What is Evil?

...you know not what evil shall be upon the earth...

Ecclesiastes 11:2

A statement made recently in a sermon that I was privileged to hear instantly sent my mind whirling in a dozen different directions.  I thought that it would be a momentary distraction, but my thoughts have proved to be quite tenacious with the need to ferret out the truth or error of the message.  Consequently, I have been avidly researching the question,

What is "EVIL"?

I turned first to Webster's New World College Dictionary for a concise definition.  Due to the usage of the word in the aforementioned statement, I am only interested in its noun form.  With that in mind, Webster lists the following definitions:  

 1 anything morally bad or wrong; wickedness; depravity; sin   

2 anything that causes harm, pain, misery, disaster, etc.

Turning to online sources, I found the following definitions for the noun form of the word:

• Wikipedia:  Profound immorality, wickedness, depravity. 
• Dicitionary.com:  The force in nature that governs and gives rise to wickedness and sin.
• The Free Dictionary:  The quality of being morally bad or wrong; An evil force, power or personification.
• Oxford Dictionaries:  Profound immorality and wickedness, especially when regarded as a supernatural force.
• Collins English Dictionary:  the quality of being morally wrong; wickedness; a force or power that brings about wickedness or harm
• Cambridge Dictionary:  Something that is very bad and harmful
• Ayn Rand (Western Philosophy):   "Since reason is man’s basic means of survival, that which is proper to the life of a rational being is the good; that which negates, opposes or destroys it is the evil." (from The Virtue of Selfishness)
•  Carl Jung:  Evil is "the dark side of the devil."
• Anonymous:  The fact that you cannot separate pure evil from other elements causes the word’s definition to be vague and imprecise. 
• Ithcus77:   "Some believe that good and evil are equal and opposite forces in constant struggle with each other. Actually, good is the default, and evil is a privation, or absence of good."
• Lord Voldemort (Harry Potter):  "There is no good and evil; there is only power, and those too weak to seek it."
• Plato:  "Evil can never pass away, for there must always remain something which is antagonistic to good."
• Frederick Robertson:  "The truest definition of evil is that which represents it as something contrary to nature; evil is evil because it is unnatural."
• Ralph Waldo Emerson:  Evil is merely privative, not absolute: it is like cold, which is privation of heat.
• Johann Heinrich Daniel Zschokke: Evil is in antagonism with the entire creation.

Are you thoroughly confused now?  In the definitions above, evil is a "thing," a description, a "force," an undefinable, and a non-entity.  Perhaps looking at synonyms might help. [to be continued]