Now therefore go, speak to the men of Judah, and to the inhabitants of Jerusalem, saying, Thus says the LORD; Behold, I am shaping evil against you, and devise a plan against you: return you now everyone from his evil way, and make your ways and your doings good.
Read Chapter 18
Tertullian of Carthage
AD 220
I affirm that “wickedness” in this context does not signify something that can be referred to the Creator’s nature, as though he were evil, but to his authority, because he is a judge. It was in view of this that he declared, “It is I who create evils,” and, “Behold, I send evils against you.” These are not evils of ill doing but evils of vengeance—and I have already cleared away the ill repute of these by showing them to be fit and proper for a judge. As then, though described as evils, they are no matter of disrepute in a judge, nor by being so described do they stigmatize the judge as evil, so also “wickedness” in this context must now be understood as that which, deriving from those judiciary evils, is along with them proper to a judge.… As then his purpose, being a just one, was not evil, he had decided on it for justice’s sake, not from wickedness. Yet the Scripture has described the punishment itself as “wickedness” because of the well-deserved evil of what they were to suffer. - "Against Marcion 2.24"
