DEUT368 [The prophets'] moral and religious conceptions [regarding evil, sorrow, and grief] centered in the doctrine of [Divine] retribution, in the light of which suffering is the fruit of sin and of folly, and happiness the reward of obedience and of goodness. This simple creed of the Biblical authors was shaken by the suffering of the righteous and the prosperity of the wicked. Prophets, Psalmists, and Sages alike complain against the topsy-turvydom of the moral order. Hab. 1:3-4; Jer. 12:1-3; Pss. 49; 73. Job rejected the orthodox belief, championed by his friends, of an equation between evil and suffering, and left a matter a veiled impenetrable mystery. The Parsis [followers in India of the Persian prophet Zoroaster - AJL] had solved the problem in a holy different way. They envisioned the world as governed by two conflicting powers, one good and the other evil. Deutero–Isaiah, rejecting the dualistic conception of the world, reaffirmed the doctrine of ethical monotheism: "I am the Lord, and there is none else; I form light, and create darkness; I make peace, and create evil. I am the Lord that doeth all these things (Is. 45:6-7). (Cf. Sanh. 39a. Lam. 3:38 lends itself to two opposite constructions. Take it as a question, it supports the belief of Deutero-Isaiah. As a direct statement it asserts that evil and good proceed not from God, but that they are man-made). This manifesto of monotheism, while ruling out dualism from the range of Jewish belief, left the ethical problem where it was. How can a good God create evil? Does not evil cast a reflection upon His character? Deutero-Isaiah resorts to two novel conceptions to supplement the old doctrine of retribution. With (this verse) he interprets suffering as disciplinary in character, as the rabbis subsequently turned it, "chastisement of love." Chapter 53 of Isaiah advances the belief that suffering is vicarious. The righteous does not suffer merely an expiration of his own sins. By his suffering, he bears and expiates the guilt of his wicked fellow man.