Tzadeqah & Mishpat: Seeking Social Justice

“Yet they seek me daily and delight to know my ways, as if they were a nation that did righteousness and did not forsake the justice of their God; they ask of me righteous judgments; they delight to draw near to God.” (Isaiah 58:2)

God’s ways are delightful - filled with righteousness (ṣᵊḏāqâ, or tzadeqah) and justice (mišpāṭ, or mishpat).

These two words, which appear together dozens of times in the Scriptures, reveal something deeply redemptive of the heart of Adonai towards his people.

The righteousness of tzadeqah is not an ethereal state of being, but the outworking of an ethical, equitable, and kind-hearted disposition towards man, creation, and the Creator. It is the constant and proliferate pursuit of goodness, beauty, and truth for all that was, is, and will be.

“This means, then,” as Keller puts it, “that Biblical righteousness is inevitably ‘social,’ because it is about relationships.”

This is the righteousness of the new creation; it is the just way in which we were made to walk with one another and it is all we will know once the Kingdom of God has come in full.

But, we also have the justice of mishpat, which is typically known as retributive justice. This justice is fundamentally the enforcement of repercussions on the party responsible for wrongdoing and the restoration of the party that had been wronged. When rupture occurs, mishpat creates a path back to repair and harmony and shalom.

At essence, mishpat is our gift from God in a fallen world calling us to return to Eden. It’s a justice that exists to draw us back into an embodiment of tzadeqah.

When we conjoin these words, we ultimately get the divine inception of “social justice.” It is central to who we are, and how we were made to be, because every part of our design is meant for right relationship.

Just as Job wrapped this “social justice” around him as his robe and turban, leading him into relationship with those harmed by injustice - advocating for the disabled and fatherless, the poor and the immigrant (Job 29:12-17) - so too are we still called to cloak ourselves in social justice and find ourselves sitting among and championing the afflicted and oppressed.

Father, conform us to tzadeqah,

and give us the courage to seek restorative mishpat.

Allow our eyes to see the dignity of those who have done wrong,

the willingness to help reestablish those who have been wronged,

and the discernment to call out systems that have been set up to do wrong,

that we might extend what is right and righteous in the world.

Amen.

P.S. Tim Keller’s book “Generous Justice” is fantastic, as well as Michael Rhodes’ “Practicing the King’s Economy”.