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5 nothing but evil all day long. רַ֥ק רַ֖ע כָּל־הַיּֽוֹם׃
Last time, I pointed out that this verse is suffused with evil — at least, with the words ra (the adjective) and ra’a (the noun), which have not yet occurred in the Bible outside the context of “knowing good and evil” (as traditional translations have it). No one has been called evil and no one has done anything that has been called evil.
Santa Claus has to come to town to “find out who's naughty and nice.” YHWH somehow knows, even though no one has actually been naughty, that they are scheming to commit naughtiness. The beginning of our verse says (in the King James translation) that “every imagination of the thoughts of his heart” was nothing but evil all day long.
Let’s sum up the data we’ve collected so far about “evil” on earth:
deeds — 100% nice
thoughts — 100% naughty
You may wish to point to Cain’s killing Abel as something that’s at least a little bit naughty. It certainly violates my concept of what’s good and what isn’t. The Bible, however, never even calls it wrong, let alone sinful or evil. YHWH is willing to make sure that no revenge is taken on Cain for the killing. As I pointed out when we first read that story:
Cain and YHWH both agree it would not do to have Cain killed — just as they both agreed that it would be all right to have Abel killed.
Moving further back in Genesis, the two humans in Xanadu Park ate a piece of fruit that YHWH God did not want them to eat. This too is not called sinful, let alone evil, perhaps for the simple reason that it was (supposedly) this very fruit that gave them the ability to sort out what was good and what was evil.
Even the “sons of the gods” have not misbehaved. Since you might think that the Nephilim were misbehaving (though again, there’s no mention of sin or evil), let me remind you that all of the possibly extramarital divine-human sex is happening afterwards, in a footnote. The only thing that has actually happened in our plot so far is that the sons of the gods married human women. All perfectly kosher.
Now, something else I pointed out last week. The word מַחֲשָׁבָה maḥshava, translated as “thought” by the KJV, means precisely that still in Modern Hebrew. The Biblical Hebrew word, though (and this goes for the verb חשׁב ḥashav ‘think’ as well), has those meanings when God is thinking but not when human beings are, unless they are figuring out how to build the Tabernacle or Temple — in which case God has previously given them the capacity to think through those design tasks (KJV again, with a reminder from me that heart in the Bible can refer to what we call the mind):
Exod 36:1 Then wrought Bezaleel and Aholiab, and every wise hearted [חֲכַם־לֵ֗ב] man, in whom the LORD put wisdom and understanding to know how to work all manner of work for the service of the sanctuary, according to all that the LORD had commanded.
Since we’re not going to be reading Isaiah together (not until the year 2525, anyway), let me bring two verses from that book that may bear on our discussion:
Isa 55:8 For my thoughts are not your thoughts,
nor are your ways my ways, says the LORD.
9 For as the heavens are higher than the earth,
so are my ways higher than your ways
and my thoughts than your thoughts.
Here’s how Joseph Blenkinsopp (in the old Anchor Bible commentary) explains these verses:
The word maḥšěbôt, here translated “thoughts,” contains the idea of calculations, devices, or plans. Human maḥšěbôt are characterized more often than not by sinful deviance (Gen 6:5; Isa 59:7; Ezek 38:10; Ps 56:6), stubborn resistance to God (Jer 18:12; Prov 15:26) and a misguided sense of self-sufficiency (Isa 65:2). Like the maḥšěbâ of Haman in the book of Esther (8:3, 5; 9:25), they generally end badly.
In the translation above, NRSV translates מחשבות with the neutral “thoughts,” where NJPS uses “plans,” perhaps shading just slightly to the negative side. In the following verse, from Jeremiah, NRSV uses that word too:
Jer 18:11 Now, therefore, say to the people of Judah and the inhabitants of Jerusalem: Thus says the LORD: Look, I am a potter shaping evil against you and devising [חֹשֵׁ֥ב] a plan [מַֽחֲשָׁבָ֑ה] against you. Turn now, all of you from your evil way, and amend your ways and your doings.
Oh, yes. “A potter shaping evil”? That is יוֹצֵ֤ר עֲלֵיכֶם֙ רָעָ֔ה yotzer … ra’a. Here YHWH declares himself to be doing just what he is now (here in Genesis) upset that humanity is doing all day long. To quote the familiar King James translation of our verse once more:
every imagination [יצר yétzer] of the thoughts [מחשבת maḥshevot] of his heart was only evil [רע ra] continually
It is not — at all — that human beings are doing something sinful. They are being something that YHWH doesn’t want them to be: they are acting godlike. In 3:5, our old friend the snake explained quite clearly to the woman what would happen if she ate the fruit: “You will be like God.”
You might wonder why, if God doesn’t want the humans to be godlike, he created them as he did:
Gen 1:27 God created the earthling in his image. In the image of God He created him; male and female He created them.
It’s possible to say that God (of the priestly version) and YHWH (of the J version) had different purposes and perspectives in the original texts that were combined to create the Bible we have today. It’s also possible, I think, to say — in a way that’s appropriate for those who are thinking historically and literarily as well as for those who understand the complete Pentateuch to have been given to the Israelites in the desert — that the text is trying to show God as having second thoughts about his creation.
That is most certainly what we’ll see next time, when we turn to v. 6.