[This is part 4 in an article series on Sin, Repentance, and Revival. See part one, two, three, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve]

Leaving Egypt Ministries, Obadiah D. Morris

In our effort to show that statism—that is, the ideological belief in human civil government as well as the actual practice of ruling over other men—is demonstrably sinful, wicked, evil, and representative of mankind’s chief form of rebellion against the Kingdom of God, we will analyze some of the Hebrew words that are used to express these concepts and show how they are often used in a political context that speaks directly of scenarios where men raise up human rulers who inevitably—as a consequence of this sin—go on to prey upon the people, pervert law and justice, and corrupt all that is right.

Here we begin with a rather simple and foundational word used to describe in some way or another the idea of being out of harmony with God and His Law. This is the basic Hebrew word רַע (Strong’s H7451), with a likewise simple transliteration: ra’ (pronounced rah). This is the word that usually gets translated into “evil, bad, wicked, harmful, unpleasant.” This word, with over 600 occurrences in the Hebrew Bible, comes from the related word רָעַע (Strong’s H7489) that gets transliterated as ra’a’ (pronounced rah-ah’). This root word is a verb defined as “be evil, to do wickedly, to harm, to break, to be displeasing.” It carries with it also the idea of “to spoil, to ruin, to be bad.” As one might expect, it spans the whole Old Testament canon, with nearly one-hundred occurrences. 

The evils of statism 

In one powerful defense of our thesis, a notable use of this word for evil is when the Israelites’ demand for a king is said to be “displeasing” in the sight of Samuel (1 Samuel 8:6). The word here is רַע or ra’, meaning evil. Here we already see a good example of problems that can arise in attempting to translate languages with different word meanings, or the issue with the word choices or potential biases of the translators. Obviously, “displeasing” doesn’t quite convey as powerful as an objection to this sinful quest for a king to English speakers as we take evil to mean. At any rate, Samuel’s reaction to the people wanting a human king was that it was evil.

Another relevant use for our aims of linking statism to evil is the prevalence of this word to describe what became of most all of the kings of Israel and Judah later in the Bible: that they “did evil in the sight of the Lord” (2 Chronicles 33:22; cf. 1 Kings 11:6, 14:22, 15:26, 15:34, 16:13, 16:19, 16:25, 16:30, 22:52; 2 Kings 3:2, 13:2, 13:11, 14:24, 15;9, 15:18, 15:24, 15:28, 17:2, 17:17, 21:2, 23:32). Before its use here, the word is also used to describe the evil-doing of Pharaoh against the captives in Egypt (Ex 5:23). Later on it is used to recall how “the Egyptians mistreated us, afflicted us, and laid hard bondage on us” (Deuteronomy 26:6). Most translations turn the word ra’ into “mistreated” here; other translations leave it as “evil” (KJV) or even “oppressed” (NLT). Compared to the “yoke” of making Jesus your King (Matt 11:28-30), the yoke of Egyptian, Roman, or American rulers is a heavy burden to bear. 

The prophets eventually make use of the word ra’a’ to describe an evildoing people—both the rulers and the idolaters among the population who support them—in the context of a statist society at large, where men live under rulers who are robbing them, killing them, and perverting justice and corrupting all that is good and right, and have even loved it this way (Isa 1:21-23). 

“Alas, O sinful nation, a people laden with iniquity, a brood of evildoers, children who act corruptly! They have forsaken the LORD; they have despised the Holy One of Israel and turned their backs on Him” (Isaiah 1:4). 

As much as statist idolaters attempt to make sin into a general and vague concept that won’t indict them as guilty of certain wicked practices, like those intrinsic to the man-made political systems of the world, what we see in scripture is that the evils of which men need to repent from are rather specific and clear. It is all the evils that are practiced among a statist people, from raising up rulers who inevitably pervert justice and plunder and kill men, as well as the slothful failure to seek God’s Kingdom among a people who just sit around in so-called churches (Isa 1:11-15), that God calls us to turn away from.

“Wash yourselves; make yourselves clean; remove the evil of your deeds from before my eyes; cease to do evil, learn to do good; seek justice, correct oppression; bring justice to the fatherless, plead the widow’s cause” (Isaiah 1:16-17). 

To further the case that statism is evil, we see the Hebrew word transliterated as ra’a’ used in direct connection with the acts of those who trust in Egypt. It was the statist faith that men placed in such institutions as these, which represent the quintessential statist systems of kings, armies, and officers in the Bible, as well as all the accompanying violence and plunder that comes along with these systems, that the prophets preached as the evils that would bring judgment upon a people. 

“Woe to those who go down to Egypt for help, who rely on horses, who trust in their abundance of chariots and in their multitude of horsemen. They do not look to the Holy One of Israel; they do not seek the LORD. Yet He too is wise and brings disaster; He does not call back His words. He will rise up against the house of the wicked and against the allies of evildoers. But the Egyptians are men, not God; their horses are flesh, not spirit. When the LORD stretches out His hand, the helper will stumble, and the one he helps will fall; both will perish together” (Isaiah 31:1-3). 

Those men who look to human rulers to protect, serve, and save them are allies of evildoers, making them evil too. They are people who whore themselves out to violent men for their protection, whether the domestic terrorists who call themselves presidents, soldiers, or police officers, or foreign “allies” who are said to be needed to protect us from “our enemies” abroad. This was always the scene the Biblical prophets were preaching upon: a land of people who knew only how to raise up rulers, plunder their neighbors, and champion the general violence of human government.  

“For My people are fools; they have not known Me. They are foolish children, without understanding. They are skilled in doing evil, but they know not how to do good” (Jeremiah 4:22). 

Rather than to have learned from the Lord that His servants are not people who exercise authority and lord their power over others (Mark 10:42-45), statists are a people who have only ever known the violence and plunderous way of the world that teaches men that the force of human government is the only way to possibly organize a society. They are people who are “accustomed to doing evil” (Jeremiah 13:23). 

It is often then all the evils bound-up with a statist society—the bloodshed, violence, injustices, and oppression (Isa 59:1-15) that will always be found in them—that the prophets of God spoke of turning away from when the Hebrew word that gets translated as evil is mentioned (Isa 59:15). As the Micah says in his direct rebuke to the rulers of his day, “they have practiced evil deeds” (Micah 3:4). The common transliteration of the Hebrew word for evil (ra’) is used by the prophet again in direct relation to the plunderous statists of the world, who he preaches judgment against:

“Woe to those who devise iniquity and plot evil on their beds! At morning’s light they accomplish it because the power is in their hands. They covet fields and seize them; they take away houses. They deprive a man of his home, a fellow man of his inheritance” (Micah 2:1-2). 

The present form and titles of the men referred to here as evil go all the way down to local levels of human government, like police officers, sheriffs deputies, judges, lawyers, and other statists who prey upon men, evict them from their properties for non-payment of their taxes and steal their houses and sell them off, and who use civil asset forfeiture laws to seize their property and sell it off for the benefit of their local plunder operations. 

In the next articles, we will continue to explore all the major Biblical words that define mankind’s rebellion against God and continue demonstrating that they all point to their statist political revolt against God and His Kingdom.