1 Kings Chapter 9 verse 9

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preb34

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Dear fellow Catholics,

I recently read this scripture verse:
Men will answer: ‘They forsook the Lord, their God, who brought their fathers out of the land of Egypt; they adopted strange gods which they worshiped and served. That is why the Lord has brought down upon them all this evil.’"
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The part highlighted concerns me. Doesn’t the Church teach that God does not bring evil down on man, but man brings evil upon himself? Would this verse be contradictory, or is “evil” being used in a different way (such as suffering/chastisement)?
 
preb34 said:
Dear fellow Catholics,

I recently read this scripture verse:

The part highlighted concerns me. Doesn’t the Church teach that God does not bring evil down on man, but man brings evil upon himself? Would this verse be contradictory, or is “evil” being used in a different way (such as suffering/chastisement)?
Click to expand...
Evil is being used in the general sense of suffering. The men brought punishment down on themselves, though they may have seen their own suffering as “evil”, it was actually a judgment from God.
 
It’s a different way of saying that they got exactly what they asked for. They chose to walk away from God and God simply said, “Have it your way” and honored their choice.

You have to remember that the Jews were people of the covenant. The covenant with God was everything to the Jews. The covenant defined the identity of the Jewish people as God’s own, apart from the other nations. And the benefits for faithfulness to the covenant as well as consequences for unfaithfulness were crystal clear:

See, I have today set before you life and good, death and evil. If you obey the commandments of the LORD, your God, which I am giving you today, loving the LORD, your God, and walking in his ways, and keeping his commandments, statutes and ordinances, you will live and grow numerous, and the LORD, your God, will bless you in the land you are entering to possess. If, however, your heart turns away and you do not obey, but are led astray and bow down to other gods and serve them, 18I tell you today that you will certainly perish; you will not have a long life on the land which you are crossing the Jordan to enter and possess. I call heaven and earth today to witness against you: I have set before you life and death, the blessing and the curse. Choose life, then, that you and your descendants may live, by loving the LORD, your God, obeying his voice, and holding fast to him. For that will mean life for you, a long life for you to live on the land which the LORD swore to your ancestors, to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, to give to them. (Deuteronomy 30:15-30)

Life and death, good and evil, blessing and curse… Crystal clear. God still does that to us. We are under no less of a covenant, and God honors our choices. Like the Israelites however, God is always willing to fogive if we turn back to him.

It was a covenant, a family bond made with God, and it had consequences. Never forget that it was a covenant.

-Tim-
 
God is not evil or do anything evil, but the providential plan of history that he has put in place includes much evil for the sake of bringing about greater good.
 
Aelred_Minor said:
God is not evil or do anything evil, but the providential plan of history that he has put in place includes permitting, but not willing, much evil for the sake of bringing about greater good.
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I fixed it for you.👍
 
Is punishment evil if it is just? There are many instances in Scripture that are hard to distinguish as “God permitting misfortune to befall sinners” as something different from God actively administering punishment. Consider the fate of Korah’s rebellion recorded in Numbers 16. Did God only allow passively an earthquake that “swallowed them up, and their houses, and all the men that appertained unto Korah, and all their goods” in v. 32? Similarly, it seems hard to only allow that God simply “allowed” a fire to occur that “consumed the two hundred and fifty men that offered incense” in v. 35 while saying that God had no active part in it, especially when it is stated that the fire “came out… from the Lord.”

St. Paul states: “whom the Lord loveth he chasteneth, and scourgeth every son whom he receiveth” (Hebrews 12:6).
 
The mental picture I have when I think of the issue of good and evil, the blessing and the curse, is a picture of God holding an umbrella and inviting everyone to get under it and out of the rain (= the curse). If someone doesn’t choose to get under the umbrella (= livi ng according to the will of God), then he is living in the rain (= under the curse).
 
Remember that quote is saying ‘what men would say’ not what is true neccesarily just what men in that time would say about what was happening.
 
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