JTK :
The Hebrew word translated "evil" in the KJV is "ra," which has a much broader range than the English word "evil" suggests. It's the same word used throughout the Old Testament for calamity, disaster, adversity, and misfortune, not necessarily moral wickedness or sin. Modern translations reflect this, the NIV renders it "I bring prosperity and create disaster," and the NASB says "causing well-being and creating calamity." The verse is contrasting peace with disaster, not righteousness with moral evil, it's a statement about God's sovereignty over circumstances, not a claim that God manufactures moral wickedness. Read this way, the verse describes God's providence extending over both favorable and difficult circumstances in a person's life, not that God authors sin. "Light" and "darkness," "peace" and "calamity," correspond to states a person passes through during spiritual growth, comfort and difficulty, clarity and confusion, both of which God permits and works within for genuine growth, without either being morally equivalent to God originating actual evil, which Scripture consistently and elsewhere attributes to human and infernal freedom, not divine authorship.
2026-09-12 02:30:35