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NASB | Isaiah 45:7 The One forming light and creating darkness, Causing well-being and creating calamity; I am the LORD who does all these. |
AMPLIFIED 2015 | Isaiah 45:7 The One forming light and creating darkness, Causing peace and creating disaster; I am the LORD who does all these things. |
Bible Question:
Some say that God does not create evil,but what does this mean. Isa 45:7 I form the light, and create darkness: I make peace, and create evil: I the LORD do all these things. |
Bible Answer: In his discourse entitled That God is not the Cause of Evil, Saint Basil the Great writes the following: "But one may say, if God is not responsible for evil things, why is it said in the book of Isaiah, 'I am He that prepared light and Who formed darkness, Who makes peace and Who creates evils' (45:7)". And again, "There came down evils from the Lord upon the gates of Jerusalem" (Mich. 1:12). And, "Shall there be evil in the city which the Lord hath not wrought?" (Amos 3:6). And in the great Ode of Moses, "Behold, I am and there is no god beside Me. I will slay, and I will make to live; I will smite, and I will heal" (Deut. 32:39). But none of these citations, to him who understands the deeper meaning of the Holy Scriptures, casts any blame on God, as if He were the cause of evils and their creator, for He Who said, "I am the One Who makes light and darkness", shows Himself as the Creator of the universe, not that He is the creator of any evil.... "He creates evils", that means, "He fashions them again and brings them to a betterment, so that they leave their evilness, to take on the nature of good". [St. Basil the Great, op. cit. 7, 94-96. In this particular passage, St. Basil carefully makes a distinction between the Greek verbs "ktizo" and "dimiourgo", both of which are generally translated into English as "create". However, "ktizo" has a long history, beginning with the Sanskrit kshi, which, as in early Greek, meant "to people a country", "to build houses and cities", "to colonize". Later, in Greek, the word came to mean "to establish", "to build up and develop", and finally, "to produce", "create", "bring about". Having in mind these other connotations of the verb "ktizo", St. Basil discerned the proper implication of the word in this context and hence made a point of emphasizing this distinction.] |