Righteousness, Justice and Peace

Amos was a shepherd and a tender of sycamore figs from Tekoa in Judah, sent to prophesy in the northern kingdom in the days of Jeroboam II, in the eighth century before Christ, when Israel was prosperous and its shrines were busy. The Old Testament Survey lesson The Eighth Century sets the scene. In 5:21-23 God rejects the feasts, the offerings and the songs at those shrines, every one of them something the law of Moses commanded. Then comes verse 24, introduced with the plain וְ (ve-, and, but). The BSB's But is right: this is what God wants instead.

In the Westminster Leningrad Codex (WLC) the verse is six words: וְיִגַּל כַּמַּיִם מִשְׁפָּט וּצְדָקָה כְּנַחַל אֵיתָן (veyiggal kammayim mishpat utsedaqah kenachal eitan, and let justice roll like the waters, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream). וְיִגַּל (veyiggal) is the niphal imperfect, third person masculine singular, of גָּלַל (galal, to roll), with the conjunction. The imperfect here carries the force of a wish or a command, let it roll, which is why the BSB has let. כַּמַּיִם (kammayim) is כְּ (ke-, like) with the article and מַיִם (mayim, water), a word that is always plural in form. The second half has no verb of its own; it borrows the first, as Hebrew poetry often does, and Module 6 showed you how parallel lines lean on each other.

The image is deliberate. Much of the land of Israel is crossed by valleys that carry a torrent in the rainy months and are dry stones for the rest of the year. Job compares friends who fail him to such streams in Job 6:15. אֵיתָן (eitan, perennial, enduring) describes the other kind, a stream that keeps running in August. The two words נַחַל אֵיתָן (nachal eitan) appear together in Deuteronomy 21:4, where the BSB renders them a valley with running water. Israel's worship came in floods at the festivals. God asked for a righteousness that would still be flowing when the festival was over.

One question about the verse is genuinely open. Most readers take it as a demand: Israel is to let justice roll, and the verse is the positive side of the rejection of empty worship before it, matching establish justice in the gate in 5:15. But some interpreters have read it as a threat, in the light of 5:18-20, where the Day of the LORD will be darkness and not light. On that reading, since Israel will not do justice, God's justice will come over them like a flood that cannot be stopped. The niphal, which can be passive, let justice be rolled, and the image of overwhelming water, can both be read that way. The first reading has the context of 5:15 and the prophets' wider call to do justice on its side; the second has the darker setting of the chapter and the fact that Amos speaks mostly of coming judgment. The preacher should know both. The two are not as far apart as they look, because in either case God will have justice.

Notice one more thing in verse 22. The peace offerings God rejects are, in Hebrew, שֶׁלֶם (shelem), a word built on the same root as שָׁלוֹם (shalom, peace, well-being). Israel was offering the sacrifice of peace while denying the poor any peace in the gate. The words of this lesson belong together, and the prophets knew it.

Righteousness in the Old Testament is carried mainly by two nouns from the root צדק (tsadaq, to be in the right): צֶדֶק (tsedeq), which occurs 119 times, and צְדָקָה (tsedaqah), which occurs 159 times, counted in the Open Scriptures Hebrew Bible, the free tagged WLC on GitHub (openscriptures/morphhb). The adjective צַדִּיק (tsaddiq, righteous) occurs 206 times. The two nouns overlap heavily, and in most places a reader would lose little by treating them as one word, though tsedaqah is the one more often used of righteous acts and the one paired with mishpat in Amos.

The inquiry showed how concrete the words are. In Leviticus 19:36 the same noun is used four times in one breath: מֹאזְנֵי צֶדֶק (moznei tsedeq, scales of righteousness), and righteous weights, a righteous ephah and a righteous hin, which the BSB renders honest scales and weights, an honest ephah, and an honest hin. A scale is righteous when it measures truly. In Genesis 30:33 Jacob calls his honest dealing with Laban צִדְקָתִי (tsidqati, my righteousness), rendered my honesty. In Genesis 38:26 Judah says of Tamar צָדְקָה מִמֶּנִּי (tsadqah mimmenni, she is more righteous than I), using the verb, qal perfect, third person feminine singular: she has done what was right by the family and he has not. In Deuteronomy 25:1 the judges are to acquit the innocent, וְהִצְדִּיקוּ אֶת־הַצַּדִּיק (vehitsdiqu et-hatsaddiq, they shall declare righteous the righteous one), the hiphil of the same verb. The causative stem here does not mean make someone good. It means declare him in the right, give the verdict in his favour.

That legal sense matters for the whole Bible. When Genesis 15:6 says that Abram believed the LORD, and it was credited to him as righteousness, the Hebrew is וַיַּחְשְׁבֶהָ לּוֹ צְדָקָה (vayyachsheveha lo tsedaqah, and he counted it to him as righteousness), with the qal wayyiqtol of חָשַׁב (chashav, to count, reckon). Paul builds Romans 4 on this verse, and the systematic theology track's lesson Justification sets out how the traditions read it. A word study can tell you that righteousness here is something reckoned, a standing, a verdict. It cannot by itself settle the debates over justification that the next section touches.

Above all, righteousness belongs to God, and when it is God's it is very often saving. Deborah's song in Judges 5:11 calls Israel's deliverances צִדְקוֹת יְהוָה (tsidqot YHWH, the righteous acts of the LORD). Psalm 98:2 sets God's righteousness beside his salvation as two names for one thing: The LORD has proclaimed His salvation and revealed His righteousness to the nations. Isaiah 46:13 does the same: I am bringing My righteousness near; it is not far away, and My salvation will not be delayed. A reader who thinks of God's righteousness only as the standard that condemns him will be surprised how often, in the Psalms and Isaiah, it is the reason he can hope.

A footnote from later history. In the Hebrew of the rabbis, after the Old Testament period, tsedaqah came to mean almsgiving, charity to the poor, and it still does in modern Hebrew. That later meaning is not what Amos meant, but it grew naturally from passages like his, where doing right by the poor is at the centre of what righteousness is.

For more than a century scholars have argued about the core of tsedeq and tsedaqah, and the argument affects how Christians read Paul. In 1899 the German theologian Hermann Cremer argued, in a study of Paul's doctrine of justification against its Old Testament background, that righteousness in Hebrew is a relational idea, not a norm. To be righteous is to fulfil the claims of a relationship: a judge is righteous when he does right by those who come before him, a king when he protects his people, God when he acts for his covenant people. Gerhard von Rad and many others made this the standard account in the twentieth century. Its strength is in the texts this lesson has already read: Tamar is righteous toward the family, Jacob toward Laban, God toward Israel when he saves. It explains why God's righteousness is so often his saving action, and it lies behind the reading, popular in recent decades, that God's righteousness in Paul is his faithfulness to his covenant promises.

Others have argued that the relational account, however illuminating, misses something essential. Hans Heinrich Schmid's Gerechtigkeit als Weltordnung (Righteousness as World Order, 1968) argued that tsedeq in Israel, as in the wider ancient Near East, is bound up with the right ordering of the world that God established in creation and upholds as king and judge. Mark Seifrid, writing in 2001 in the first volume of Justification and Variegated Nomism, examined the uses and argued that righteousness words in the Old Testament are rarely paired with covenant language, that they very often concern judgment and ruling, and that their centre is conformity to what is right, a norm which God himself sets and enforces. On this view honest scales are righteous because they match the true standard, not because they keep a relationship; and God's saving righteousness is his ruling and judging the world aright, which means vindicating the oppressed and condemning the oppressor. Its strength is in Deuteronomy 25:1, Leviticus 19:36 and the large number of texts where righteousness is the work of a judge.

What is settled? Both sides agree that tsedeq and tsedaqah are not abstract qualities but are shown in action, that they often appear in the law court, that God's righteousness is frequently his saving action for the oppressed, and that relationships are always in view somewhere. What they dispute is which comes first, the relationship or the standard, and so whether God's righteousness in Paul is best described as covenant faithfulness or as his just rule and judgment. Many careful readers now say that both ideas are present and that no single definition covers every use. The systematic theology track's lesson Justification gives the Pauline debate its full length. Here it is enough to say that each side has real Hebrew evidence, and that a preacher who says the Hebrew settles the matter has not read both sides.

מִשְׁפָּט (mishpat, justice, judgment, ordinance) occurs 424 times. It is formed from the root שׁפט (shafat, to judge), whose verb occurs 204 times, and whose participle שֹׁפֵט (shofet, judge) gives the book of Judges its name. The judges of that book did more than decide cases; they delivered Israel and ruled it. So mishpat begins in the court but reaches into government. In Genesis 18:25 Abraham asks, Will not the Judge of all the earth do what is right? The Hebrew is הֲשֹׁפֵט כָּל־הָאָרֶץ לֹא יַעֲשֶׂה מִשְׁפָּט (hashofet kol-ha'arets lo ya'aseh mishpat, shall not the judge of all the earth do justice?).

Follow the word through and its range opens up. It can be a verdict: all Israel heard of the judgment the king had given in 1 Kings 3:28. It can be a case brought for decision: Moses brought their case before the LORD in Numbers 27:5. It can be a law or ordinance: These are the ordinances, הַמִּשְׁפָּטִים (hammishpatim), in Exodus 21:1. And it can be simply the way something is done, a custom or a manner. In 1 Samuel 8:9 and 11 Samuel warns Israel of the mishpat of the king, which the BSB renders the manner of the king who will reign over you, and he describes how such a king will take their sons and daughters and fields. In Judges 13:12 Manoah asks what will be the boy's mishpat, rendered rule of life. In 2 Kings 1:7 the king asks what the mishpat of the man was, rendered What sort of man. A dictionary will list all these senses. Your passage will choose one.

With tsedaqah, mishpat forms a pair the prophets used constantly. In the WLC the two stand in the same verse 46 times, and mishpat stands with tsedeq in 30 verses. Amos joins them three times (5:7, 5:24, 6:12). The Israeli scholar Moshe Weinfeld, in Social Justice in Ancient Israel and in the Ancient Near East (1995), argued that the pair works as a single expression meaning something like social justice, and compared it with a similar Akkadian pair used of kings who issued decrees freeing debt slaves and restoring land. Not every scholar follows him all the way, but his comparison helps explain why the prophets so often connect the pair with the widow, the orphan, the foreigner and the poor.

Isaiah gives the pair its most memorable form, in the parable of the vineyard. Isaiah 5:7 ends: He looked for justice, but saw bloodshed; for righteousness, but heard a cry of distress. In Hebrew the puns are unmissable: God waited לְמִשְׁפָּט (lemishpat, for justice) and behold מִשְׂפָּח (mispach, bloodshed); לִצְדָקָה (litsdaqah, for righteousness) and behold צְעָקָה (tse'aqah, a cry). The two pairs differ by a letter or two. The word for bloodshed occurs nowhere else; Isaiah seems to have chosen it for the sound. No English translation can carry the pun without footnotes, and that is a reason to tell a congregation about it when you preach the verse. It is one of the places where a little Hebrew lets them hear what Isaiah's hearers heard.

Here the church is divided, and honestly so. Some Christians, including many evangelicals, read the pair as a call that rests on every believer and every congregation to seek justice for the vulnerable, including by working to change unjust laws and practices; Timothy Keller's Generous Justice (2010) is a widely read statement of that view. Others, such as Kevin DeYoung and Greg Gilbert in What Is the Mission of the Church? (2011), agree that God's people must do justice and love mercy, but caution that many of these commands were given to Israel as a nation under God's law, that the church's distinct mission is to make disciples, and that the prophets' words should not be turned into support for any modern political programme. Liberation theologians, beginning with Gustavo Gutiérrez's A Theology of Liberation in 1971, go further than either, and read God's justice as a preference for the poor that should shape the whole of theology and the church's action in history. What a word study does settle is this: God hates bribery, false scales and the oppression of the poor in court; his people may not practise them; and no amount of worship covers them. How that becomes action in your town is a question the words alone do not answer.

שָׁלוֹם (shalom, peace, well-being) occurs 237 times. Its range is wide and, in many places, very ordinary. When Jacob meets the shepherds of Haran he asks about Laban, הֲשָׁלוֹם לוֹ (hashalom lo, is there shalom to him?), rendered Is he well? (Genesis 29:6). Joseph asks his brothers about their welfare and their father's in Genesis 43:27. When Elisha sends his servant to meet the woman of Shunem, he gives him three questions, Are you all right? Is your husband all right? Is your child all right? and each time the Hebrew is hashalom (2 Kings 4:26). Shalom is the word for asking after someone, and it is the word for greeting them: peace to you is in Abigail's message to David in 1 Samuel 25:6.

It is also the word for peace as opposed to war: Israel is to make an offer of peace to a city before attacking it (Deuteronomy 20:10). And it is a word for the gift of God that covers all of life. The priestly blessing ends with it, may the LORD lift up His countenance toward you and give you peace (Numbers 6:26). God makes a covenant of peace with Phinehas (Numbers 25:12) and promises one to Zion that will not be broken (Isaiah 54:10). Gideon names an altar The LORD Is Peace (Judges 6:24). The false prophets say Peace, peace, when there is no peace at all (Jeremiah 6:14), dressing a deep wound lightly. And Isaiah 32:17 joins it to this lesson's other word: The work of righteousness will be peace.

The root שׁלם (shalam) is shared by several words, and the family is real. שָׁלֵם (shalem) means whole, complete, sound. The piel verb שִׁלֵּם (shillem) means to make good, repay, make restitution, as in Exodus 21:34, where the owner of an open pit must pay for an animal that falls into it. The shelem of Amos 5:22 is the peace offering. So it is fair to say that shalom often has the sense of wholeness, things being as they should be, debts paid, relationships sound. But be careful not to make every use carry everything. When Jacob asks whether Laban is well, he is not asking whether Laban's life is restored to cosmic harmony. Context decides, here as everywhere.

Be more careful still with one popular claim. You may find it said, in sermons and online, that the ancient pictures behind the four letters of shalom spell out a hidden message, something about destroying the authority that establishes chaos. Claims like this were the subject of the Module 2 lesson on myths, and they fail for the same reasons: the letters of Hebrew were long since letters, not pictures, when these words were written; the supposed meanings of the pictures are themselves often guesses; and the same method would give a hidden message for any word at all. Shalom does not need a secret meaning. Psalm 85:10 gives it a better one: Loving devotion and faithfulness have joined together; righteousness and peace have kissed. In that verse the four words of this lesson and the last meet, חֶסֶד וֶאֱמֶת (chesed ve'emet) and צֶדֶק וְשָׁלוֹם (tsedeq veshalom), and the psalmist sees them embrace.

Choose one important word from your Words to study list. If your passage has tsedeq, tsedaqah, mishpat or shalom, choose that; if not, choose the boxed word you think matters most. Turn to a new page and write the word in Hebrew at the top, with its transliteration and its dictionary form, and the number of times your tool says it occurs.

Now work through five steps, writing a line or two for each. First, list the English renderings the BSB uses for this word, using the concordance on Blue Letter Bible or STEP; you are looking for the range, as this lesson did for mishpat. Second, find the uses in the same book as your passage and note which part of the range they use. Third, find the words that stand beside it in your passage and elsewhere, as justice stands beside righteousness, because a word's companions tell you a great deal. Fourth, check whether the same spelling can be a different word, as you learned with hesed; read every verse you count. Fifth, write one sentence beginning In my passage this word means, and choose one English word or phrase for it.

Finally, write one sentence about what this word does not settle. If your word is righteousness, does it settle the debate in section 3? If it is justice, does it settle how your church should act? Saying plainly what the Hebrew does not decide is part of preaching it honestly. File this page with your passage notes; it is the first full word study of your capstone.