Shabbat Shelach Lecha

Who Creates Evil

There is a well-known quote from the Prophet Isaiah. “God says: Who creates light and creates darkness: Who makes peace and creates evil: I am the Lord Who does all these things” (Isaiah 45:7). This appears in our daily prayers with a small change: “Who creates light and creates darkness, who makes peace and creates everything.” In the Talmud, there is another modification, “Who creates light and brightness” (TB Brachot 11b). The Talmud goes on to offer various justifications of this change in the original source. Why did they make these changes from the original? Is it not accepted that if God is the creator, then everything comes from God? Whether in the natural or the human world?

I can explain it as a response to Zoroastrianism. Zoroastrianism is named after Zoroaster Spitama (624-599 BCE), who based himself on earlier Indian religious ideas. It only became the State religion hundreds of years later under the Sassanian dynasty (224-651 CE). But it was a challenge to the Jewish world. Its adherents worshipped a deity of good, known as Ahura Mazda, in opposition to the evil enemy Angra Mainyu the adversary of all good. It looked forward to the triumph of good over bad and of light over darkness. In the 7th century CE, the rise of Islam marked the beginning of Zoroastrianism’s decline. And most of those few who survive today are in India, not Iran (Shia Islam does not approve).

Zoroastrianism’s emphasis on fire as the symbol of goodness was a reason why fire played such a prominent role in the religion. In my youth, almost all electric bulbs were made by a firm called Mazda!  This often led to tension between them and the Jews of the Persian empire. Zoroastrianism paved the way for Gnosticism in Christianity and its preoccupation with the Devil, Satan and his Works. This still plays a very important role in popular Christian theology. Hence the battle between God and the Devil in the English poet Milton’s “Paradise Lost,” and the Christian understanding of the Book of Job where a figure called Satan challenges God’s relationship with Job.

The word SaTaN in the Torah is used simply as a verb meaning “to get in the way” (Numbers 22.22). Divine messengers occurred often in the Torah, but always acting on behalf of God, never as rivals. Everything in the world that Judaism says originates from the Divine Creator. And this is what Isaiah was referring to when he says God creates good and evil, in the quote above. The popularity of such an idea outside Judaism during the Talmudic era and beyond, both in the East and the West, was why describing God creating Evil seemed to support a Dualistic concept and Devil worship. Which was, in my opinion, why the rabbis wanted to avoid the idea that God created evil, so they changed the wording of the quote.

Early Judaism as expressed in the Torah did not see evil as an independent force. Events we call bad, such as floods, fires and earthquakes, are simply natural features of a material world. In human affairs things go wrong when we humans make the wrong decisions that impact on us and others.

After Noah’s flood, God says, “There is no point in my cursing the earth because of mankind, since humans tend to do bad things from youth regardless (Bereishit 9:21). Notice the word youth, rather than birth, as in the Christian idea of original sin. It was the ability to choose, to obey or disobey that leads to human disasters (the issue of Free Will is too complex to deal with here). As for why nature sometimes behaves destructively and unpredictably, “The world runs according to its own rules and fools expect otherwise”(TB Avodah Zarah 54b”). 

There’s an interesting book by Manvir Singh, How God Got So Great: What monotheism means is surprisingly hard to pin down, but there’s a reason it swept the world. Its thesis is that even so-called monotheistic religions are not entirely monotheistic because they all have sub-gods or angels or devils. He suggests that Judaism is the same. Many religious Jews at all levels take angels, voices and oracles seriously. And Judaism has always used anthropomorphisms in talking about God. But no one, I think, would suggest that there are gods or sub-gods that rival the Divine uniqueness.  Even so, the profound superstition I encounter in much of Jewish life is disturbing. The light of God should be enlightening!

Rabbi Jeremy Rosen lives in New York. He was born in Manchester. His writings are concerned with religion, culture, history and current affairs – anything he finds interesting or relevant. They are designed to entertain and to stimulate. Disagreement is always welcome.