Oidipous seems to be reflecting at last on the fact that as long as the god requires him to remain alive, nothing can kill him. He seems to be acknowledging the god’s power over life and death, and thus over human will, for his parents, as he has just mentioned, meant for him to die on Kithairon. [Apa] Yet this insight into the god’s capacity to create and execute a long-range plan despite active mortal resistance ends with an inference that the audience knows to be false, namely, that if the god saved him, it was for something terrible. [Mpea] Granted, having to take one’s father’s life even in conformity with necessity and divine justice might be terrible, yet Oidipous was quite willing to take that life without any awareness of its necessity or justice and in utter disregard for a divine plan. [Md] [Aj] [Mj] As a ruler he has moreover undoubtedly been prepared to order executions, send men to their death in battle, or levy painful sanctions. [Mg] From the audience’s point of view, however, necessity and divine justice would mitigate the burden even of parricide, and had Oidipous participated in it willingly, the other terrible events of his life need not have occurred at all: marrying his mother, fathering abominable children, infecting the city with plague, Iokaste’s suicide, and his own self-blinding, shame, and the prospect of banishment or execution. [Mw] The god might save the lives of mortals so that they can participate in difficult, challenging, and even extremely distasteful actions, but with the promise of a restoration to health and wellbeing, those actions cannot categorically be labeled as “bad” or “ignominious.” As Oidipous himself earlier observed, it is only by doing as the god instructs that one can avoid being κακός (l. 76). [Dnc] The judgment of any action depends on how well it accords with divine approval or disapproval, a matter that can be ascertained only through consultation with Delphi, which is precisely what Kreon proposes to do. Kreon rightly understands that not to consult makes it likely that he himself will be judged “bad.” [Dnp]