Neighborly

For if you truly amend your ways and your deeds, if you truly practice justice between a person and his neighbor, if you do not oppress the stranger, the orphan, or the widow, and do not shed innocent blood in this place, nor follow other gods to your own ruin, then I will let you live in this place, in the land that I gave to your fathers forever and ever. Jeremiah 7:5-7 NASB

Justice – You know, God’s blessings are contingent!  We don’t like it that way.  We want the Santa Claus God without the “naughty or nice” judgment, but that’s not the God of Israel.  If you want to find a stable place in God’s kingdom, then you need to do these very things—“truly.”  With deliberate intention.  Seriously.  Extra-effort action.  And the first of these conditions is mišpāṭ.

The translation “justice” hardly does justice to the word (ha! ha!).

מִשְׁפָּט (mišpāṭ). Justice, ordinance, custom, manner. Represents what is doubtless the most important idea for correct understanding of government—whether of man by man or of the whole creation by God. Though rendered “judgment” in most of the four hundred or so appearances of mišpāṭ in the Hebrew Bible, this rendering is often defective for us moderns by reason of our novel way of distinctly separating legislative, executive, and judicial functions and functionaries in government. Hence šāpaṭ, the common verb (from which our word mišpaṭ is derived) meaning “to rule, govern,” referring to all functions of government is erroneously restricted to judicial processes only, whereas both the verb and noun include all these functions. . . The noun mišpāṭ can be used to designate almost any aspect of civil or religious government.^[1]

With this background in mind, mišpaṭ covers legal decisions, the process of deciding, the cases themselves, the sentence determined by the decision, and the timing of the decision.  In other words, everything about civil issues between people.  God requires us to be neighborly.  Have a problem with someone?  Be neighborly.  Someone has a problem with you?  Be neighborly.  Doesn’t really matter who the other person is or what the issue is.  Be neighborly.  mišpāṭ isn’t a theory.  It’s an action.  Where you have the opportunity to act neighborly, you are required to do so, no matter what the outcome.

Sovereignty, the legal foundation of government in the sense of ultimate authority or right. Men today are accustomed to finding this in constitutions and the nature of man (“natural rights”) but in the Hebrew Scriptures (a) all authority is God’s and it is this authority which is denominated mišpāṭ. “The mišpāṭ is God’s” (Deut 1:17); “The lot is cast into the lap; but the whole mišpāṭ thereof is of the Lord (Prov 16:33). Individual men, as created by God, have inalienable mišpāṭîm (“rights”).^[2]

Neighborliness is the manifestation and exercise of God’s sovereignty over humanity.  Anything else denies God’s order, and eventually brings about God’s judgment.  It’s never just getting along for the sake of getting along or not making waves.  It’s not about being left alone or minding your own business.  It’s about who rules, not what the law says.  And the fact that Yeshua extended this idea to include enemies means it’s probably one of the most difficult contingencies we must deal with.  But deal with it we must.  Just remember that mišpāṭ follows a repeated verb, so give it extra emphasis.

Topical Index:  mišpāṭ, justice, sovereignty, neighborly, Jeremiah 7:5-7

^[1] Culver, R. D. (1999). 2443 שָׁפַט. R. L. Harris, G. L. Archer Jr., & B. K. Waltke (Eds.), Theological Wordbook of the Old Testament (electronic ed., p. 948). Chicago: Moody Press.

^[2] Ibid.