The Greeks, and to some extent, those who inherited their intellectual legacy, often combine or conflate goodness with other values – like truth and beauty. For example, Aquinas (building on Plato, Aristotle, and earlier Church Fathers) affirms that God is the perfect source and fullness of all three. For Aquinas, beauty is thus fundamentally tied to goodness. And indeed, if G-d is the embodiment of good – and G-d is perfect and thus unchanging – then “the good” must also be static.
Other traditions have defined “the good” using moral or utilitarian or other metrics.
But the Torah definitions of “good” and “evil” do not conform to these other understandings.
What is “good” in the Torah?
“Good” is first shown by the judgements G-d makes about His acts of creation: “And G-d saw that this was good.” (G. 1:10, etc). We can thus say that at least one aspect of “goodness” is creative production.
Similarly, G-d said, “It is not good for the Human to be alone; I will make a fitting counterpart for him.” And Jethro criticizes Moses’ processes for teaching the people: “Not good is this matter, as you do it!”
In both cases, “good” refers to productivity, the opportunity to use our time and lives wisely. “Good” might be a functional designation of whether what we are doing is most effective!
It extends everywhere! When G-d tells Avraham:
And thou shalt go to thy fathers in peace; thou shalt be buried in a good old age.
The use of the word “good” thus means the point at which you have achieved your potential. A “good” life is one of achievement and accomplishment, a life in which we have done what we came here for. And who could ask for anything more than a life that is compared to G-d’s own seal of approval for a stage of Creation?
On the other hand…
Evil
“Good and Evil” are offered as the first duality in the text (i.e. the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil): evil is the opposite of good. And we can similarly learn the meaning “evil” from the way the text itself uses these words.
If Goodness is creative and productive action, then evil is inaction or – at its worst – destruction.
The human desire and instinct for indolence, for inaction, is described in the text:
First, we are told (Gen. 6) that powerful men, left to their own devices, pursue unproductive lives, taking what they want (especially women), and never giving in return. Left to our own devices, and absent a moral code, mankind invariably falls into behavioral loops that do not lead anywhere good. Or as the Torah puts it: G-d saw how great was human evil (Ra) on earth—how every thought that emerged from man’s heart was nothing but evil (Ra) all the time.
If there is no reason to choose otherwise, men choose indolence, superficial relationships, and waste. Man’s desires are “Evil from youth” (Gen 8:21). Mankind is not inherently active – we instinctively prefer inactive spectating. That is how man’s default state is evil, as per the verse above. Our default is not doing things, especially once we have met our material needs (see the vast swaths of young people today).
Which perhaps explains why Joseph, who is explicitly called a “youth’’ while still living at home, brings evil reports about his brothers back to his father. The word for “reports” (deebah) is already pejorative (it is only found in the text elsewhere to describe the corrosive reports of the spies), so the word Ra-ah, evil, in this context tells us that Joseph’s words were … unhelpful at best. In other words, he acted with the noblest self-righteousness of a journalist. And it was, in a nutshell, Ra – it was evil. Joseph’s tale-bearing was the equivalent of a Covid Karen, taking pleasure from snitching on her neighbors. Sniping about others.
Thus passivity, watching without acting, is itself the opposite of creativity – evil is the opposite of good. There is an opportunity cost, a wasted chance, that comes from not acting. If we are not building life, then we are taking it away. Hence Jacob’s use of the word Ra-ah to describe the wild animal whom Jacob feels must have killed his beloved son.
Evil and laziness leads to victimization: young people who blame everyone else for their own failings and limitations.
By way of contrast, what is described as the most evil act described in the Torah? It is not murder – it is adultery. An older and much wiser Joseph declines to sleep with Potiphar’s wife, saying, “How can I do this great evil?” (G. 39:9)
If investing in creativity and relationships is “good”, then the greatest evil of all is undermining and destroying the relationships, the marriages, of others. If pornography is evil because it is lazy and self-destructive, then adultery is the greatest evil because it is exporting this selfishness and victimhood to others, threatening to tear society apart, one marriage at a time.
P.S. In the Torah, “good” does not equal holiness, nor is “good” used to describe G-d Himself – though the Torah says that G-d possesses goodness (E. 33:19). The value is not interchangeable with others (e.g. Truth or Beauty). And even that verse: And [G-d] answered, “I will make all My goodness pass before you, and I will proclaim before you the name YKVK, and the grace that I grant and the compassion that I show,” deals specifically with G-d acting in a certain way (the thirteen attributes of mercy), not necessarily an inherent trait. In other words, even this one place where G-d is described as “possessing” goodness, refers to G-d’s constructive and innovative mercy. In the Torah, goodness is not static: the word describes something that is dynamic, and changing.
P.P.S. The above interpretation suggests there might be a radically different understanding of the Garden of Eden. Adam and Eve were entirely passive in the Garden. But when they left, they started to create. The awareness of knowledge of Good and Evil, eating the fruit, triggered a movement in their personal lives from passivity to action, from evil toward good! Once they were aware of the difference, they could choose to do good (even if their descendants rarely did).