THE Question

How long the wicked, O LORD, how long will the wicked exult?  Psalm 94:3  Robert Alter

How long – It’s the question of every age.  It’s the critical question of all theology.  It’s the torturing question of every good man and woman.  How long?  How long will the wicked get away with it?  How long will they rejoice?  Yes, the Hebrew verb at the end of this verse is ʿālaz, a word that describes the emotion of joy and euphoria.  How long – ʿad mātay – literally, “until when” with the overtone of perpetuity.  “Until when will the wicked continue to be joyful and delight in what they are doing?”  It seems like forever.  “There is something painful and worrying which in itself, in every generation, leads many to outright heresy—it is the appearance of injustice in the world, the suffering of the righteous, and the prosperity of the wicked.”[1]

Theodicy is the crucial subject of any religious system that contends God is good.  It is the question of how a good God can allow, even apparently condone, the continual presence of rebellious evil in His created world.  Of course, the usual response is that free will agents must be able to resist or even circumvent God’s goodness.  Otherwise, they would not be free agents.  But even if this answer is theoretically satisfying, it’s not much consolation.  The righteous are still the prey of the wicked.  Evil still oppresses, slaughters, derides, ruins innocent lives every day.  Heschel is right.  History is a nightmare.  And so we ask with the psalmist, “Must this continue?  Are You, Lord, so committed to this idea of freedom that You allow such atrocities when You could most certainly put an end to it at any time?”  If the psalmist in the 10^thCentury BCE felt this way, how much more must we feel the pain and discouragement 3000 years later? When will it ever end?

Of course, we have to keep in mind the rabbis’ insight.  God forestalls His judgment so that men will come to repentance.  “May Your mercy outweigh Your wrath.”  But even with this caveat that would allow men to turn back to God, the enormity of evil seems to set aside any good that might come from delay.  Frankly, I suspect that in the heart of every righteous person is the desire for it all to end—and quickly.  If we’ve had enough, how do you suppose God must feel?  And yet, for some reason He doesn’t end it.  It baffles the mind.

There is a sense in which I’m relieved that He delays.  If Luzzatto is right, I will have to live in the next world with the unresolved issues of this world.  I don’t get a blank-slate start-over.  So, as long as He delays, I have a chance to deal with my most agonizing faults.  That’s the good part.  But as my rabbi friend said when I was toppled off my bicycle, “If God wanted to get your attention, wouldn’t it have been sufficient just to knock you down?  Was it really necessary to break your leg—and your hand?”  I could expand that question.  Is it really necessary for those children under the bridge to die of malnutrition, to be abused, to live in squalor?  Was that tsunami necessary?  Was the Holocaust?  I don’t have answers for these questions.  Perhaps they can’t be answered by any human intellect.  The “how long” question just might be unresolvable in this world.  Maybe that’s why we need another world—just so we might find an answer.

Topical Index: how long, ʿad mātay, evil, Psalm 94:3

[1] Amit Kula, “Justification, Denial, and ‘Terraforming’: Three Theological-Exegetical Models,” in The Believer and Modern Study of the Bible(Academic Studies Press, 2019), p. 413.