Tipping Point

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! Shall not the Judge of all the earth deal justly?”  Genesis 18:25  NASB

Justly – Rabbi Sacks recognized just how crucial Abraham’s question was—and is.  

“‘Shall the judge of all the earth not do justice?’ (Genesis 18:25).  This is the question of questions for biblical faith.  Paganism then, like secularism now, had no such doubt.  Why should anyone expect justice in the world?  The gods fought.  They were indifferent to mankind.  The universe was not moral.  It was an arena of conflict.”[1]

Justice!  No, not “fairness.”  Fairness means that I should have the same treatment as you.  That’s not the real question.  The real question is why, if God is a good God, do the wicked prosper, do calamities befall the righteous, do we feel insecure in this life, do we see evil triumph?  The Bible addresses this concern over and over with questions like “How long, O Lord?” and “Where are You?”  Perhaps you’ve struggled to find a reasonable answer.  Perhaps you’ve combed the pages of Scripture—and left emptyhanded.  Perhaps we are all like Job, forced into silence.

Sacks invites us to look at a much bigger picture.  “There are times when we must silence our most human instincts if we are to bring about good in the long run.”[2]  Gaza.  Iran.  Countless other conflicts where the innocent die because something else must be accomplished.  Who can know the real goals of God, the real history of humankind?  What would we have to pay to “see” the world stage as He does? 

Sacks points out that Moses refused to acquire such knowledge because he understood that to do so would come “at the cost of ceasing to be human.  How could he still be moved by the cry of slaves, the anguish of the oppressed, if he understood its place in the scheme of things, if he knew that it was necessary in the long run?”[3]  No, to be human is to be limited to temporal compassion.  We see what hurts now.  God sees what heals later.  We might keep this in mind when we are tempted to complain that life isn’t just. 

Perhaps we should have noticed this if we knew more about the Hebrew vocabulary.  The term translated “justly” is mišpāṭ, derived from the root šāpaṭ.

The primary sense of šāpaṭ is to exercise the processes of government. Since, however, the ancients did not always divide the functions of government, as most modern governments do, between legislative, executive, and judicial functions (and departments) the common translation, “to judge,” misleads us. For, the word, judge, as šāpaṭ is usually translated, in modern English, means to exercise only the judicial function of government. Unless one wishes in a context of government—civil, religious, or otherwise—consistently to translate as “to govern or rule,” the interpreter must seek more specialized words to translate a word of such broad meaning in the modern world scene. For the participle NIV uses “leader.”

The meaning of šāpaṭ is further complicated by the fact that although the ancients knew full well what law—whether civil, religious, domestic or otherwise—was, they did not think of themselves as ruled by laws rather than by men as modern people like to suppose themselves to be. The centering of law, rulership, government in a man was deeply ingrained. “The administration of justice in all early eastern nations, as among the Arabs of the desert to this day, rests with the patriarchal seniors … Such … would have the requisite leisure, would be able to make their decisions respected, and through the wider intercourse of superior station would decide with fuller experience and riper reflection.”^[4]

The government of God is eternal.  It’s perspective is eternal.  It’s goals are eternal.  And that’s the problem.  We aren’t. We are trapped in between the horizons of the past and our version of the future.  That limitation means we often don’t see what God is doing—or why He is doing it this way.  

But we can trust that He knows what is really necessary.  

Topical Index: justly, šāpaṭ, mišpāṭ, government, justice, Genesis 18:25