 By Dr. Marvin Olasky|Published Date: January 11, 2010
Part 2: Justice as Righteousness
Dr. Olasky continues his Biblical examination of the term, “justice.” As he shows, justice and righteousness are inextricably linked to one another in many places in Scripture.
The justice/righteousness link
As we have seen, the Old Testament gives examples of contractual, commutative, legal, and criminal justice, and distributive justice towards widows and orphans, but it emphasizes something else: 60 of the 145 “justice” verses also include the word tzedek, “righteous.”
The linkage starts with the injunction in Genesis 18:19 to “keep the way of the Lord by doing righteousness and justice.” Deuteronomy 32:4 emphasizes this connection: “The Rock, his work is perfect, for all his ways are justice. A God of faithfulness and without iniquity, just and upright is he.” So does 1 Kings 10:9: “He has made you king, that you may execute justice and righteousness.”
I largely worked out of the English Standard Version but also consulted the Masoretic text, and this clause in Deuteronomy 16:20 fascinated me: “Justice, and only justice, you shall follow.” The first justice is tzedek (usually translate as righteousness) and the second is mishpat, so consistency suggests, “Righteousness, and only justice, you shall follow.” Mistranslation? Not really, because the double use of justice is both mellifluous and emphatic, and the words are virtually synonymous.
Psalms regularly shows the tzedek-mishpat connections. Psalms 33:5 states that God “loves righteousness and justice,” and 72:1 notes, “Give the king your justice, O God, and your righteousness to the royal son!” Note also Psalm 89:14, “Righteousness and justice are the foundation of your throne”; Psalm 99:4, “You have executed justice and righteousness in Jacob”; Psalm 103:6, “The Lord works righteousness and justice for all who are oppressed.”
It’s well known that Hebrew poetry rests on parallelism, with words given comforting or fresh meanings by paralleling them with another. Some parallel verses in Psalms: are 72:3 – “May he judge your people with righteousness, and your poor with justice!” – and 106:3, “Blessed are they who observe justice, who do righteousness at all times!” holy in righteousness.”
Parallelism in Isaiah includes 1:27, “Zion shall be redeemed by justice, and those in her who repent, by righteousness”; 5:7, “He looked for justice, but behold, bloodshed; for righteousness, but behold, an outcry”; 5:16, “The Lord of hosts is exalted in justice, and the Holy God shows himself holy in righteousness”; 32:1, “Behold, a king will reign in righteousness, and princes will rule in justice”; and 32:16, “Then justice will dwell in the wilderness, and righteousness abide in the fruitful field.’
I am not saying that mishpat only refers to tzedek/righteousness. The understandings of justice noted earlier are certainly present, and so is a meaning that those skeptical of government relish: Proverbs 29:4 notes, “By justice a king builds up the land, but he who taxes heavily tears it down.” Ecclesiastes 5:8 sarcastically points out, “If you see in a province the oppression of the poor and the violation of justice and righteousness, do not be amazed at the matter, for the high official is watched by a higher, and there are yet higher ones over them.”
That specific political application, though, is far less important than the general usage. The constant refrain is that in Proverbs 21:3, “To do righteousness and justice is more acceptable to the Lord than sacrifice”; in Isaiah 33:5, “He will fill Zion with justice and righteousness”; in Jeremiah 33:15, “He shall execute justice and righteousness in the land”; and in Ezekiel 45:9, “Execute justice and righteousness.”
Justice points to God
Justice, in short, essentially equals righteousness. Justice in making loans to a poor person requires that “You shall restore to him the pledge as the sun sets, that he may sleep in his cloak and bless you.” The man rests easy, but God also watches: “And it shall be righteousness for you before the Lord your God.” The Bible posits that all justice, even of the most elementary anti-cheating kind, is based in the character of God: Leviticus 19:36 commands, “You shall have just balances, just weights,” and then gives the reason: “I am the Lord our God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt.”
The Bible wants us to rejoice over justice because it points to God, as in Proverbs 21:15, “When justice is done, it is a joy to the righteous but terror to evildoers.” The justice-righteousness connection shows why entitlements that go equally to the reliable and to the profligate, whether rich or poor, are wrong: Isaiah 26:9,10 states, “When your judgments are in the earth, the inhabitants of the world learn righteousness,” but “If favor is shown to the wicked, he does not learn righteousness.”
Ezekiel 13:22 has further discussion of what may happen when, because of “social justice” notions, those who work hard are over-taxed and those who don’t work garner entitlements: “You have disheartened the righteous falsely, although I have not grieved him, and you have encouraged the wicked, that he should not turn from his evil way to save his life.”
 Dr. Olasky is Editor-in-Chief of World magazine, Provost of The King’s College, New York City, and a Fellow of The Wilberforce Forum.
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