Isaiah 45:7

I form the light, and create darkness,.... Natural light, or that light which was produced at the first creation, and of which the sun is the fountain and source; or day which is light, and night

I form the light, and create darkness: I make peace, and create evil: I the LORD do all these things. I form the light, and create darkness - Yaatsar (H3335), to give "form" to previously existing matter.

All men’ s comforts and calamities come from my hand.

Isaiah 45:7 I form the light, and create darkness: I make peace, and create evil: I the LORD do all these [things].Ver. 7. I form the light, and create darkness,] sc., By withdrawing the light whence darkness succeedeth; so doth misery when God withholdeth mercy. But what an odd, or rather mad conceit was that of the Manichees, that there were two beginnings of things - a good one, and an evil! that the latter was the God of the Old Testament, and the former of the New! that the God of the Old Testament did good by accident and occasionally, but created evil of himself, even evil of sin! for so they mistook this text, which is to be understood as evil of punishment only, which he inflicteth on evildoers for the manifestation of his justice and power, ac propterea recte, et non male eo pacto quo per nos mala male flunt. I make peace, and create evil.] Evil, that is, war, by a specialty, and καταντονομασιαν, Omega nostrorum Mors est, Mars Alpha malorum. Sin, Satan, and war have all one name; evil is the best of them. The best of sin is deformity, of Satan enmity, of war misery. Vide Aug. contra Julian., lib. iii. cap. 8.

(7) I make peace, and create evil . . .—The words have no bearing on the insoluble problem of what we call the origin of evil. “Evil,” as opposed to “peace” or prosperity, is suffering, but not sin; normally, in the Divine counsels, at once the consequence and corrective of moral evil (comp. Isaiah 47:11; Isaiah 57:1.)

Verse 7. I form the light, and create darkness] It was the great principle of the Magian religion, which prevailed in Persia in the time of Cyrus, and in which probably he was educated, that there are two supreme, co-eternal, and independent causes always acting in opposition one to the other; one the author of all good, the other of all evil. The good being they called LIGHT; the evil being, DARKNESS. That when LIGHT had the ascendant, then good and happiness prevailed among men; when DARKNESS had the superiority, then evil and misery abounded. An opinion that contradicts the clearest evidence of our reason, which plainly leads us to the acknowledgment of one only Supreme Being, infinitely good as well as powerful. With reference to this absurd opinion, held by the person to whom this prophecy is addressed, God, by his prophet, in the most significant terms, asserts his omnipotence and absolute supremacy: - "I am JEHOVAH, and none else; Forming light, and creating darkness, Making peace, and creating evil: I JEHOVAH am the author of all these things." Declaring that those powers whom the Persians held to be the original authors of good and evil to mankind, representing them by light and darkness, as their proper emblems, are no other than creatures of God, the instruments which he employs in his government of the world, ordained or permitted by him in order to execute his wise and just decrees; and that there is no power, either of good or evil, independent of the one supreme God, infinite in power and in goodness. There were, however, some among the Persians whose sentiments were more moderate as to this matter; who held the evil principle to be in some measure subordinate to the good; and that the former would at length be wholly subdued by the latter. See Hyde, De Relig. Vet. Pers. cap. xxii. That this opinion prevailed among the Persians as early as the time of Cyrus we may, I think, infer not only from this passage of Isaiah, which has a manifest reference to it, but likewise from a passage in Xenophon's Cyropaedia, where the same doctrine is applied to the human mind. Araspes, a noble young Persian, had fallen in love with the fair captive Panthea, committed to his charge by Cyrus. After all his boasting that he was superior to the assaults of that passion, he yielded so far to it as even to threaten violence if she would not comply with his desires. Awed by the reproof of Cyrus, fearing his displeasure, and having by cool reflection recovered his reason; in his discourse with him on this subject he says: "O Cyrus, I have certainly two souls; and this piece of philosophy I have learned from that wicked sophist, Love.

7. It has been very generally supposed that the expressions of this verse cover a polemic against the Zoroastrian dualism, with its eternal antagonism between Ahuramazda, the god of light and of goodness, and Ahriman, the god of darkness and evil. The prophet’s language, however, is perfectly general, and it is hardly probable that he would have contented himself with a vague allusion to so important a controversy. And apart from the question whether Cyrus was a Zoroastrian in religion, it is doubtful whether a sharply formulated dualism was a prominent feature of Persian religion in his time. It is more likely therefore that the only dualism here referred to is the dualism latent in every polytheistic system, viz., the ascription of good and evil events to different classes of deities. The context shews that the writer is thinking of the effect of Jehovah’s victory, not specially on Cyrus, but upon men in general; and the truth he asserts is simply that Jehovah as the only God is the disposer of all events, good and evil alike. and create evil] i.e. not moral evil, but physical evil, calamity. Cf. Amos 3:6, “shall evil befall a city and Jehovah hath not done it?” The prophet’s words are startlingly bold, but they do not go beyond the common O. T. doctrine on the subject, which is free from the speculative difficulties that readily suggest themselves to the mind of a modern reader. There is no thought in the O.T. of reducing all evil, moral and physical, to a single principle. Moral evil proceeds from the will of man, physical evil from the will of God, who sends it as the punishment of sin. The expression “create evil” implies nothing more than that. It is true (as we see from the Book of Job &c.) that the indiscriminateness of physical calamities had begun to cause perplexity in the age to which the prophecy belongs. But the discussion of that question never shook either of the two positions, that sin originates in man, and that God is the author of calamity.

I form the light, and create darkness - Light, in the Bible, is the emblem of knowledge, innocence, pure religion, and of prosperity in general; and darkness is the emblem of the opposite.

7. I form the light, and… create evil — Zoroastrianism — the Magian religion — held God to be one and omnipotent, but he was derived from the light principle. The God Jehovah here assumes priority to and creatorship of light.