Proverbs 16:4

[Zenith]

Proverbs 16:4
The Lord hath made all things for himself: yea, even the wicked for the day of evil.


God created all things. God created me. God created evil. God created sin. God created me knowing I (and everyone) would sin. Then God sends me to hell. Fair?

I would like to hear the Christian opinion of, when looking at this verse, how me (or anyone) going to hell would be justified.

I thought about replying this. You know, if my answer is satisfactory enough, I might receive a kudos :)
First off, I'll bring a better translation of this verse:

The LORD has made everything for its own purpose, even the wicked for the day of evil. (NASB)

Reason: the word used in hebrew can mean "for His purpose/sake", "for its purpose/sake" (there is no word "it" to distinguish the objects from persons, as english is perhaps the only language that has that). Anyway, it seems that KJV translated "for His purpose/sake" as "for Himself", but the problem is that there is already a hebrew word that means "for him/himself" , while the word used in Proverbs 16.4 suggests intent, purpose.

ok, other important things:
- in the Old Testament (i.e. the Jewish Bible) you can hardly find any verse to suggest hell. As far as I know, Jews don't believe in hell, and it is very possible that most to all before 0 A.D. did not imagine a hell either. So the "day of evil" it's almost impossible to mean "hell".
- The verse says that God made a purpose for everything, even for the wicked man.
- The "predestination" seems to be foreign to the Old Testament too (as far as I remember, there is no verse to clearly suggest/specify predestination in the Old Testament, i.e. the Jewish Bible).
- It's odd to understand that God created a man as inherently "evil", i.e. made evil without him the possibility to change how he is. Besides the fact that such view would contradict Ecclesiastes 7:29 & Genesis 1.31. And also consider that "wicked" does not mean "a man who does not believe in God".

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I worship a God that did create everything (including evil). He setup condition for success or failure, the alternative would be to set up no conditions or choice. I suppose He could have created beings that can't choose anything, but what would be the point of that?

Just to add a note about that. At the end of the creation (Gen 1.31) God says that what he made was "good", so it is quite odd to believe that God creates somebody as "evil", forcing him to be evil (I don't know if you meant that or not). As about the popular conception of God as an "extremely, insanely good person that would never do evil to somebody, not even to an evil man" I believe it rather comes from the people's desire for a God like that: irresponsible and ignorant in order to agree with & like how they are - irresponsible and ignorant, a God that forgives everybody and allows everything because He cannot react by reason, but only forced by His "good" nature (i.e. strong feelings that He cannot resist). I believe that belief in such a God is truly childish, like creating a "Santa Claus" to worship. (and yes, the popular conception about "God" is a "Santa Claus, that lives more than during Christmas")

Again I don't believe in "God's nature", i.e. God forced by His nature, or God falling to His feelings, unable to react by reason. And I don't believe in a "good" God to mean an "extremely good person, even to insanity and stupidity" - and you must admit that if a man is "good" in the meaning of doing nothing when people mock him and hurt him and harm him, and after all these acting as nothing happened is more "stupid" than "good". So how would be God not to take these into consideration, perhaps because of an "extremely, insanely good" nature? I guess people tend to twist too many words to the absolute.