The Reasonable Bad Guy

Og was a cynic,3 but he could respect humanitarian causes. So it’s not surprising that when Avram’s nephew Lot was taken as a prisoner of war, Og came to break the news to Avram and encouraged him to save his relative.

Yet the Midrash tells us that Og’s motives were actually immoral:

Og’s intentions were not for the sake of heaven. Rather, he thought, “This Avram is a zealot. I’ll tell him, ‘Your nephew has been taken captive,’ and he will go out to war and be killed. Then I will take Sarai, his wife.”4

Though the cause was justified and logical, Og didn’t actually believe that Avram could be victorious over the mighty kings who had taken Lot captive. Rather, Og played on Avram’s zealous nature, encouraging him to take on a suicidal mission, trusting that Avram would never return and Sarai would then be Og’s for the taking.

This demonstrates the moral danger inherent in following a system of principles based on human understanding alone. A person who, like Og, is guided and motivated only by logic, and not by a G‑dly ideal that transcends reason, can justify having someone killed in order to take that person’s wife, and all the while believe that he is doing the right, reasonable and humanitarian thing.

—Reshimos, no. 17