We have established that darkness is not necessarily רע. Darkness conceals, and the concealment may be painful, but it has a place within the world Hashem created. דין, too, is not רע. It is חסד and דין that are different דרכי ההנהגה through which Hashem governs His world.
As we discussed previously, the ultimate purpose of creation is להיטיב. But the fullest הטבה cannot be merely נהמא דכיסופא, something received without man’s own בחירה and עבודה. For man to acquire the ultimate טוב through genuine בחירה, there must be a genuine possibility of choosing otherwise. רע is therefore itself a בריאה. But we must be careful what we mean by this. It is not a second power standing opposite Hashem, nor an energy with a charge of its own. It is a created capacity — the weight Hashem placed on one side of a choice so that the choice would be real. A capacity cannot act on its own; it waits upon something else to move it. That is precisely why רע can be real without being a rival.
Nor does this require that the two sides stand equal. For בחירה to be genuine, the alternative must be present, not equal. A צדיק who has largely mastered his יצר has not thereby lost his בחירה, and the רמב״ם teaches that men differ in their dispositions from birth.¹ What creation requires is that choosing otherwise remain genuinely possible — not that טוב and רע exert matching force.
There is a limit, but it is not reached by mastery. חז״ל teach that fifty שערי בינה were created, and that all of them but one were given to משה and ותחסרהו מעט מאלקים.² At that fiftieth gate a man would stand beyond what a mortal is, and precisely there the gate was withheld until the day he was נפטר from this world. The withholding is not a deficiency. It is what keeps a man a man, and therefore what keeps his בחירה his own.
But having established why רע must exist, we must now ask a different question: What exactly is רע?
Is the מלאך המות רע for bringing death? Is the יצר הרע רע for drawing a man toward עבירה? Are the נחש, סמא״ל, and the כוחות הטומאה all different names for the same thing? And if Hashem created רע, how can רע itself have a place within a creation described as טוב מאד?
יוֹצֵר אוֹר וּבוֹרֵא חֹשֶׁךְ עֹשֶׂה שָׁלוֹם וּבוֹרֵא רָע אֲנִי ה׳ עֹשֶׂה כָל אֵלֶּה
ישעיהו מ״ה, ז׳
Created Together
The Torah speaks not only of טוב, but of the עץ הדעת טוב ורע.³ One tree encompasses both. Hashem placed man in a world in which טוב and רע stand before him as genuine alternatives. They were not introduced as two independent authorities competing with Hashem. They belong to one created order, designed for a human being endowed with בחירה.
We must not confuse this pair with חסד and דין. Those describe Hashem’s הנהגה; טוב and רע, in the sense we are examining, describe what man is called upon to choose or reject. דין may serve חסד without ceasing to be דין. In a related but different sense, רע may serve Hashem’s ultimate purpose without ceasing to be רע. Its opposition is real. We cannot simply explain it away.
Without friction, a person cannot walk forward. Friction resists movement; it is precisely that resistance that makes a step possible. So too, the struggle against רע allows man to become something he could not become through effortless compliance. The opposition is not the destination. It is part of the road.
Now an apparent contradiction becomes the key to the question. חז״ל include the יצר הרע in והנה טוב מאד, while the גמרא teaches that the Torah calls it רע.⁴ How can both be true?
The מדרש gives its own reason, and it is not the one we might expect. Were it not for the יצר הרע, a man would not build a house, marry, have children, or engage in commerce.⁵ The drive that pulls a man toward what he should not do is the same drive by which he does much of what he should. It is not merely an obstacle whose resistance trains him.
So the יצר is not simply opposition. It is a כח of desire, and desire is not the enemy of טוב. In fact, פרו ורבו is a מצוה, and it is this כח that carries a man toward it. What the Torah calls רע is this same כח ungoverned — desire without measure, pulling where it was not sent. The רמב״ם does not teach us to extinguish our מדות but to measure them.⁶ Ungoverned, the כח destroys; under judgment, it builds.
This is why one tree held both. Not two knowledges, but one, turning on what a man does with it.
And this gives us the sense in which the נביא says ובורא רע.⁷ Nothing was created as רע. What was created is a כח, together with the genuine possibility that a man will leave it ungoverned. Hashem creates רע in creating that possibility — which is to say, in creating a creature who could do otherwise.
No Will of Its Own
The נביא says to יהושע הכהן הגדול: ונתתי לך מהלכים בין העומדים האלה. The מלאכים are the עומדים, those who stand. A man is a מהלך, one who walks. And the נביא makes it conditional — אם בדרכי תלך, if you walk in My ways. Movement is not simply man’s nature. It is given to him on condition that he move.⁸
This is not a remark about posture. A מלאך is defined by his שליחות. He has no matter, and so nothing material makes him a distinct one; his mission is the only thing that individuates him at all. He is what he was sent to do, and there is nothing in him left over to deliberate with. This is why חז״ל teach that one מלאך does not carry out two שליחויות, nor two מלאכים one שליחות: a second mission would not be new work for the same being, it would be a different being.⁹ And he does not grow, because he has nothing to overcome. He stands.
A man walks. He is not identical to any one of his actions, and he can therefore become what he was not. What makes him a הולך is precisely what we have been describing — that something pushes against him, and that he must answer it.¹⁰
So the מלאכים are real, each its own בריאה with its own work. Some carry out functions we experience as good, others functions we experience as destructive. A destructive function is not the act of a רשע. The מלאכי חבלה destroy, but they cannot commit an עבירה, because an עבירה requires a choice and they lack that capacity. Their obedience is not a virtue they achieved. It is what they are.
Man alone is a בעל בחירה. He is therefore the only place in creation where חיוב — answerability before Hashem — can arise at all.
Now we can say what we are examining. The יצר is a כח — created, real, operative, necessary, and without בחירה of its own. רע is that כח ungoverned, and its opposition to what a man ought to do is genuine. רשעות is neither of these. It is what happens when the one creature that does possess בחירה takes that opposition as his own.
Responsibility Without Authorship
The משנה in אבות teaches that one who performs a מצוה acquires a פרקליט, and one who commits an עבירה acquires a קטיגור.¹¹ Note the לשון: he acquires. A man may be answerable for a מלאך he did not make. He engaged it, he dispatched it, he gave it something to say — and it speaks concerning the act that sent it. The גמרא describes the מלאכים who accompany a man to his home, where it is his own conduct that determines which of them pronounces and which must answer אמן.¹²
Here responsibility and will come apart. The מלאך has no בחירה and cannot be חייב. The man who sent him has בחירה and is answerable for the sending. Responsibility does not require authorship. It requires only that somewhere in the chain there stood a בעל בחירה — and in this world there is only one.
The משנה also teaches that מצוה גוררת מצוה ועבירה גוררת עבירה.¹³ Perhaps these are not two separate teachings. The pull a person feels toward his next מצוה and the advocate his מצוה has acquired may be one reality described at two levels — the same act, seen from within as momentum and from above as a שליח.
Nor are the two sides matched. מדה טובה מרובה ממדת פורענות, and תשובה can silence a קטיגור in a way that no עבירה undoes a פרקליט.¹⁴ Here too, the opposition is real without being equal.
The Forces That Push Back
The יצר הרע urges man away from what he ought to do. But its existence is not proof that a man is a רשע. It presents the נסיון. Man chooses how to respond. The מלאך המות offers another distinction. Death can be painful beyond words, yet the מלאך המות is a שליח of Hashem, acting under Divine authority. The pain of an event is not identical to the חיוב of the agent who brings it. A murderer who chooses to take a life is not comparable to a מלאך carrying out his שליחות.
Indeed, the גמרא identifies the שטן, the יצר הרע, and the מלאך המות, while describing different functions: temptation, accusation, and death.¹⁵
We should be careful what that identification establishes. The three named are not of one kind. The שטן and the מלאך המות are מלאכים. The יצר הרע is not a מלאך at all. The Torah speaks of יצר לב האדם and of יצר מחשבות לבו — the inclination of a heart, not a creature lodged inside it.¹⁶ It is internal and it is man’s own; and it must be his own, or he could not be held accountable for yielding to it. We do not convict a man for what a visitor did within him. When חז״ל speak of the יצר being slaughtered at the end of days, that same passage describes it as a mountain to the צדיקים and a hair to the רשעים — measured differently by each man who looks at it, which is not how a fixed being behaves.¹⁷
So the גמרא is not teaching that three beings are numerically one. It is teaching that they share a root. And the root is not a power. We are not describing one force with three outlets, which would return us to the dualism we have been at pains to deny. What is one here is the רצון that placed them — that a man should stand before a real alternative. A purpose is not a כח. This is the same distinction we have drawn throughout: one root, distinct expressions.
What differs among them is their remove from the man. The יצר is innermost; it is his own capacity, and it acts before he chooses. השטן is external and generic — the word carries the definite article, an office rather than a name, and the נביא places him among the עומדים — and he acts upon the record of what was chosen.¹⁸ The מלאך המות is external and particular, and he carries out the last consequence. Inner to outer, and before to after. That is why they appeared to be three things.
As for the מלאך המות, having no matter he is not bound to a place, and one שליחות of death does not require many מלאכים, however many deaths there are. Whether that office is discharged by one or by many is a question about how שליחויות are counted, and nothing we have said depends on the answer. We should therefore be wary of treating these names as unrelated entities—or of assuming that because the functions differ, each must describe a separate independent power.
The נחש and סמא״ל bring us to the language of כוחות הטומאה. פרקי דרבי אליעזר portrays סמא״ל acting through the נחש.¹⁹ The זוהר also joins the imagery of the נחש and the יצר הרע.²⁰ The סטרא אחרא is the broader language of the ‘other side,’ while the קליפות describe aspects of concealment and separation. These expressions are related, but their precise differences deserve careful treatment; they are not simply synonyms for a human רשע. Whatever their differences, they are differences of level and function within a single authority. The taxonomy deserves care; it does not multiply the powers.
A peel may protect a fruit even while hiding it. When the fruit is ready, the peel can become an obstruction to reaching what lies within. This is a useful משל for some aspects of קליפה, but not a complete definition of every קליפה. In the writings of the מקובלים there is an essential distinction between קליפת נוגה and the שלוש קליפות הטמאות. Some things can be elevated; from others, the ניצוצות must be separated. The work of בירור is not accomplished by pretending that concealment is itself revelation.
A Condition, Not a Verdict: טומאה
Here we must distinguish טומאה from רע in the sense of an עבירה. A woman becomes טמאה after childbirth. A person who attends to a מת may become טמא while fulfilling a great מצוה. Neither has necessarily committed any wrongdoing. טומאה is a real halachic-spiritual condition, carrying defined restrictions concerning certain forms of engagement with קדושה. It is not a declaration that the person is a רשע, nor does it sever all connection with Hashem.
Consider the pores of the skin. Their condition affects what can pass through. Perhaps this gives us a משל for טומאה: not a judgment against the person, but an obstruction to particular kinds of connection with קדושה. The comparison is illustrative, not a literal account of טומאה. The Torah itself defines the restrictions and the means of טהרה.²¹
The laws of מכשירין sharpen the point. A food can come into contact with a qualifying liquid and become מוכשר לקבל טומאה while remaining טהור.²² It has acquired susceptibility, not טומאה itself. Capacity and actualization are two different things. The distinction is not merely technical; it suggests a way to think about our own spiritual receptivity.
When we daven, learn, and perform מצוות, we do not merely accumulate isolated actions. Our עבודה also shapes the כלי that will receive their influence. The מצוה has its own inherent value, yet the person must work to become a כלי קיבול capable of internalizing its שפע. Our מדות, our רצון, and the condition of our פנימיות all matter. The משנה calls שלום a כלי מחזיק ברכה, and the גמרא describes גאוה as an obstruction to השראת השכינה.²³ טומאה and גאוה are not identical: one may be an innocent halachic condition, while the other is a defect of character. But both help us recognize that receptivity itself matters.
No Person Is Created a רשע
The רמב״ם teaches that people begin with different dispositions. One person struggles with anger, another with desire, another with a different מדה. In the language of the אריז״ל, it is קין and הבל that possessed different mixtures of טוב and רע.²⁴ Yet a difference of constitution is not a verdict. No one is created destined to become a רשע.
The רמב״ם in הלכות תשובה insists that the choice between the דרך טובה and the דרך רעה rests with the person.²⁵ Even our strongest מדות are not fixed in their direction merely because we possess them. אהבה may draw a person toward קדושה or toward something forbidden. שנאה may be corrupt and cruel, or be directed against רע itself. The כח is real, but its direction and exercise matter. This is the principle we saw at the root. A כח is not רע for being powerful; it is רע ungoverned.
An עבירה can also leave consequences beyond its original actor. ממזרות arises from certain prohibited relationships, yet the child bears no חיוב for the parents’ deed. The משנה teaches that a ממזר תלמיד חכם precedes a כהן גדול עם הארץ in several different cases of priority.²⁶ A lasting halachic restriction is real, but neither makes a person a רשע nor constitutes ordinary טומאה.
The principle of מצוה הבאה בעבירה gives another example. A stolen לולב may look no different from any other, yet the עבירה associated with its acquisition can compromise the מצוה.²⁷ The consequence of wrongdoing may outlast the act itself. Still, פגם, טומאה, and רשעות must remain distinct. Not every stain is impurity, and not every person who bears a consequence is חייב.
When Opposition Becomes Identity
We now arrive at the deeper meaning of the רשע. The יצר הרע pushes against the person. Sometimes a person stumbles. He may commit an עבירה, feel regret, and return to the struggle. That is not yet the same as what we mean here by embracing רע as a דרך.
The רשע, in this deeper sense, is the one who has ceased to regard רע as what he must overcome. He has surrendered to it, cultivated it, and come to claim it as his own. The obstacle has become an identity. This is not a claim that every person halachically called a רשע has reached the same inner state; it is the particular progression we are examining.
The יצר is a כח. However, רע is that כח ungoverned. רשעות is the man who has made it his דרך.
Yet even here, there is hope. No one was born a רשע. His capacity for טוב has not been disproven by the fact that he has chosen otherwise. ברוריה’s teaching to רבי מאיר in ברכות reads יתמו חטאים ולא חוטאים — that the עבירות should end, not those who commit them, through תשובה.²⁸ A person can separate himself from the רע he once embraced.
The Choice of a Nation: עמלק
The Torah’s description of עמלק takes the question beyond the individual. עמלק attacks כלל ישראל after יציאת מצרים, targeting the vulnerable, and is described as lacking יראת אלקים.²⁹ Here we encounter the possibility that a people can adopt and perpetuate a collective דרך of opposition to what כלל ישראל represents.
This does not mean that any human being is born incapable of טוב. Nor should ancestral identity be confused with a judgment of what a particular person has chosen. Rather, עמלק raises the sharper question of what happens when opposition to קדושה becomes a sustained public purpose. That is why the Torah’s treatment of עמלק requires a separate examination, and why it cannot be explained merely by saying that every obstacle in life is useful friction.
And What Comes at the End?
We have explained why רע has a place within the present order. But what happens when משיח comes? Will every opposing כח disappear? What becomes of בחירה, and how should we understand the stages of ימות המשיח, תחיית המתים, and עולם הבא? These are not questions whose every detail we can confidently settle. The רמב״ם warns that we will not know precisely how many of these matters unfold until they occur.³⁰ And the נביאים speak both of the removal of רוח הטומאה and of a world filled with the knowledge of Hashem.³¹
We should therefore distinguish between the existence of רע and the dominion of רשעות. Here the nature of רע matters. Because רע has no כח of its own, its removal requires no battle and no defeat of an equal. Nothing need be overthrown. A capacity that exists only because it was given can simply cease to be given, once the purpose for which it was given is complete. And the gate that was withheld in order to preserve בחירה need not remain withheld once בחירה has done its work. The נביאים speak of the removal of רוח הטומאה, and we need not imagine a war between powers in order to understand it.
What we cannot do is settle every detail of the ultimate תיקון, and the רמב״ם warns us against pretending otherwise. But we can speak of what we hope to see: the true גילוי of Hashem, before which those who embraced רע might finally recognize the טוב they were always capable of choosing.
כִּי אָז אֶהְפֹּךְ אֶל עַמִּים שָׂפָה בְרוּרָה לִקְרֹא כֻלָּם בְּשֵׁם ה׳ לְעָבְדוֹ שְׁכֶם אֶחָד
צפניה ג׳, ט׳
Perhaps we can now answer our opening question. רע is no creature and no rival. It is a created כח of desire left ungoverned — real in its opposition, necessary to the world it also threatens, and incapable of חיוב, because חיוב requires a chooser and it is not one. Hashem gave it its place because man must be able to choose what he will become. The יצר pushes; the person responds. His actions form his מדות, and his מדות shape the כלי capable of receiving קדושה. We do not know every detail of the world to come. But the נביא describes the nations calling together in the Name of Hashem.³² The destination is not an endless struggle with רע. It is a world moving toward the recognition of Hashem.
May the day come when the world no longer embraces רשעות, when those who have made רע their דרך recognize the truth, and when the knowledge of Hashem fills the earth. The ultimate victory is not merely that opposition has been defeated, but that man finally embraces the טוב for which he was created.
Notes: מראי מקומות
רמב״ם, הלכות דעות א׳ — that men differ in their מדות from birth.
ראש השנה כ״א ע״ב (לבדוק) — the fifty שערי בינה and the one withheld; תהלים ח׳:ה׳ — ותחסרהו מעט מאלקים.
בראשית ב׳:ט׳ — the עץ הדעת טוב ורע.
בראשית א׳:ל״א; בראשית רבה ט׳:ז׳ — the יצר הרע included in והנה טוב מאד. The גמרא that the תורה calls it רע — להשלים.
בראשית רבה ט׳:י׳ — were it not for the יצר הרע a man would not build, marry, or engage in commerce.
רמב״ם, הלכות דעות א׳ — measuring the מדות rather than extinguishing them.
ישעיהו מ״ה:ז׳ — יוצר אור ובורא חשך עשה שלום ובורא רע.
זכריה ג׳:ז׳ — ונתתי לך מהלכים בין העומדים האלה, and the condition אם בדרכי תלך.
בראשית רבה נ׳:ב׳ (לבדוק) — אין מלאך אחד עושה שתי שליחות.
מאמרי הרבי בעניין עומד והולך — להשלים.
אבות ד׳:י״א — the פרקליט and the קטיגור a person acquires.
שבת קי״ט ע״ב (לבדוק) — the two מלאכים who accompany a man to his home.
אבות ד׳:ב׳ — מצוה גוררת מצוה ועבירה גוררת עבירה.
מכות כ״ג ע״א (לבדוק) — מדה טובה מרובה ממדת פורענות.
בבא בתרא ט״ז ע״א — the identification of the שטן, the יצר הרע, and the מלאך המות.
בראשית ו׳:ה׳ — יצר לב האדם; בראשית ח׳:כ״א — יצר לב האדם רע מנעוריו.
סוכה נ״ב ע״א — the slaughtering of the יצר, a mountain to the צדיקים and a hair to the רשעים.
זכריה ג׳:א׳ — השטן standing among the עומדים; איוב א׳–ב׳ — השטן as an office of accusation.
פרקי דרבי אליעזר י״ג — סמא״ל acting through the נחש.
זוהר, בראשית ל״ה ע״ב — the נחש and the יצר הרע joined.
רמב״ם, הלכות מקואות י״א:י״ב — טומאה as a condition and the means of טהרה.
ויקרא י״א:ל״ח — וכי יתן מים על זרע; משנה מכשירין — acquiring susceptibility without acquiring טומאה.
משנה עוקצין ג׳:י״ב — שלום as a כלי מחזיק ברכה; סוטה ה׳ ע״א — גאוה as an obstruction to השראת השכינה.
שער הגלגולים, הקדמות כ״ט ול״ו (לבדוק לשון ומיקום) — the mixtures of טוב and רע in קין and הבל.
רמב״ם, הלכות תשובה ה׳ — the choice between the דרך טובה and the דרך רעה.
משנה הוריות ג׳:ח׳ — ממזר תלמיד חכם קודם לכהן גדול עם הארץ.
סוכה ל׳ ע״א — מצוה הבאה בעבירה, the stolen לולב.
ברכות י׳ ע״א — ברוריה to רבי מאיר: יתמו חטאים ולא חוטאים.
שמות י״ז:ח׳–ט״ז; דברים כ״ה:י״ז–י״ט — the attack of עמלק and ולא ירא אלקים.
רמב״ם, הלכות מלכים י״ב:ב׳ — that the details of those days are not known until they occur.
זכריה י״ג:ב׳ — the removal of רוח הטומאה; ישעיהו י״א:ט׳ — כי מלאה הארץ דעה את ה׳.
צפניה ג׳:ט׳ — לקרא כלם בשם ה׳ לעבדו שכם אחד.