Did God create evil?

I was reading a long rant about the Bible on a website (to which I will not link), and the writer said that God created evil, citing Isaiah 45:7. But which definition of evil? Look it up in just about any dictionary, and you find these definitions, which I found online at dictionary.com:

n.
2. That which causes harm, misfortune, or destruction: a leader's power to do both good and evil.
4. Something that is a cause or source of suffering, injury, or destruction: the social evils of poverty and injustice.

So, when you read in the Bible "I make peace, and create evil: I the LORD do all these things," it is possible that God is not saying that He creates wickedness or moral shortcomings, but rather that He causes harm, misfortune, destruction, suffering, injury, or... um, destruction again.

This destruction isn't morally evil. As Jeremiah related in what is now called chapter 18, God has moral authority to do anything He wants with His creation (saliently, us), whether that be prosperity or calamity - or as ol' King James put it, peace or evil.

It is evil in the other senses of the word when we bring calamity and destruction and injury and destruction upon each other, because we don't have Creator's prerogative. We as the created have to do what the Creator said, including not bringing calamity (etc.) upon each other.

Be careful what you say about God.

TPJ