Genesis 18:19 · Symbol · Justice
The Words Mishpat and Tsedaqah
Mishpat and tsedaqah are the Hebrew nouns that English Bibles render justice and righteousness, and Scripture often joins them in one verse.
Isaiah's song of the vineyard turns on two pairs of Hebrew words that sound alike.
For I have chosen him, so that he will command his children and his household after him to keep the way of the LORD by doing what is right and just, in order that the LORD may bring upon Abraham what He has promised.”
- The word
- מִשְׁפָּט (mishpat), H4941
- First appears
- Genesis 18:19 “For I have chosen him, so that he…”
Summary
Mishpat begins in the court as a judge's verdict and reaches out to the right a person is owed. Tsedaqah names what is right, in a person's conduct and in God's own dealings. Scripture sets the two side by side in the charge to Abraham's household, in the reign of David and in the promise of a righteous Branch. In the New Testament the Greek words krisis, dikaiosyne and dikaios carry the same ground.
- Mishpat (H4941) stands 422 times in 31 books of the Hebrew Bible, and tsedaqah (H6666) 157 times in 22.
- The related noun tsedeq (H6664) is also rendered righteousness and stands 119 times.
- Psalm 89:14 calls righteousness and justice the foundation of God's throne.
- Paul writes that God demonstrates His righteousness so as to be just and to justify the one who has faith in Jesus (Romans 3:26).
Mishpat and Tsedaqah in the Hebrew Bible
Abraham's plea for Sodom puts mishpat in the mouth of a man speaking to God.
Justice is one of the values Scripture asks of God's people, and the Hebrew Bible states it chiefly with two nouns, mishpat and tsedaqah. Both words stand from Genesis to Malachi, and Scripture joins them in the law, the Psalms and the prophets.
This word study asks what each word means, how often each stands and what the two mean when they stand side by side. It counts both words book by book and follows the pair through the law, the king and the prophets. It then sets out the Greek words that carry them into the New Testament and two readings of the pair from the commentators.
Far be it from You to do such a thing—to kill the righteous with the wicked, so that the righteous and the wicked are treated alike. Far be it from You! Will not the Judge of all the earth do what is right?”Abraham calls the LORD the Judge of all the earth, and the Hebrew of the verse holds shophet, judge, and mishpat, what is right.
The study Justice and Righteousness follows the pair through six passages from Deuteronomy to Matthew, with the later use of Amos 5:24.
Where the Two Words Stand
Both words stand most often in the Psalms, Isaiah and Ezekiel.
Mishpat stands more often than any other word of justice in either Testament.
| Word | Sense in the lexicon | Uses | Books with the most uses |
|---|---|---|---|
| Hebrew | |||
| mishpat, מִשְׁפָּט, H4941 | justice, judgement | 422 | Psalms 65, Ezekiel 43, Isaiah 42; 31 books in all |
| tsaddiq, צַדִּיק, H6662 | righteous | 206 | Proverbs 66, Psalms 52, Ezekiel 16; 25 books in all |
| tsedaqah, צְדָקָה, H6666 | righteousness | 157 | Isaiah 36, Psalms 34, Ezekiel 20; 22 books in all |
| tsedeq, צֶדֶק, H6664 | righteousness | 119 | Psalms 49, Isaiah 25, Proverbs 9; 12 books in all |
| tsadaq, צָדַק, H6663 | to justify | 41 | Job 17, Isaiah 6, Psalms 4; 13 books in all |
| din, דִּין, H1779, noun | judgment | 20 | Proverbs 5, Jeremiah 4, Job 4; 7 books in all |
| Greek | |||
| dikaiosyne, δικαιοσύνη, G1343 | righteousness | 92 | Romans 34, Matthew 7, 2 Corinthians 7; 19 books in all |
| dikaios, δίκαιος, G1342 | just | 79 | Matthew 17, Luke 11, Romans 7; 20 books in all |
| krisis, κρίσις, G2920 | judgment | 47 | Matthew 12, John 11; 12 books in all |
| dikaioo, δικαιόω, G1344 | to justify | 38 | Romans 15, Galatians 8, Luke 5; 9 books in all |
| krima, κρίμα, G2917 | judgment | 27 | Romans 6, 1 Corinthians 3, Luke 3; 15 books in all |
| ekdikesis, ἐκδίκησις, G1557 | vengeance | 9 | Luke 3; 7 books in all |
| ekdikeo, ἐκδικέω, G1556 | to avenge | 6 | Luke 2, Revelation 2; 4 books in all |
din, דִּין, H1779, noun, Greek, dikaiosyne, δικαιοσύνη, G1343, dikaios, δίκαιος, G1342, krisis, κρίσις, G2920, dikaioo, δικαιόω, G1344, krima, κρίμα, G2917, ekdikesis, ἐκδίκησις, G1557 and 1 more
The counts are those of the site's tagged Hebrew text, and a printed concordance may differ by a few. Some verses hold a word twice, so the uses of mishpat stand in 406 verses and those of tsedaqah in 150.
Mishpat and tsedaqah book by book2 figures
Psalms, Ezekiel and Isaiah hold 150 of the 422 uses of mishpat.
The thirty-one counts as a table
| Book | Uses |
|---|---|
| Psalms | 65 |
| Ezekiel | 43 |
| Isaiah | 42 |
| Deuteronomy | 37 |
| Jeremiah | 32 |
| Job | 23 |
| Proverbs | 20 |
| Numbers | 19 |
| 1 Kings | 18 |
| Leviticus | 14 |
| 2 Chronicles | 13 |
| 2 Kings | 11 |
| Exodus | 11 |
| 1 Chronicles | 9 |
| 1 Samuel | 7 |
| Ecclesiastes | 6 |
| Hosea | 6 |
| 2 Samuel | 5 |
| Micah | 5 |
| Nehemiah | 5 |
| Amos | 4 |
| Habakkuk | 4 |
| Zephaniah | 4 |
| Genesis | 3 |
| Judges | 3 |
| Joshua | 3 |
| Malachi | 3 |
| Ezra | 2 |
| Lamentations | 2 |
| Zechariah | 2 |
| Daniel | 1 |
Mishpat, H4941, drawn as 31 bars from zero, longest first.
Isaiah and Psalms hold 70 of the 157 uses of tsedaqah.
The twenty-two counts as a table
| Book | Uses |
|---|---|
| Isaiah | 36 |
| Psalms | 34 |
| Ezekiel | 20 |
| Proverbs | 18 |
| Jeremiah | 8 |
| Deuteronomy | 6 |
| 2 Samuel | 4 |
| Job | 4 |
| 1 Kings | 3 |
| Amos | 3 |
| Daniel | 3 |
| Genesis | 3 |
| 1 Samuel | 2 |
| 2 Chronicles | 2 |
| Judges | 2 |
| Malachi | 2 |
| Micah | 2 |
| 1 Chronicles | 1 |
| Hosea | 1 |
| Joel | 1 |
| Nehemiah | 1 |
| Zechariah | 1 |
Tsedaqah, H6666, in 22 bars, one per book that uses it.
The Pair from Abraham to the Righteous Branch
Mishpat and tsedaqah stand in the same verse 46 times, from the law to the prophets.
Mishpat also stands with tsedeq, the other Hebrew noun for righteousness, in 30 verses, and with one or the other of the two in 75. A count of shared verses includes some where the two words are not joined as a pair.
The 46 shared verses book by book1 figure
Isaiah holds 12 of the 46 verses where mishpat and tsedaqah stand together.
The fourteen counts as a table
| Book | Verses |
|---|---|
| Isaiah | 12 |
| Ezekiel | 8 |
| Jeremiah | 6 |
| Psalms | 6 |
| Amos | 3 |
| Proverbs | 3 |
| 1 Chronicles | 1 |
| 1 Kings | 1 |
| 2 Chronicles | 1 |
| 2 Samuel | 1 |
| Deuteronomy | 1 |
| Genesis | 1 |
| Job | 1 |
| Micah | 1 |
Fourteen bars, each the number of shared verses in one book.
Righteousness and justice are the foundation of Your throne; loving devotion and faithfulness go before You.The Hebrew of the verse pairs mishpat with tsedeq and sends chesed and emet, loving devotion and faithfulness, before God.
Psalm 97:2 sets the same two words under the throne after the line “Clouds and darkness surround Him.”
Thus David reigned over all Israel and administered justice and righteousness for all his people:The narrator joins the pair to David's reign over all Israel.
Behold, the days are coming, declares the LORD, when I will raise up for David a righteous Branch, and He will reign wisely as King and will administer justice and righteousness in the land.The promise sets mishpat and tsedaqah as the work of the coming ruler from David's house.
Jeremiah 22:15 to 16 says the same of Josiah, the father of King Shallum, and adds that he “took up the cause of the poor and needy.”
David's reign as a type of ChristMatthew Henry, on 2 Samuel 8:15
“Herein he was a type of Christ, who was faithful and true, and who doth in righteousness both judge and make war, Rev. xix. He kept good order and good officers in his court. David being the first king that had an established government (for Saul's reign was short and unsettled) he had the modelling of the administration.”
Matthew Henry · Commentary on the Whole Bible · on 2 Samuel 8:15Puritan
For the vineyard of the LORD of Hosts is the house of Israel, and the men of Judah are the plant of His delight. He looked for justice, but saw bloodshed; for righteousness, but heard a cry of distress.The LORD looked for mishpat and saw mispach, bloodshed, and looked for tsedaqah and heard tse'aqah, an outcry.
Jamieson, Fausset and Brown called the play upon words “striking in the Hebrew” in their Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871). They set the cry beside the cry of the crowd at the trial of Jesus in Matthew 27:23 to 24.
Nine verses later the song turns to God, and Isaiah 5:16 says that “the holy God will show Himself holy in righteousness.”
Jeremiah 23:5, Isaiah 5:7
The Words of Justice in the Lexicon
Strong's dictionary and the site's lexicon give the senses of mishpat, tsedaqah and tsedeq.
Strong's dictionary defines mishpat as “properly, a verdict (favorable or unfavorable) pronounced judicially.” It adds the abstract sense of justice, “including a participant's right or privilege.”
The King James Version renders mishpat by many English words, among them judgment, justice, right, ordinance, custom, manner and fashion. So mishpat can name a custom or a manner as well as a verdict.
You must not pervert justice; you must not show partiality to the poor or favoritism to the rich; you are to judge your neighbor fairly.The law forbids injustice in mishpat and tells the judge to judge his neighbour in tsedeq, favouring neither the poor nor the rich.
The lexicon gives tsedaqah and tsedeq the one meaning, righteousness. Strong's dictionary gives tsedaqah the senses rectitude, justice, virtue and, figuratively, prosperity. Leviticus 19:36 uses tsedeq four times, of the scales, the weights, the ephah and the hin.
Pursue justice, and justice alone, so that you may live, and you may possess the land that the LORD your God is giving you.The Hebrew doubles tsedeq here, and the Berean text renders the doubled word as justice, and justice alone.
The verb shaphat (H8199), to judge, is set out beside mishpat in the study of the Judge, with the courts that Moses set up.
Two words name what corrupts justice in the court and the market. Shochad (H7810), a bribe, stands 23 times, and mozenayim (H3976), a pair of scales, stands 15 times.
The Greek Words for Justice
Matthew, Luke and Paul write of justice with krisis, with ekdikeo and with the words built on dikaios.
Abbott-Smith's lexicon notes that the Septuagint uses krisis for mishpat, of the standard of judgment, right and justice.
“Here is My Servant, whom I have chosen, My beloved, in whom My soul delights. I will put My Spirit on Him, and He will proclaim justice to the nations.Matthew quotes Isaiah 42:1 with krisin, rendered justice, where the Hebrew of Isaiah has mishpat.
Two verses later Matthew 12:20 ends “till He leads justice to victory,” again with krisis. In Matthew 23:23 Jesus names krisis with eleos and pistis, justice, mercy and faithfulness, as the weightier matters of the law.
The lexicon gives dikaiosyne a narrower sense, justice, and cites Acts 17:31, where God “will judge the world with justice by the Man He has appointed.”
Masters, supply your slaves with what is right and fair, since you know that you also have a Master in heaven.Paul tells masters to give what is dikaion, and the lexicon cites the verse for dikaios in its narrow sense, rendering to each his due.
He did this to demonstrate His righteousness at the present time, so as to be just and to justify the one who has faith in Jesus.The Greek reads dikaion kai dikaiounta, and the lexicon files the two words under dikaios and dikaioo.
The study Justification by Faith teaches what Paul means by the verb dikaioo, to justify.
Jesus' parable of the widow and the judge uses ekdikeo, to vindicate, for her plea, “Give me justice against my adversary” (Luke 18:3). Luke 18:7 uses the noun ekdikesis when Jesus asks whether God will bring about justice for His elect.
Two Readings of the Pair
Two commentaries, of 1710 and 1871, read the pair in Jeremiah 9:24 in two ways.
But let him who boasts boast in this, that he understands and knows Me, that I am the LORD, who exercises loving devotion, justice and righteousness on the earth—for I delight in these things,” declares the LORD.Chesed, mishpat and tsedaqah stand together here as three marks of the LORD's own character.
Readers ask whether the pair names God's even-handed justice toward all, or His faithfulness to the people He has bound to Himself by covenant.
Justice toward every creatureMatthew Henry, on Jeremiah 9:24
Matthew Henry wrote in his Commentary on the Whole Bible (1710) that God is “just to all his creatures” and also “kind to all his children”.
Against this reading, Psalm 72:2 asks the king to judge the afflicted with justice, which is more than doing no wrong to anyone.
Righteousness as faithfulness to His promisesJamieson, Fausset and Brown, on Jeremiah 9:24
Jamieson, Fausset and Brown wrote on the same verse, “Faithfulness to His promises to preserve the godly, as well as stern execution of judgment on the ungodly, is included in ‘righteousness.’”
Against this reading, many verses of the pair concern the poor and the wronged, as Jeremiah 22:3 does with the command “Rescue the victim of robbery from the hand of his oppressor.”
Books to Read Next
Two works on the Hebrew and Greek words, each free to read in full.
The Exhaustive Concordance of the Bible
James Strong · 1890
Its Hebrew and Greek dictionaries give the definitions of mishpat and tsedaqah that the site's lexicon carries.
Read on archive.orgA Manual Greek Lexicon of the New Testament
G. Abbott-Smith · 1922
Its entries for krisis, dikaiosyne and dikaios give each sense with the New Testament verses for it.
Read on archive.orgJustice and the Salvation to Come
Isaiah joins the command to keep justice to the promise that God's righteousness will be revealed.
This is what the LORD says: “Maintain justice and do what is right, for My salvation is coming soon, and My righteousness will be revealed.The verse holds mishpat once and tsedaqah twice, first for what the people must do and then for what God will reveal.
In Romans 3:21 Paul writes that apart from the law, the righteousness of God has been revealed.
Sources
Scripture is the Berean Standard Bible.
- STEP Bible, Translators Brief lexicon of Extended Strongs for Hebrew and for Greek (Tyndale House, Cambridge), CC BY 4.0, with the Greek brief lexicon based on Abbott-Smith (1922)
- James Strong, The Exhaustive Concordance of the Bible, with brief dictionaries of the Hebrew and Greek words of the original (1890)
- Matthew Henry, Commentary on the Whole Bible (1710), on 2 Samuel 8:15 and Jeremiah 9:24.
- Robert Jamieson, A. R. Fausset and David Brown, Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871), on Isaiah 5:7 and Jeremiah 9:24.
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