ris3n's Apologetics Codex

Lexicon

H7451 - ra

ra, ra', raʿ, ra'ah, raah, רַע, רָעָה, H7451, H7451 - ra, Hebrew word for evil, evil or calamity Hebrew

Strong's: H7451 · BLB lookup Pronunciation: rah (noun form ra'ah, rah-AH) Part of speech: adjective ("bad") and noun ("evil, harm, calamity"); Strong's gathers the adjective ra and the noun ra'ah under this one number Root: the verb ra'a' (H7489, "to be bad, to do harm"), measured at 83 tags in 80 verses OT occurrences: measured in the Strong's-tagged KJV (kjv.json): 663 tags in 623 verses. KJV renderings, counted by the English word carrying the tag, include: "evil" 434, "wickedness" 59, "wicked" 25, "hurt" 20, "mischief" 19, "bad" 13, "sore" 9, "trouble" 9, "evils" 8, "affliction" 5, "ill" 5 (as in "ill favoured"), "adversity" 3, "harm" 3, with scattered others ("sad", "grievous", "noisome", "sorrow", "naught").

Semantic range

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The word means bad, and it is as broad as the English word. Context decides whether the badness is moral, physical, emotional or circumstantial.

  1. Bad in quality, no moral content at all. Pharaoh's seven "ill favoured" cows (Genesis 41:3); a vowed animal "a good for a bad" (Leviticus 27:10); Jeremiah's basket of figs so bad they cannot be eaten (Jeremiah 24:2-3); Jericho's water that "is naught" (2 Kings 2:19); Nehemiah's "sad" face (Nehemiah 2:2). Cows, figs and water cannot sin.
  2. Harm, trouble, calamity, disaster. What happens to someone: "adversity", "affliction", "hurt", "trouble". This is the sense of judgment texts, where God sends ra'ah on a city or a house.
  3. Moral evil, wickedness. What someone does: "the wickedness of man was great in the earth" (Genesis 6:5), "to do evil in his sight" (2 Samuel 12:9).

The opposite is tov (H2896 - tov, "good"), with the same breadth. In the phrase "good and evil" the pair can mean the whole range of benefit and harm, not only right and wrong.

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One word, two senses, one verse

The strongest evidence that ra does not always mean moral evil is that Scripture uses it in both senses side by side, of man and of God, in the same sentence:

  • Jeremiah 18:8: "If that nation ... turn from their evil (ra'ah), I will repent of the evil (ra'ah) that I thought to do unto them." The nation's ra'ah is its wickedness; God's ra'ah is the disaster He had announced. Same word, measured twice in the verse.
  • Jonah 3:10: Nineveh "turned from their evil way; and God repented of the evil, that he had said that he would do unto them."
  • Genesis 50:20: "ye thought evil against me; but God meant it unto good." The brothers' ra'ah is malice; God turns the same event to tov.

Anyone who reads every ra as "moral wickedness" has to say that in Jeremiah 18:8 God promises to stop sinning if Israel stops sinning. The text plainly means something else, and the reader who notices it has refuted the equivocation.

Theological force

God sends ra'ah; God does not do wickedness

  • Isaiah 45:7: "I make peace, and create evil." The pairing with shalom (peace, well-being) fixes the sense: the opposite of shalom is disaster, not sin. See Isaiah 45.7 I Create Evil.
  • Amos 3:6: "shall there be evil in a city, and the LORD hath not done it?" The line before is a war trumpet; the evil is the disaster the trumpet announces.
  • Lamentations 3:38: "Out of the mouth of the most High proceedeth not evil and good?", said over Jerusalem's ruin.
  • Job 2:10: "shall we receive good at the hand of God, and shall we not receive evil?", of Job's losses and sores.
  • 2 Samuel 12:11: "I will raise up evil against thee out of thine own house", the judgment on David's house for his adultery and murder. See Did God Cause the Rape of Davids Wives Objection Defeater.

In every one of these the ra'ah is judicial or providential calamity, and several are explicitly punishment for moral ra done by people (David's "evil in his sight", 2 Samuel 12:9; Nineveh's "evil way", Jonah 3:10). The Bible's own logic is: people do ra (wickedness); God answers with ra'ah (disaster). Scripture never says God does wickedness; it says the opposite of the Judge (Habakkuk 1:13, "Thou art of purer eyes than to behold evil").

"Repenting of the evil"

Because ra'ah can mean announced disaster, God can "repent of the evil" (Jonah 3:10; 4:2; Jeremiah 18:8) without any suggestion that He had been planning a sin. Jonah even lists it as one of God's attributes: "gracious ... merciful, slow to anger, and of great kindness, and repentest thee of the evil" (Jonah 4:2). The verb there is nacham (H5162 - nacham).

Apologetic load

The standard objection is an equivocation (see Equivocation):

Step Content
Contested term ra, "evil"
Sense A moral wickedness, sin, what an agent does wrongly
Sense B harm, trouble, disaster, what befalls someone
The objection needs Sense A: "God says He creates moral evil"
The texts use Sense B, fixed by shalom (Isaiah 45:7), the war trumpet (Amos 3:6), the ruin of Jerusalem (Lamentations 3:38), the judgment on David (2 Samuel 12:11)

The honest concession: this does not make these texts soft. God really says "I will", and the calamity is real suffering. The remaining question, whether each judgment was just, is a different argument from "God is the author of sin", and the objector owes it separately. See Isaiah 45.7 I Create Evil and Divine Sovereignty.

Notable verses

See also

Lexicon

Concepts and defeaters