ngth for the unfolding of the good. The principle of
holiness, which culminates in Israel's holy God, transforms and ennobles
every evil. As the Midrash explains, referring to Deut. XI, 26: "If thou
but seest that both good and evil are placed in thy hand, no evil will
come to thee from above, since thou knowest how to turn it into
good."(523)

2. The conception of evil passed through a development parallel with that
of the related conceptions which we have just reviewed. At first every
misfortune was considered to be inflicted by divine wrath as a punishment
for human misdeeds. Nations and individuals were thought to suffer for
some special moral cause; through suffering they were punished for past
wrong, warned against its repetition in the future, and urged to
repentance and improvement of their conduct. Even death, the fate of all
living creatures, was regarded as a punishment which the first pair of
human beings brought upon all their descendants through their
transgression of the divine command. The Talmudic sages clung to the view
of the Paradise legend in the Bible, when they held that every death is
due to some sin committed by the individual.(524)

This view, which was shared by paganism, was accompanied by a higher
conception, gradually growing in the thinking mind. As a father does not
punish his child in anger, but in order to improve his conduct, so God
chastens man in order to purify his moral nature. Good fortune tends to
harden the heart; adversity often softens and sweetens it. In the crucible
of suffering the gold of the human soul is purified from the dross. The
evil strokes of destiny come upon the righteous, not because he deserves
them, but because his divine Friend is raising him to still higher tests
of virtue. This standpoint, never reached even by the pious sufferer Job,
is attained by rabbinic Judaism when it calls the visitations of the
righteous "trials of the divine love."(525) Thus evil, both physical and
spiritual, receives its true valuation in the divine economy. Evil exists
only to be overcome by the good. In His paternal goodness God uses it to
educate His children for a place in His kingdom.

3. According to the direct words of Scripture good and evil, light and
darkness, emanate alike from the Creator. This is accentuated by the great
seer of the Exile,(526) who protests against the Persian belief in a
creative principle of good and a destructive principle of evil. The
rabbis, ho