---

No light on this passage comes from the context. The words may be taken —

I. IN THE SENSE THAT GOD CREATED ALL THINGS MERELY FOR HIS OWN GOOD PLEASURE, WITHOUT ANY EXTERNAL MOTIVE. Then the latter part of the verse contains a great difficulty — how can God be said to have made the wicked for Himself, for the manifesting of His glory in the day of punishment? It is impossible that God could have any external motive, when in the universe there was nothing existing without Himself. The good pleasure of God is the only reason why things were brought into being at all. God has declared Himself by a clear revelation to persons of all capacities to be the Creator of heaven and earth, and of all things that are therein. His goodness moved Him to bring creatures into being on which He might display that goodness, and to whom He might communicate His happiness. The glory of God is not anything properly relating to Himself, any advantage or benefit to Him; it is the communicating of His goodness, by creating the world; the promoting His likeness among rational creatures, by the practice of righteousness. But how can God be said to have made even the wicked for Himself? Some have contended that God has on purpose made many creatures necessarily inclined to wickedness, that He might manifest His power and authority in their destruction. But nothing can be more blasphemous than to imagine that He created any beings with design that they might be wicked and miserable. Nevertheless, because it is certain that nothing comes to pass without His permission, nothing subsists but by His power and concurrence, nothing is done but by the use or abuse of those faculties which He has created, therefore in Scripture phrase, and in acknowledgment of the supreme superintendence of providence over all events, God is represented as doing everything that is done in the world.

II. CONSIDER THE TEXT AS MEANING, THE LORD HAS MADE ALL THINGS SUITED TO EACH OTHER: YEA, EVEN THE WICKED TO THE DAY OF EVIL. This is the more natural sense. The only question that arises is, How can God be said to have fitted the wicked to destruction? In the Jewish language all that is meant is, that God causes wickedness and punishment to be proportionable. It is only an instance of the wisdom and exact adjustment of the works of God. The adjustment of men's condition to their deserts is the true greatness and glory of a kingdom. It is the natural tendency of things to get conditions fitted to deserts; and God takes care, by the positive interposition of His power and authority in the world, that every evil work shall have its proper recompense in the day of evil.

1. We may justify God, and give glory to Him in all His proceedings.

2. If we would escape the day of evil, we must avoid the wickedness to which it is annexed.

(S. Clarke, D.D.)

---

---

KJV: The LORD hath made all things for himself: yea, even the wicked for the day of evil.

WEB: Yahweh has made everything for its own end— yes, even the wicked for the day of evil.