(aven)" (Prov. 22: 8).

And so the weary process is repeated from generation to

We now reach those aspects and phases of sin that demand more vigorous and active

titles to express their character. Up till now we have seen sin as a failure, its condition

ignorance, its fruit vanity, its course distortion, but this can have but one result, viz.,

active rebellion and transgression.

Thus we get abar, transgression. The primary meaning of abar is to pass over (see

Gen. 32: 10, 16, 31,  33: 3;  Exod. 12: 12).  Pasha, rebellion, and rasha,

wickedness. I Sam. 20: 3 uses the word pasha, "There is but a step between me and

death", and the marginal reading of Isa. 27: 4, "I would march against them". These

usages show that pasha is similar to abar in the thought of overstepping. Abar oversteps

the bounds, pasha revolts against authority. "I have nourished and brought up children,

and they have rebelled against Me" (Isa. 1: 2).

Rasha, wickedness, is revolt in progress, rebellion rushing to ruin.  Its essential

meaning is that of violent commotion, the exact opposite of peace. Micah 6: 11 speaks

of the "wicked balances", which contrast with that sense of equal poise expressed by

"just balances". Job 3: 17 speaks of the wicked in a context that expresses restless

character. "There the wicked cease from troubling, and there the weary be at rest."

So also Isa. 57: 20, 21 speaks to the same effect: "The wicked are like the troubled sea,

when it cannot rest, whose waves cast up mire and dirt. There is no peace, saith my God,

to the wicked." These are the "ungodly" of Psa. 1: 1, 4, 6, and the "malefactors" and

"thieves" indicated prophetically in Isa. 53: 9.

Such negation of right and commission of wrong has but one end.  This is

foreshadowed in the word ra, evil. This word is translated evil no less than 444 times in

the O.T. Its primary meaning is to break, and to destroy, "Thou shalt break them with a

rod of iron" (Psa. 2: 9). Then to afflict, to entreat evil (Job 24: 21). Ra is translated by

a number of words that suggest calamity and trouble: adversity 4 times, affliction 6,

calamity once, displeasure 4, distress once, grief and grievous 3, harm once,

hurt 20, misery once, sad, sore, sorrow, trouble, wretchedness among others will

show that the primitive idea of "ruin" is never absent from the word. The reader, with a

concordance before him, or even the above citations, will not be greatly troubled by those

who wish to bring out of Isa. 45: 7 a bolster for the teaching that God is the creator of

sin. The book of Ecclesiastes provides a commentary upon the meaning of evil no less

than that of vanity. The writer speaks of sore travail (1: 13), work that is grievous (2: 17),

a vanity and a great evil (2: 21), as he sees the ruin and the purposeless toil that has

resulted from sin.