Isaiah 45:7

In the wake of the Haitian earthquake, I have seen references to Isaiah 45:7 popping up frequently. The passage reads (in the NIV):

I form the light and create darkness,
I bring prosperity and create disaster;
I, the LORD, do all these things. link

The reason this passage has garnered recent attention, obviously is the fact that it seems to claim that God creates disasters (the NASB translates it as "calamity.") This has only fueled debate over things like Pat Robertson's comments on the cause of the earthquake. While there are plenty of Christian apologetic sites that will point out that the Hebrew word translated disaster here refers to natural disasters and not moral evil, this does not make the passage any less troubling.

I don't think that every difficult passage in the Bible can be harmonized or given an explanation that is satisfying to 21st century ethics, however I don't think it is never legitimate to try to explain a passage that may seem to be troubling. In the case of this passage, however, there is perhaps a greater need to offer comment on it because it seems to refer to more than God simply punishing people for evil (which would just lead to debates over whether or not God's punishments are just or not), but for God being the source of all natural disasters.

In doing some reflecting and research on the passage, I came across an interesting article by Michael Deroche from a 1992 issue of Vetus Testamentum entitled "Isaiah XLV 7 and the Creation of Chaos?" In the article, Deroche in passing makes an interesting analysis that provides a compelling way of understanding this passage. This is all the more interesting because Deroche is not seeking to grapple with the ethical implications of the passage or seeking to explain it away, but is instead weighing in on a debate about the doctrine of creation ex nihilo and the Hebrew creation account.

In looking at the verse, Deroche comments:

The four elements that Yahweh claims to create are not listed in a random fashion. They appear in two groups of two, each group containing a pair of terms normally thought of as opposites. This form of expression is called a merism, a figure in which two opposite terms are used together to refer to a totality

This idea of opposites used to express a totality is elaborated upon later in the article:

I would argue that Isa. xlv 7 reflects the same notion that the created world is comprised of sets of binary opposites. In this case, the two pairs reflect the two dimensions of human existence: light and darkness reflect the physical world, while well-being and evil stand for the ethical world. Of course, since light and darkness can be metaphors for good and evil, the distinction is by no means absolute, and reflects the Hebrew notion that the physical and ethical realms are intertwined. The last stich of the verse summarizes in a more succinct manner the point of the first two: Yahweh is the creator of everything!

What this merism expresses is God's supremacy over the physical and ethical realms of the universe, which is a pretty uncontroversial claim for a Christian. If we view this as a literary technique that uses binary opposites to express a totality, what we have isn't an affirmation of God's role in sending disasters upon people, but in affirming God's role as Lord of all of creation.

This sort of affirmation would stop short of attributing divine agency to everything that takes place in the universe, but instead only asserts that God is the creator of a universe in which such things take place. This obviously can raise the question of why God would create a universe in such disasters are able to take place at all, which is a legitimate question. But this is not the same thing as ascribing responsibility to God for disasters (anyone with children will recognize that you can create something that can do things that you are not morally responsible for). This little bit of exegesis doesn't provide an answer to the problem of evil, but it does provide a plausible interpretation of the verse that avoids the conclusion that God is the author of all natural disasters. Whether such a claim can be made from the Bible is up for debate, but I don't think Isaiah 45:7 will be able to establish this on its own.