shared how there are some who say bara ought to be translated “to fatten” or “to fill” and have also shared how I find those definitions unsatisfactory for two reasons: 1) because there are other perfectly good Hebrew words used to express those concepts and 2) neither definition encompasses what the word intends to convey in the passages where it is used in scripture.

I don’t believe there is any language where a word means one thing in one place and something entirely different in another place.  I have also previously shared where I plugged the different definitions for bara I’d come across into every passage where the word occurred to see if the definition worked.  An excellent example is in Jeremiah 31:22 where I find: “…For the Lord has created a new thing in the earth–A woman shall encompass a man.”  The definitions “to fatten” or “to fill” simply do not work in this passage.  Neither does defining bara as “to do a new thing”.  I was curious so I looked up the Hebrew words in this passage and it isn’t bara repeated twice.  There is a different Hebrew word translated as “a new thing”: chadash (H2319) and it means “new, fresh.” 

After all these weeks of study and compiling information from different sources, here is what I think is the closest and fullest definition of bara: to cause something new to come into being and grow to accomplish an intended purpose.  It is long and complicated but it is a definition I find fits every occurrence of bara in the Old Testament.  I find it even works in 1 Samuel 2:29 where bara is translated “to make yourselves fat” and in Joshua 17: 15 & 18 where bara is translated “to cut down”.  In both instances those involved had a purpose and caused something new to come into being in order to bring that purpose about.  In the 1Samuel passage that something new was a malformation of something God had ordained and the purpose was the satisfaction of selfish appetites.  It was born out of greed.  In Joshua, the purpose was to make a home and the new thing necessitated the removal of existing trees.  In both of these cases, the purpose did originate in the minds of mankind but the bringing about the new thing was accomplished using processes and material already in existence.  The same is true in the Jeremiah 31:22 passage where God is causing a new thing to come into being in order to satisfy His purpose but, while this new thing is originating in the mind of God and is something only God can do, man and woman already exist.

My point is, I don’t need to think “something out of nothing” every time I read the word “create” in scripture.  This is a point I think is important when I apply my definition of bara to Isaiah 45:7: “I create evil.”  What is God saying here?  Is bara intending to convey the idea that God is the source of evil i.e. He caused it to come into being or does bara mean evil is the thing already in existence God will use to cause something new to come into being and grow according to His purpose?  The Brown-Driver-Briggs Hebrew Lexicon lists Isaiah 45:7 under the definition “to shape or fashion new conditions and circumstances” so some scholars, at least, do not think the passage is saying God is the cause of evil.   

 The context of Isaiah 45:7 establishes both the Lordship and uniqueness of God.  God says to the future ruler Cyrus that, no matter how great he thinks he is, God alone is God.  God goes before him and has held his right hand (verses 1-3).  The rest of the chapter continues to establish the absolute truth that God alone is God and I find this an important truth to have established when it comes to evil.  There is a prevalent idea among believers, never outright declared but there nonetheless, that God is the God of good and Satan is the god of evil.  God might have had His original intent but Satan got in there with his lie and ruined everything.  God did what He could in Jesus but Satan is still ruining God’s plans.

I simply cannot go into how much the Bible refutes that so will simply use what is said in this chapter: “I am the Lord and there is no other…Truly You are God, who hide Yourself, O God of Israel, the Savior!  They shall be ashamed and also disgraced, all of them; they shall go into confusion together, who are makers of idols…For thus says the Lord, Who created the heavens, Who is God…Look to Me and be saved, all you ends of the earth!  For I am God and there is no other.” Satan is not a god neither does he wield power equal to God.  Evil exists but, drawing on my study of bara, God comes down into it, makes His home in the midst of it, and destroys it forever by causing something new to come into being and grow and accomplish His purpose.  

One of the best examples of this is found in the story of Joseph related in Chapters 37-50 of Genesis.  Just in case someone is reading this who is unfamiliar with the story it is, briefly: Joseph is the only son of Jacob’s most-loved wife.  He is also younger than his brothers, by a great many years in some cases, which makes the special attention paid to him by Jacob something difficult for the brothers to handle.  Worse is the favoritism and elevation of Joseph over the other brothers, including the first-born son, which was something NOT DONE in that culture.  This special treatment does appear to make Joseph act a bit like a brat.  The story records him bringing a bad report of the brothers born to the maidservants to their father and then comes the sharing of his dreams.  You can just imagine how this teenage kid telling his father and brothers one day they’d all bow down to him went over.  I am not surprised that, when his brothers see him coming across the fields to check up on them in his fancy coat, they decide to kill him.

Two of his brothers intervene.  Reuben convinces the others not to kill him but rather to drop him into a pit (or cistern).  Reuben appears to have vague plans to rescue Joseph but apparently he thinks of some pressing task because he isn’t around when a caravan of slave traders comes along and Judah convinces the other brothers that, rather than killing Joseph, a better idea was to sell him to the slave traders.  Joseph is taken down to Egypt and sold as a slave.  I won’t relate all the ups and downs of his circumstances there but worth nothing is how Chapter 39 of Genesis stresses that “the Lord was with Joseph” and noticeably so (verses 2-3, 21, 23).

Joseph is eventually made ruler over Egypt second only to the Pharaoh and the day comes when his dreams are realized: his brothers come to Egypt and-not recognizing him-bow down to him.  When Joseph finally reveals his identity to his brothers he says an interesting thing: “But now, do not therefore be grieved or angry with yourselves because you sold me here; for God sent me before you to preserve life” (Genesis 45:5).  After the death of their father, still fearing Joseph might take vengeance on them, the brothers come once more before him and Joseph has this to say: “Do not be afraid, for am I in the place of God?  But as for you, you meant evil against me; but God meant it for good, in order to bring it about as it is this day, to save many people alive” (Genesis 50: 19-20).

This is a fascinating story.  Joseph sees God with him and at work in his circumstances so that he says, “God sent me before you”.  But, Joseph does not ignore the fact that the intent of his brothers was evil.  God no doubt could have got Joseph to Egypt a myriad of ways.  Perhaps Joseph’s suffering-and the Bible makes it clear he did suffer (See Psalm 105)-would not have happened.  It did happen and he did suffer because his brothers thought evil thoughts and acted on them.  And yet, while those evil thoughts and actions brought about circumstances I’m sure Joseph would have avoided if the choice had been his; those very same circumstances were the ones God worked in to elevate Joseph to a position where not only the lives of his people were saved but the lives of the people of Egypt as well. 

There is a passage of scripture which states, “And we know that all things work together for good to those who love God, to those who are the called according to His purposes” (Romans 8:28).  This passage states what I’ve seen so far in my study of “I create evil” (Isaiah 45:7).  No matter who may come against me with plans of evil, God is with me.  If a circumstance arises which brings evil instead of good, God is with me.  Not just with me-He lives inside of me by His Spirit.  That same Spirit that energized the creating Word is in me still energizing but also transforming and renewing.  In Jesus Christ I live and move and have my being and He not only creates evil but makes peace.

Until next time, let us each one hold fast to the truth that we are the very temples of the Holy Spirit and, as we hold fast, may the peace of God which surpasses all understanding guard our hearts and minds through Christ Jesus (Philippians 4:7).

Hallelujah! 

Amen.

Unless noted otherwise, all Scriptures are quoted from The Holy Bible, New King James Version, Thomas Nelson Publishers, Nashville, Tennessee, 1982

Note: for a comprehensive look at the story of Joseph, I recommend Joseph: A Story of Love, Hate, Slavery, Power, and Forgiveness by Dr. John C. Lennox.

References

Brown, F., S. Driver, and C. Briggs, The Brown-Driver-Briggs Hebrew and English Lexicon, Eighteenth Printing, Hendrickson Publishers, Peabody Massachusetts, 2018, Page 135

Green, Jay P. Sr., The Interlinear Bible: Hebrew, Greek, English, Volume 3, Authors For Christ Inc., Lafayette, IN, 1985

Strong, James, LL.D., S.T.D., The New Strong’s Exhaustive Concordance of the Bible, Thomas Nelson Publishers, Nashville, Tennessee, 1990