Emor & Job: A Sacred Name

A man who blasphemes the name of God is executed in this week’s Torah portion, Emor, in the book of Leviticus.

In English, “blasphemy” means insulting or showing contempt for a god, or for something sacred. In Biblical Hebrew, there is no word that exactly corresponds to “blasphemy”. Humans do not have the power to profane God, and our curses are only effective if God chooses to carry them out. We can, however, misuse sacred objects, making them chalal חָלַל = profaned, degraded by being used for an ordinary purpose. And we can insult or belittle God’s name, which is a type of blasphemy.¹ In Biblical Hebrew, one’s name also means one’s reputation.

Yet the idea of reviling God or God’s name was so abominable to the ancient Israelites that the bible usually indicates blasphemy through euphemisms or near-synonyms.

Blasphemy with a euphemism in 1 Kings and Job

Naboth’s Stoning in Front of the Vineyard, Anon., Prague, 14th century

The verb barakh (בָּרַךְ), meaning to bless or utter a blessing, appears frequently in the Hebrew Bible. But twice in the first book of Kings and four times in the book of Job, this verb serves as a euphemism for blaspheming or cursing God.

In 1 Kings, Nabot owns a vineyard adjacent to palace of King Ahab. Ahab offers to buy the land, but Nabot refuses. The king is so upset that his wife, Jezebel, schemes to kill Nabot so she can seize the vineyard for her husband. She writes orders in the king’s name telling the judges of the town to summon Nabot.

“And seat two worthless men opposite him, and they must testify, saying: ‘Beirakhta God and king!’ Then take him out and stone him so he dies.” (1 Kings 21:10)

beirakhta (בֵּרַכְתָּ) = you “blessed”.

The judges follow orders. The two worthless men use exactly those words, and everyone knows they really mean that Nabot reviled God and the king. Nabot is executed by stoning.

At the beginning of the book of Job, Job is so devout he makes extra burnt offerings for his adult children, saying to himself:

“Perhaps my children are guilty, uveirakhu God in their hearts.” (Job 1:15)

uveirakhu (וּבֵרַכוּ) = and they “blessed”.

Job not only worries that his children might have some negative thoughts about God, but even uses a euphemism for blasphemy when he talks to himself.

The action of the story switches to the heavenly court of the “children of God”—perhaps lesser gods or angels. The God character mentions how upright and God-fearing Job is. The satan (שָׂטָן = adversary, accuser) in the court points out that God has blessed Job with wealth and children, so of course the man responds with grateful service. He adds:

“However, just stretch out your hand and afflict everything that is his. Surely yevarakhekha to your face!” (Job 1:11)

yevarakhekha (יְוָרַכֶךָּ) = he will “bless” you.

Thus the satan in the heavenly court also uses blessing as a euphemism for cursing God. The God character gives the satan permission to run the experiment, and in four simultaneous disasters Job loses his livestock, his servants, and all his children. Job responds:

“Y-H-V-H gave and Y-H-V-H took away. May the name of Y-H-V-H be a mevorakh.” Through all that, Job did not sin and did not accuse God of worthlessness. (Joab 1:21)

mevorakh (מְבֺרָךְ) = blessing.

Here Job actually does bless God’s four-letter personal name. He does not use the word for “bless” to revile or curse God.

The God character points out to the satan that Job’s devotion to God has not wavered. The satan replies:

“But a man will give up all that he has [to save] his life. However, just stretch out your hand and afflict his bones and his flesh. Surely yevarakhekha to your face!” (Job 2:5)

Job and his Wife, Venice Codex, 905 C.E.

Again the satan uses blessing as a euphemism for blasphemy, and again the God character authorizes the experiment, asking only that the satan spare Job’s life. Job comes down with a painful inflammation from head to toe, and he sits in an ash-heap scratching himself.

Then Job’s wife utters her famous cry of despair, “Curse God and die!” But in the original Hebrew she expresses it this way:

“You still cling to your uprightness? Bareikh God and die!” (Job 2:9)

bareikh (בָּרֵךְ) = “bless!”

The reader or listener is expected to understand that “bless!” means the opposite, and should have the equivalent of air-quotes around it. Either Job’s wife does not want to go so far as to say “curse God” herself, or the author of the book does not.

Near-synonyms for blasphemy in Emor

People in the Hebrew Bible also commit blasphemy by using near-synonyms for “blaspheme”: verbs that mean curse, belittle, or revile, but count as blasphemy when they are applied to God or the name of God. The near-synonyms in this week’s Torah portion, Emor, are:

nakav (נָקַב) = pierce, put a hole in, designate, curse,
kalal (ַקַלַל) in the piel stem = belittle, insult, revile, curse.

One of God’s commands in the book of Exodus is:

Lo tekaleil God! (Exodus 22:27)

lo tekaleil (לֺא תְקַלֵּל) = you must not belittle, revile, curse. (lo, לֺא = not + tekaleil, תְקַלֵּל = you must belittle, insult, revile, curse; from the piel stem of the root verb kalal.)

Even though a human cannot actually inflict a curse on God, it is possible to belittle or revile God’s reputation. The word for “God” in this command is not God’s four-letter personal name, but Elohim (אֳלֺהִים) = God, a god, gods. The God of Israel does not want to be belittled or reviled by any name.

The command in Exodus is violated in this week’s Torah portion, Emor.

A son of an Israelite woman and an Egyptian man went out among the Israelites. And the Israelite woman’s son and an Israelite man scuffled in the camp. Vayikov the name, the Israelite woman’s son, vayekaleil, and he was brought to Moses. The name of his mother was Shelomit, daughter of Divri, from the tribe of Dan. (Leviticus 24:10-11)

vayikov (וַיִּקּב) = and he pierced, put a hole through, designated, cursed. (A form of the verb nakav.)

vayekaleil (וַיְקַלֵּל) = and he belittled, insulted, reviled, cursed. (A form of the root verb kalal in the piel stem.)

Does he curse God’s name? Or does he curse the Israelite man he is scuffling with, using God’s name in a curse formula?² We do not know; this week’s Torah portion adds vayekaleil (and he belittled, reviled) without a direct object. But whatever Shelomit’s son says, we know he is misusing God’s name.

And they put him into custody [to wait] for exact information for themselves from the mouth of God. Then God spoke to Moses, saying: “Take hamekaleil outside the camp, and all who heard must lay their hands on his head. Then the whole community must stone him.” (Leviticus 24:12-14)

hamekaleil (הַמְקַלֵּל) = the belittler, the insulter, the reviler, the curser. (Also in the piel stem of the verb kalal.)

Moses and some of the other judges in the community have already determined, on the testimony of multiple witnesses, that Shelomit’s son is guilty. They wait only for God to tell Moses what the sentence should be, and God obliges.

Next God provides a general rule about blasphemy:

“And you must speak to the Israelites, saying: Anyone yekaleil his eloha will bear the burden of his guilt. Venokeiv the Name of God, he must definitely be put to death; the whole community must definitely stone him. Resident alien and native alike, benakvo the Name he must be put to death.” (Leviticus 24:15-16)

yekaleil (יְחַלֵּל) = who belittles, insults, reviles, curses. (Also in the piel stem of the verb kalal.)

eloha (אֱלֺהָ) = god. (Singular of Elohim.)

venokeiv (וְנֺקֵב) = and one who curses. (Another form of the verb nakav.)

benakvo (בְּנָקְבוֹ) = when he curses. (Also from nakav.)

One way to interpret this command is that anyonewho reviles his own god is guilty and will be punished in some undetermined way; but anyone who reviles the personal name of the God of Israel must be executed.

The Talmud (6^th century C.E.) agrees that “For cursing the ineffable name of God, one is liable to be executed with a court-imposed death penalty.” But it interprets “anyone yekaleil his eloha” as anyone who reviles or curses one of the less sacred names of God, such as Elohim.³

Rashbam⁴ wrote in the 12^th century C.E. that God would deliver the punishment to someone who cursed a lesser name of God, so human judges did not need to take action.

The God character in the portion Emor immediately adds:

“And a man who strikes down the life of any human being, he must definitely be put to death.” (Leviticus 24:17)

There are other death penalties in the Torah, but this juxtaposition makes a point. Reviling God’s personal name is as bad as destroying a human being, who is made “in the image of God” (Genesis 1:27).

Shelomit’s son in this week’s Torah portion might have had a good reason for cursing God’s name. According to Sifra, a 4^th-century C.E. commentary,

He had come to Moses asking him to render a judgment in his favor so that he could pitch his tent in the camp of Dan, his mother’s tribe. Moses ruled against him because of the regulation (Numbers 2:2) that the order of the encampment was to be strictly governed by the father’s ancestry. His resentment against the unfavorable ruling by Moses led him to blaspheme.⁵

In this addition to the biblical story, he curses when he is scuffling with an Israelite from the tribe of Dan who insults or excludes him.

I can sympathize with Shelomit’s son, and I think he should have been reprimanded, not executed, for expressing his anger with a curse.

Does it really matter if we give God a bad reputation? Ancient Israelite society depended on respect for God and therefore obedience to God’s laws, so reviling God could be an incitement to insurrection. Modern multicultural societies depend on obedience to civil laws and respect for those who follow different religions from your own. Today, I believe, it matters if we give a religion a bad reputation.

May we all bless, not curse, one another. And may we refrain from belittling or reviling any human being, for the sake of the divine image in every one of us.

“God in principle cannot be hurt by any human act, but His name, available for manipulation and debasement in human linguistic practice, can suffer injury, and for this injury the death penalty is exacted, as here in the case of murder.” (Robert Alter, The Five Books of Moses, W.W. Norton & Co., New York, 2004, p. 652.)
One example of a curse formula appears in Psalm 109:20: “May this be God’s repayment to my enemies …”
Talmud Bavli, Shevuot 36a, translation by The William Davidson Talmud, www.sefaria.org.
Rashbam is the acronym of 12^th-century Rabbi Shmuel ben Meir.
Translation by www.sefaria.org.

Haftarat Va-ethchanan—Isaiah: How to Comfort Yourself

How can people find consolation after a national disaster?

Flight of the Prisoners (from Jerusalem in 586 BCE) by James J.J. Tissot, 1896

“There are none menacheim me!” wails Jerusalem, imagined as a widow, in Lamentations 1:21.

menacheim (מְנַחֵם) = comforting, consoling; one who comforts or consoles. (A piel form of the verb nacham, נָחַם, which in the nifil form means a change of heart: either regret or consolation.)

Jerusalem is crying because the Babylonian army besieged and destroyed the city and its temple in 586 B.C.E. (See last week’s post: Lamentations: Seeking Comfort.) The leading families of the kingdom of Judah and its capital were exiled to Babylon, and the rest of the Israelites of Judah became serfs to the Babylonian conquerors.

Jews customarily read the book of Lamentations on the annual fast day of Tisha Be-Av. On the following Shabbat, called Shabbat Nachamu, we read the Torah portion Va-Etchanan in the book of Deuteronomy, and its accompanying haftarah reading from second Isaiah¹, which begins:

“Nachamu, nachamu my people!”

Said your God. (Isaiah 40:1)

nachamu (נַחֲמוּ) = Comfort! Console! (A plural imperative of the verb nacham in its piel form.)

Here God is the speaker, telling someone to comfort God’s people. These people (referred to later in the haftarah as “Jerusalem” or “Zion”) include both the exiles in Babylon and those who remained in Judah.

But who should do the comforting?

Decree by Cyrus (British Museum, photo by Ferrell Jenkins)

One candidate could be King Cyrus, whose Persian Empire swallowed the Babylonian Empire in 538 B.C.E.. Cyrus did, in fact, comfort the exiles from Judah living in Babylon, since he decreed that exiles throughout his empire could return to their own lands and enjoy modified independence.

Yet in the rest of the haftarah God never mentions Cyrus or the good news that the next generation among the exiles could go home after the Persians take over.

Instead God recommends four possible attitudes the Judahites could adopt to console themselves:

that they deserved their punishment, and it is ending;
that their lives and their troubles are ephemeral, impermanent; and
that God moves in mysterious ways.

An unnamed prophetess is called to deliver God’s messages of possible consolation.²

1. Just deserts

The first message begins by telling the people of Judah that have been punished enough.

Speak to the heart of Jerusalem

And call out to her

That she has completed her term of service,

That her crime has been expiated … (Isaiah 40:2)

Throughout the Hebrew Bible, God is considered responsible for the outcome of any war. When God wants the Israelites to win, they do. When God wants to punish the Israelites for worshiping other gods or behaving unethically, then their enemy wins.

Lamentations, Jeremiah, and second Isaiah all assume that God let the Babylonians capture the kingdom of Judah and destroy Jerusalem in order to punish the Israelites.

The Judahites would certainly be reassured if they believed that their sentence of punishment was now over. Many people also find comfort in the belief that there is a reason for their suffering. If God is punishing them for their own misdeeds, they have a reason that does not shake their faith in an omnipotent, omniscient, and omni-benevolent God.

However, verse 40:2 continues with a potentially faith-shaking statement.

… That her crime has been expiated,

Since she took from the hand of God

A double [punishment] for all her misdeeds. (Isaiah 40:2)

Why tell the people that they have endured twice as much punishment as they deserved?

Rashi³ pointed out that Isaiah 40:2 echoes Jeremiah 16:18: “I shall fully repay double for their crime and their misdeeds, because they profaned my land …”

Contemporary commentator Benjamin Sommer reasoned that if people believed that Jeremiah’s prophecy had come true, they were more likely to believe that second Isaiah’s would also come true.⁴

But the reference to a double punishment could also reflect a feeling among the exiles in Babylon or the serfs in the former land of Judah that they had not really sinned enough to warrant what happened to them.

Job, by Ivan Mestrovic, 1943 (photo by M.C.)

In the book of Job, the title character suddenly loses his wealth, his health, and all his children. Three of his friends come to the ash-heap where he sits scratching his boils.

And they agreed to meet together to come to condole with him ulenachamo. (Job 2:11)

ulenachamo (וּלְנַחֲמוֹ) = and to comfort him, and to console him. (From the same root as menacheim and nachamu.)

They take turns telling Job that all his suffering is a punishment from God, and if he would only recognize what sin he had committed and apologize to God, God might heal him. These would-be comforters utterly fail to comfort their friend, because Job knows he did nothing wrong.

Unlike Job, the Judahites in this week’s haftarah know that the people as a whole have committed some misdeeds—but they believe they are being punished twice as much as they deserve. People in this position would not be comfortable with the argument that they deserved their suffering and now it is ending. Their faith that God is just would be shaken.

Perhaps that is why God tells the prophetess:

Say unto the cities of Judah:

Behold your God! (Isaiah 40:9)⁵

A description of God’s power to punish and reward follows. Then God is described as a gentle, caring shepherd.⁶ Anyone who believes they belong to this shepherd’s flock might be comforted.

Nevertheless, the people of Judah might be hesitant to trust God to care for them tenderly so soon after God delivered them into the hands of the Babylonians.

2. Impermanence

For a second approach at consolation, God says:

“All flesh is grass

And all its loyalty is like the flowers of the field.

Grass dries up, and flowers wither and fall

When the breath of God has blown on them.” (Isaiah 40:6-7)

The prophetess replies:

“Truly, the people are grass!

Grass dries up, and flowers wither and fall.

But the word of our God stands forever.” (Isaiah 40:7-8)

The impermanence of human life is also compared to grass or wildflowers in Psalm 90:5-6, Psalm 103:15, and Job 14:1-2. Pondering the ephemeral nature of human life might be depressing to people who are eager to have more deeds and experiences. But people who are helplessly suffering might be consoled by the reflection that their suffering is ephemeral and will soon disappear.

Later in the haftarah the metaphor of grass returns, along with a veiled reference to government dignitaries.⁷ This iteration points out that the Babylonian Empire is ephemeral too, not a permanent evil.

3. Mysterious ways

William Cowper wrote the Christian hymn that begins “God moves in a mysterious way” in 1773. His line became an adage, “God moves in mysterious ways”, reflecting the idea that even when we cannot explain events, God knows that God is doing. For all we know, Cowper had been studying the book of Job, where God finally answers by pointing out that God knows things Job could not even imagine.⁸

Or he was studying Isaiah 40, which says:

Who measured the waters in the hollow of his palm,

And plumbed the skies with a handspan? (Isaiah 40:12)

No human being, obviously, but only God. Then the haftarah mocks humans who think they could understand God:

Who has plumbed the spirit of God?

And [what] man informs [God] of his plan?

With whom did [God] consult, and who discerned

And taught [God] the measure of justice,

And taught [God] knowledge

And informed [God] about the path of discernment? (Isaiah 40:13-14)

Obviously, according to this approach, God’s wisdom and justice are so far beyond human comprehension that for all we know, our suffering is necessary for some mysterious good result. We can console ourselves by trusting that the pain God inflicts on us is worthwhile.

A reader with a theological bent will have noticed that just deserts, impermanence, and trust in God’s mysterious ways are all theodicies: attempts to explain why an omnipotent, omniscient, and good God permits evil in the world. (See my post Psalm 73: When Good Things Happen.)

Some theologians excuse God from responsibility for war, on the grounds that wars are begun and conducted by human beings, and God gave humans free will because without it we could not make ethical choices at all. But the biblical assumption is that God permits war in order to punish peoples who have disobeyed or misbehaved.

Those whose worldview depends on a God who rewards and punishes desperately need to trust God to do the right thing. Then they could not only be comforted, but could also consider the evils of war acceptable, because

the losers deserved their punishment, and ends when justice has been done; or
both lives and their troubles are ephemeral, impermanent anyway; or
God moves in mysterious ways and brings about the best possible world in the long run.

But what about people who believe that human beings, not God, are to blame for wars and other national disasters?

Perhaps we can find consolation in the thought that at least our suffering is not the will of God.

—

Most of Isaiah 1-39 consists of the prophecies of Isaiah son of Amotz, who lived in Jerusalem when the Assyrians besieged it in 701 B.C.E. (but failed to capture the city). Isaiah 40-66, sometimes called “second Isaiah”, is a collection of writings dating from after the Babylonians succeeded in capturing Jerusalem in 586 B.C.E.. It includes prophecies that the Babylonian exile would end and the Judahites would return to Jerusalem.
In Isaiah 40:9, God addresses the one who answers the call as “mevaseret of Zion”. Mevaseret (מְבַשֶּׂרֶת) = (fem.) herald, bringer of news. (The masculine form is mevaseir, מְבַשֵּׂר.)
11^th-century Rabbi Shlomoh Yitzchaki.
Benjamin D. Sommer, “Deutero-Isaiah Reworks Past Prophecies to Comfort Israel”, thetorah.com.
I used the King James translation of this couplet from Isaiah 40:9 because it is captures the meaning of the Hebrew and it is well-known from the libretto in George Friderick Handel’s oratorio “The Messiah”.
Isaiah 40:11. The King James translation contains some inaccuracies, but Charles Jennens used this verse as well in his libretto for Handel’s Messiah. For more, see my post Haftarah for Ki Tavo—Isaiah: Rise and Shine.
Isaiah 40:23.
Job 38:1-39:4.

Psalm 73: When Good Things Happen

This week’s Torah portion is Bemidbar, the beginning of the book of Numbers/Bemidbar. But I am still pondering God’s promises of reward and punishment in the last portion in the book of Leviticus/Vayikra. This post will consider Psalm 73, a different take on divine recompense and retribution.

Next week I will write about the first two Torah portions in the book of Numbers, and catch up with the Jewish cycle of Torah readings!

Last week’s Torah portion, Bechukotai, quotes God as promising rewards to those who obey God’s rules and punishments to those who disobey them—with physical consequences here and now: food or starvation, health or sickness, peace or war, etc. (See my post Bechukotai & Jeremiah: Real Carrots and Sticks.) Yet often the good suffer and the wicked prosper, as Psalm 73 and the book of Job point out.

If God is omnipotent, omniscient, omnibenevolent, and just, then why do so many good things happen to bad people, and bad things happen to the good? Theologians have struggled with “the problem of evil” for millennia. Their solutions include:

Wilhelm Gottfried Leibniz, 18th-cent. author of Theodicy on the Goodness of God

Best of All Possible Worlds and Free Will: This imperfect world that God created is the best of all possible worlds; God could not improve it in one way without making it worse in another way. Furthermore, the best possible world is one in which human beings freely choose what is good. God created a world containing evil as well as good so that humans could understand the difference, and choose to increase the goodness in the world.¹

(This answer means that if God modified any natural disasters, there would be some unimaginable dire effect. So we should not blame God for all the natural disasters that happened before man-made global warming took effect.

(It also means that if God tweaked human psychology to make our thinking less short-sighted and compartmentalized, so we made fewer inadvertent poor moral decisions, it would turn us into monsters in some other way.

(And it means that if God eliminated sociopaths from our species it would create some disaster. All of this strains belief.)

The Reward Is in Heaven: God rewards every good person and punishes every bad person—not in this world, but in an afterlife.²

(This answer requires belief in one or two mysterious other worlds that “exist” outside space and time. It also requires belief in a soul that can magically retain the identity of an individual person after death without any physical correlates.)

The Long Run: God is unconcerned about individuals, but has a master plan in which all humans will be good and this earth will be a paradise—in the long, long run, after many millennia. Too bad so many good people have to suffer along the way.³

(This answer posits a God unlike the one in the bible, who shows personal concern for at least some individuals and groups, and commands human judges to be fair to individuals.)

“I do not understand wonders too difficult for me.” (Job 42:3): Humans are incapable of understanding divine justice, which is radically different from human justice.⁴

(This answer is self-defeating. If we are incapable of understanding what God considers “good”, God’s injunctions in the bible do not mean what we think they do. Then how can we judge what God wants in new situations? And should we do what we know is right, or what we are guessing God wants?)

Is the problem of evil insoluble, then? Or does God reward the good and punish the bad in some other way?

Psalm 73

Psalm 73 opens:

Surely God is good to Israel

—to those who purify their hearts.⁵

As for me, my feet had almost turned aside;

My steps had nearly slipped,

Because I envied the revelers;

I saw the prosperity of the wicked. (Psalm 73:1-3)

The psalmist goes on to describe how fat and healthy the wicked are, despite the fact that they oppress people and speak with malice. They seem to be getting away with a selfish and cruel way of life.

They avoid the toil of other men,

And lo yenuga-u with [the rest of] humankind. …

Hey! These are the wicked, yet they are always complacent.

They pile up wealth.

Surely in vain have I kept my heart morally pure

And washed my palms with innocence!

For I was nagua every day,

And I was chastised every morning. (Psalm 73:5, 12-14)

lo yenuga-u (לֺא יְנֻגָּעוּ) = they are not afflicted, hurt. (lo = not + a form of the verb naga, נָגַע = touch, afflict, hurt, strike.)

nagua (נָגוּעַ) = touched, afflicted, hurt. (Another form of the verb naga.)

Job 1, by Ivan Mestrovic, 1943 (photo by M.C.)

We do not learn what the speaker’s affliction was, but elsewhere in the Hebrew Bible the “touch” of God often causes a disease or plague.⁶

While Job is sitting on the ash-heap scratching his putrid sores he says:

“Be kind! Be kind! You are my friends!

For the hand of God nagah me.” (Job 19:21)

nagah (נָגְעָה) = touched, afflicted. (Another form of the verb naga.)

Like Job, the speaker in Psalm 73 is innocent of wrongdoing, but nevertheless afflicted. The speaker considers telling the world that the wicked are rewarded and the good are punished, but then realizes:

If I said: “I will recount [this] exactly”

Hey, I would be backstabbing your children’s generation!

And when I evaluated and understood this,

It was trouble in my sight. (Psalm 73:15-16)

Unlike the wicked, the speaker cares about the welfare of the next generation, and feels responsible for promoting good behavior so that people will not harm each other.

The speaker’s second insight is that although the wicked think their path is smooth, it is actually slippery, and sooner or later they will fall.

Surely you set them [the wicked] on slippery footing,

You cast them down into destruction.

How they become a horror in an instant!

They reach the limit, they come to an end in terror.

Like awakening from a dream, my Lord,

The city finds their shadow contemptible. (Psalm 73:18-20)

Suddenly their wickedness will be revealed to everyone, and people will turn against them. Then their complacency will change into terror.

The psalmist does not tell us the nature of their terror. Are the wicked afraid that now “the city” will be as cruel to them as they were to others? Or do they recognize their own guilt?

The third insight is that mental agitation and pangs of conscience come from God.

When my mind was agitated

and my conscience was stabbed,

Then I was a dolt and I did not know;

I was [like] the beasts with you.

Yet I was always with you;

You held fast to my right hand. (Psalm 73:20-23)

Since God is always available, the wicked have to deliberately turn away from God and ignore their consciences in order to continue doing bad deeds. But the speaker did not pull away. The speaker’s affliction, as a “touch” from God, might even have led him or her to reflect deeply enough to feel the stab of conscience.

Through your counsel you guided me

And in the end, you will take me in honor. (Psalm 73:24)

Martin Buber explained, “God counsels by making known that He is present”.⁷

Unlike the wicked, the psalmist says, someone who follows God’s counsel will be honored after death. But Psalm 73 focuses on life in this world. And in this world the wicked travel so far from God that eventually nobody listens to them anymore.

Because hey! Those far away from [God] go astray;

Everyone who is unfaithful to [God] is silenced.

But as for me, the nearness of God is my good.

I place my refuge in my lord God, and I recount all of your works. (Psalm 73:27-28)

Doing the right things leads to an inner satisfaction, the good experience of feeling the nearness of God. This inner reward is a refuge when outer circumstances are difficult.

“The nearness of God is my good” is the best answer I know to the problem of evil. But it is incomplete. A thoughtful adult might well conclude that virtue is its own reward, and physical suffering is unimportant compared to the reward of a contented conscience. But what about the millions of innocent children who have suffered, physically and psychologically, and then died without growing up?

Must we believe that this is nevertheless the best of all possible worlds? Or that children who have been tortured will get a good “life” in a non-physical afterlife? Or that all the children destroyed by the Holocaust are unimportant compared to some ideal distant future? Or that a superior, divine point of view considers our outrage and empathy for these children foolish?

Even though doing the right thing is intrinsically rewarding, it is only a partial solution to the problem of evil in a world created by a God who is an omnipotent, omniscient, omnibenevolent, and just judge.

We might ask whether this notion of God is a naïve concept.

—

Wilhelm Gottfried Leibniz presented this argument in Essays of Theodicy on the Goodness of God, the Freedom of Man and the Origin of Evil, 1710, and was satirized by Voltaire in Candide, 1759, in which Dr. Pangloss chirps that this is “the best of all possible worlds” at inopportune times.
This is Rabbi Yitzchak Abravanel’s answer to the problem of evil in his 15th-century commentary on Leviticus, as well as a common answer in Christian and Muslim traditions.
Cf. Isaiah 46:10-13; Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamozov.
Cf. the book of Job.
My translation is informed by 19^th-century rabbi S.R. Hirsch on the psalm’s use of the word bar (ּבַּר) instead of tahor (טָהוֹר) for “pure”. “A man may be לב טהוֹר by nature and disposition. However, the designation לב בר can be applied only to him whose purity of mind is a result of his own efforts at self-improvement.” (Samson Raphael Hirsch, The Hirsch Tehillim, translated by Gertrude Hirschler, Feldheim Publishers, Nanuet, NY, 2014, p. 597)
Eg. Genesis 12:17, 2 Kings 15:5, Isaiah 53:4, Job 2:5, 2 Chronicles 26:20.
Martin Buber, Good and Evil, translated by Ronald Gregor Smith, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1952, p. 43.