Understanding Violence in Old Testament - Psalm 139

Psalm 139 is one of the most beloved of the psalms. It beautifully express God’s nearness:

“You created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother's womb. I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well.’ (Ps 139:13-14)

Yet beginning at verse 19 there is a clear shift both thematically and emotionally. What begins as a psalm of intimacy and closeness to God suddenly shifts into a tirade of hatred:

“If only you would slay the wicked, O God! Away from me, you bloodthirsty men!... I have nothing but hatred for them; I count them my enemies.” (Ps 139:19, 22)

The raw hatred expressed here is disturbing, especially if we see this psalm as a model of prayer. As Christians we know it is wrong to pray for the death of our enemies and cultivate “complete hatred” (v 22). So how can we understand this psalm? Viewing this from the perspective of a screenwriter or actor, one would need to immediately ask what the emotional motivation was that triggered this shift? What breaks the psalmist out of the gentle rhapsody of feeling sheltered and initiate with God, into his sudden outburst of hatred? What is the personal back-story that accounts for this emotional and thematic shift in the narrative?

One clue is that we see that the psalmist's hatred is directed against “men of blood” (v 19), that is, against men of violence whom the psalmist wants to be “kept far away from.” When he wishes that God would “kill the wicked” therefore, this is clearly not meant in the context of Psalm 51 where David confesses his sins. In fact, the Hebrew word rasa translated as “wicked” is never used reflexively in the psalms to refer one’s self, but always refers to the other, to "them." This Hebrew word rasa ("wicked") is also frequently coupled with violence in the psalms:

“The Lord... hates the wicked and the one who loves violence” (Ps 11:15)

“...the wicked who do me violence, my deadly enemies who surround me” (Ps 17:9)

“Guard me, O Lord, from the hands of the wicked; preserve me from violent men (Ps 140:5)

So the word rasa is used very much in the same way as we use the term “bad” people in the context of terrorists and child abductors. As with those emotionally charged themes, here too there is a history of hurt behind the psalmist’s words. Likely they or someone they love were the victim of violence, and now they are lashing out in their hurt. A friend of mine had a girl from Israel live with her family as an exchange student. This girl had seen Palestinians inflicting violence on little children, and one day confessed to my friend through tears “I hate them! I want them to suffer, I want their children to suffer like ours have! I know that’s wrong, but I don’t know how to stop. I just hate them so much.” If we read this psalm in that context, of emotional pain and trauma then the abrupt shift makes sense. It also shed light on the closing two verses:

“23 Search me God and know my-heart. Examine me and know my troubled thoughts. 24 See if the way of pain is in me, and lead me in way eternal.”

Verse 23 is an echo of the opening line of this psalm “God, you search and know me,” (v 1) which launches the psalmist into the beautiful description of god’s intimate knowledge of our inmost being. Here he adds “...and know my troubled thoughts” (v 23). This is frequently translated as “anxious thoughts” and as a result I, and many others, have read this in the context of assurance from doubt, as a verse of comfort when I doubt God’s love for me. I still think this is a perfectly legitimate way to read this—a psalm can take on new meaning as the Spirit uses it to speak into the context of our lives—but here I am convinced that in the original context the “troubled heart” that the psalmist speaks of is the one that caused him in pain and anger to be pulled out of worship and into his outburst of hatred.

His thoughts of worship and intimacy are troubled, disturbed, interrupted, by violence. This takes us into the next line “See if the way of pain is in me” (v 24). The Hebrew word here is otsev meaning pain or suffering, but many translations have instead “the way of wickedness” (NRSV) or “offensive way” (NIV) which both lose the direct emotional connection this term has to the very real hurt expressed in this psalm. Here is someone whose heart is "troubled" by violence, they are hurting, and because of this they lash out in anger. They are stuck in the “way of pain,” the way of hurting and being hurt, are praying that they would be brought out of this road of hurt, and instead be placed on “the eternal way” which is not characterized by hurt and violence, but by life.

Most psalms begin with a lament, and end in praise. Here the order is reversed: It begins in praise, and ends in anguish, hatred, and pain. So we need to look back to vv 1-18 to find the answer to the psalmist's troubled angry heart at the end. The message of the psalm, if we look back to these beautiful opening lines, is that God knows our troubled hearts, God knows our pain, and even our darkness, even when we “make our bed in hell” (v 8), God can “make that darkness into light” (v 12). Even our hatred and pain can be transformed and redeemed by the God who knows us. God meets us there in our darkness and there in that embrace can turn that darkness into light.

How to do a Bible study in Hebrew even if you don't know Hebrew

People are always impressed when you can talk about what the original Hebrew or Greek means in a Bible study. So I thought I would share an easy way to look up words in the original biblical Hebrew. It's easy to do, can greatly expand your understanding of God's word, and will only cost you 50 bucks.

First the free part: look up a passage in the Bible using the Greek and Hebrew concordance function of Blue Letter Bible. You can search for a passage in the Bible and it will show you the corresponding Hebrew or Greek text for that verse. Just hit the "show me" button below to see an example of Psalm 34:2 (it will open in a new tab so you can continue reading).

You can see there that verse in the NASB and the corresponding Hebrew lemmas for each word. Click on the Strong's number for a word and it will open a page that will give you a definition for it. Pretty awesome. If you want to look up your own verse, just click on the "C" to the left of your verse.

Now comes the money part. The dictionary. There are two sections, one called "outline of biblical usage" which is not a dictionary at all. Don't use that. Below that is the famous Gesenius lexicon. It's not bad, but it is quite dated (this one is from 1847!) so you should really have something more up to date one. It can be quite challenging to find a good Hebrew dictionary. Some like the HALOT are outrageously expensive, and others like the BDB (Brown-Driver-Briggs) looks like a bunch of gibberish to non-specialists and really doesn't give definitions at all. Fortunately for Hebrew there is the Theological Wordbook of the Old Testament (TWOT) which is reasonoallby priced and very practical to use. It gives long, detailed, and understandable definitions of all important Hebrew words, and what's more: you don't need to know Hebrew to look stuff up in it. Blueletterbible.com gives you both the Strong's number, and even the TWOT number which you can use to find your word in it.

So let's try that out with Psalm 34:1-2. The NASB reads

My soul will make its boast in the LORD; The humble will hear it and rejoice.

If you look up the word translated "humble" you'll find it can also mean "oppressed" which is how that line is rendered in the NIV

My soul will boast in the LORD; let the afflicted hear and rejoice.

Or how about if we look up the word translated "rejoice." It's not really the kind of thing anyone says outside of a religious context. Even from the Gesenius we can see that the word has to do with having a joyful disposition. So what if we translated it more in the way we talk today and said "let the afflicted hear and be happy"? This can help us to think more about what the text is actually saying where the familiar religious words tend to just roll over us. Of course you could go on and on like this, which is the point. It's a fairly simple way to dig into a text and see things in it that you might have missed otherwise by exploring it in the original language.

A non-penal understanding of Isaiah 53

I got an email recently asking me to explain how the song of the suffering servant in Isa 53 can be understood a non-penal substitution way. So I decided to turn my (rather long) answer into a blog post.

One question that was brought up was the difference between the LXX (the Greek Old Testament read by the Apostles) and the Hebrew OT. For example take verse 10 where it says in the Hebrew

"Yet it was the LORD's will to crush him and cause him to suffer, and though the LORD makes his life a guilt offering..." (NIV)

but the LXX has,
"The Lord wishes to cleanse Him of His wound, and if you give an offering for sin..."

These two texts clearly have different meaning, but let's step back for a moment and look at the big picture. The whole narrative of Isa 53 is one of a travesty of justice. It begins in 52 by saying that "kings will shut their mouths" when they finally get what no one was able to see coming. Then in 53 it begins by saying "who has believed this message?" and goes on to show how everyone in fact completely got it wrong and did not realize that the one who " took up our infirmities and carried our sorrows" was not someone they should despise as "stricken by God, smitten by him, and afflicted." The picture here we are seeing is one of a travesty of justice. The servant is treated unfairly. Though the people thought the servant deserved to suffer, really we were the sinful ones. It is not at all a picture of the fulfillment of justice, but of something is lamented as horribly unjust "He was oppressed and afflicted, yet he did not open his mouth... By oppression and judgment he was taken away."

Clearly this is not a picture of the satisfaction of the demands of justice. No legal system would ever say it is just to punish the innocent. This goes completely against the entire thrust of the OT law, and indeed against all legal systems. Luther commenting on this says that it goes against "all law, custom, and reason." And that is the whole point. The big picture is that this is supposed to be a shock, something hard to swallow. Isaiah tells us this repeatedly. Paul similarly speaks of the cross as being "foolishness" and a "scandal". So with that in mind let's return to that verse in the LXX...

My guess is that a scribe changed it from "crush" to "cleanse" in an attempt to make sense of the text. The idea that this travesty of justice was somehow God's will was too much for him. So he "fixed" the text. Penal substitution tries to do the same thing by presenting the cross as a reasonable fulfillment of law, even though as I said this really makes no sense (punishing the innocent is not just). Here we who want to get away from a punitive understanding of the cross might also want to adopt the LXX reading and avoid the idea that Christ suffered for us too. But I think that is a mistake. The cross needs to stay a scandal and a shock. It needs to be intimidating. As Moltmann says "if we do not have the feeling that we must flee the cross of Christ, we have not yet understood it in a sufficiently radical way"

The crazy picture we get is that even though it is totally unfair, the servant bore our sickness, suffering, and hurtfulness and that somehow acts to cleanse us. Isaiah does not directly deal with how that works. He says that we are healed, brought peace, and carried, and alludes to the idea of sacrifice, speaking of lambs and guilt offerings (i.e. offerings of restitution). As I have argued here and here, sacrifice has nothing to do with punishment (sacrifice is the alternative to punishment) and everything to do with cleansing - that is with sanctification. So the purpose of Christ bearing our pain, doubt, fear, and ugliness is not so that God can be appeased, but so that we can be made new. This is as I have argued in my article here the way that the early church understood Christ's death for us. So with that in mind, let me "fix" the LXX

"The Lord wishes to cleanse Him of us by His wound, and if you give an accept his offering for sin..."

While I'm at it, let me offer a thought about doing biblical exegesis. Most people read the Bible one verse at a time. When doing this it is very easy to miss the larger story or narrative point (like the one we saw in Isa 53) and instead to simply plug in our preconceived doctrinal understandings onto the words and phrases we see in those little verse snippets. This is not at all helped by the fact that the majority of biblical scholars read in this same way, fussing over single words, arguing about the exact grammatical form of this or that word. Commentaries go on for pages like this, and if you asked me the result is that we focus on the crumbs and miss the cookie. We get so focused on some minute detail that we miss the big picture - not just of this chapter, but of how atonement works throughout the entire narrative of both Testaments, how it was understood by the Apostles, and by the early church. How all the pieces fit together. It is that BIG picture we need to focus on as the primary goal of biblical interpretation, and if you think about it this makes perfect sense. If we were interpreting any other novel or story we would certainly not fuss so much over some little sentence fragment or tense of a verb, we would read the whole story and talk about that. Likewise when people read this blog post I hope they focus on the points I am making and don't write a dissertation on my use of the word "of". It is really not that hard to interpret Isaiah 53 if we simply read it as a whole and look at the theme that it is developing. You don't need to know Hebrew or Greek, you just need to read the whole thing and get your head in the narrative. Someone who does this really well is Eugene Peterson. Here's his rendering of Isa 52:13-53:12:

^13-15"Just watch my servant blossom!
Exalted, tall, head and shoulders above the crowd!
But he didn't begin that way.
At first everyone was appalled.
He didn't even look human—
a ruined face, disfigured past recognition.
Nations all over the world will be in awe, taken aback,
kings shocked into silence when they see him.
For what was unheard of they'll see with their own eyes,
what was unthinkable they'll have right before them."

¹ Who believes what we've heard and seen? Who would have thought God's saving power would look like this?

^2-6The servant grew up before God—a scrawny seedling,
a scrubby plant in a parched field.
There was nothing attractive about him,
nothing to cause us to take a second look.
He was looked down on and passed over,
a man who suffered, who knew pain firsthand.
One look at him and people turned away.
We looked down on him, thought he was scum.
But the fact is, it was our pains he carried—
our disfigurements, all the things wrong with us.
We thought he brought it on himself,
that God was punishing him for his own failures.
But it was our sins that did that to him,
that ripped and tore and crushed him—our sins!
He took the punishment, and that made us whole.
Through his bruises we get healed.
We're all like sheep who've wandered off and gotten lost.
We've all done our own thing, gone our own way.
And God has piled all our sins, everything we've done wrong,
on him, on him.

^7-9He was beaten, he was tortured,
but he didn't say a word.
Like a lamb taken to be slaughtered
and like a sheep being sheared,
he took it all in silence.
Justice miscarried, and he was led off—
and did anyone really know what was happening?
He died without a thought for his own welfare,
beaten bloody for the sins of my people.
They buried him with the wicked,
threw him in a grave with a rich man,
Even though he'd never hurt a soul
or said one word that wasn't true.

¹⁰Still, it's what God had in mind all along,
to crush him with pain.
The plan was that he give himself as an offering for sin
so that he'd see life come from it—life, life, and more life.
And God's plan will deeply prosper through him.

^11-12Out of that terrible travail of soul,
he'll see that it's worth it and be glad he did it.
Through what he experienced, my righteous one, my servant,
will make many "righteous ones,"
as he himself carries the burden of their sins.
Therefore I'll reward him extravagantly—
the best of everything, the highest honors—
Because he looked death in the face and didn't flinch,
because he embraced the company of the lowest.
He took on his own shoulders the sin of the many,
he took up the cause of all the black sheep.

A Subversive Easter Message

I've been spending a lot of time lately looking at the way the Old Testament is quoted in the New, and I've found something pretty surprising: 9 times out of 10 the New Testament citation completely flips the original meaning of the Old Testament passage on its head! Take for example Paul's Easter message in 1 Cor 15 where he writes that "The last enemy to be destroyed is death" (1 Cor 15:26). Paul then quotes the familiar line "Where, O death, is your victory? Where, O death, is your sting?" and declares that "The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law. But thanks be to God! He gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ" (1 Cor 15:55-57). As Paul is using the phrase, Where, O death, is your victory? Where, O death, is your sting? is addressing a defeated death: where is your sting now, O death? For you have been defeated by Christ! But take a look at the original passage in Hosea that Paul is quoting from:

"Shall I ransom them from the power of Sheol? Shall I redeem them from Death?
O Death, where are your plagues? O Sheol, where is your destruction?
Compassion is hidden from my eyes." (Hos 13:14 NRSV)

The sense here is the opposite of what Paul is saying. It is about inviting death to come and destroy Israel in punishment. The NET translation makes this difference quite clear:

"Will I deliver them from the power of Sheol? No, I will not!
Will I redeem them from death? No, I will not!
O Death, bring on your plagues! O Sheol, bring on your destruction!
My eyes will not show any compassion! (Hos 13:14 NET)


Now in both Hebrew and Greek there are no question marks (or any punctuation at all), so you can't really tell whether it says "Shall I redeem them from Death?" (a question) or "I Shall redeem them from Death" (a promise), but it is pretty significant that most English translations (NAB, NASB, NCV, NRSV, TEV, CEV, NLT, NET) read this as a rhetorical question that implies a negative answer "Do you seriously think I will rescue you from death!?" The only exceptions to this reading are the NIV and KJV. Similarly, most English versions translate the part quoted by Paul to mean "What's keeping you death? Come!" meaning Hosea is not mocking death, but calling for death. Now how do we know that this is what Hosea meant? Context. Look at the last line: "Compassion is hidden from my eyes" and then read the whole chapter too and you'll see it ends by saying,

"They will fall by the sword;
their little ones will be dashed to the ground,
their pregnant women ripped open." (Hos 13:16 NIV)

This was not good news when Hosea said it, but Paul has turned it around. He has taken a passage which in its original context was about death being poured out on people and made it about humanity being liberated from death because of the Resurrection where Christ overcame death. Again, if you look at how the NT quotes the OT you will find that most of the time it is reversing the original context, subverting it, redeeming it. It takes the original context which says "I hate my enemies and want to destroy them" and makes it about redemption, forgiveness, and making things new again. I love that.

I could go on for pages and pages with other examples of this. If you want to see for yourself, just pick any passage from the NT that is quoting from the OT and then read the whole OT chapter to see what the original context was. You'll see that over and over the NT turns the original meaning around. If you ever wondered why it was that the disciples were so shocked that Jesus had to die on the cross, it's because this was a complete reversal of everything they had learned about the messiah from the prophets. They had learned from reading the OT prophets to expect the messiah to come as a warrior and kill all the bad people. The NT takes all of these messianic prophesies that are about violence and destruction and reverses their meaning. Instead of being about an oppressed people getting revenge, it makes it into a story where all of us need mercy and grace.

Now this kind of crazy exegesis that takes the meaning of a passage and turns it on its head is also exactly how we need to read life. The very heart of the gospel is that God has turned everything around at Easter. The one condemned to die is shown to be victorious. Jesus in his death has conquered death. So while we might look at our lives and see darkness, while we might see pain and hurt, while we might be hopeless screw-ups, God says to us through the resurrection, "behold I make all things new!" God takes what we see around us and flips it right-side up.

Christ entered into our hurt and helplessness and overcame it. That's why the early church could have hope in the middle of horrible persecution, that why people who are suffering can find hope in the middle of that blackness, that's why those who are wracked with guilt and feel helpless to change get so overwhelmed by grace. So my prayer for you this Easter is that you could find a way to see yourself the way God sees you, that we all would learn to see grace in the middle of our messed up lives, to have eyes that see hope in a dark world. It can be really hard to see that sometimes. But that is the truth of the Resurrection. Love has and will overcome hate and hurt. Because of that, nothing you have done, nothing that has been done to you needs to define who you are. In Christ we can be re-defined by grace.

Happy subversive Easter. Christ is risen!

Justification means "made righteous"

A Little Bible Study on δικαιόω

I've been translating the book of Romans from the Greek and wanted to do a word study on δικαιόω to determine whether it should be translated as “declared righteous” or “made righteous,” that is: when God justifies (δικαιόω) the ungodly does this mean that he actually changes us ontologically, making us holy? Or does it simply refer to what traditional Lutheran scholarship has called a legal “imputed righteousness,” meaning we are declared to be righteous even though we are not. This sense of δικαιόω as “declaring righteous” is still prevalent today. It is for example how the recent NET Bible translates δικαιόω in Romans. I would like to demonstrate here that the NET Bible – for all of the many other merits of this excellent translation – is mistaken here, and that the primary meaning of δικαιόω for Paul should instead be translated as “make righteous.”

Δικαιόω in the Old Testament

It is a safe assumption that Paul understanding of the Greek word δικαιόω is rooted in the Hebrew understanding of that concept found in his Bible (the OT). So by exploring how δικαιόω is used in the Greek Old Testament (the LXX), and comparing that to the Hebrew, we can gain insight into how Paul the Jew understands δικαιόω. In the LXX, the δικαιόω almost always corresponds to the Hebrew tsadaq (צָדַק). Both mean essentially mean “to recognize as good/right”.

The simplest way δικαιόω/tsadaq is used in the OT is to speak of making correct deliberations. Deuteronomy for example says that when there is a dispute, the judge should “decide between them, declaring one to be in the right/innocent (δικαιόω/tsadaq) and the other to be in the wrong” (Deut 25:1)¹. Conversely, Isaiah prophesies against those who “justify the ungodly for a bribe” (Isa 5:23), and God declares in Exodus “I will not justify the ungodly” (Ex 23:7). Here the meaning of δικαιόω/tsadaq essentially means to “declare righteous” in the sense of a legal acquittal, and it is expressly forbidden. Only the righteous may be declared right in God’s eyes. Proverbs goes so far as to declare that “the one who justifies the guilty” is “an abomination to the Lord” (Pr 17:15).² The idea here of affirming the good and condemning the guilty seems straightforward enough. It’s morality 101. But how are we to understand Paul’s statement in Romans that God “justifies the ungodly”? In fact, we find in these three passages the same exact phrase:

Isa 5:23: οἱ δικαιοῦντες τὸν ἀσεβῆ ἕνεκεν δώρων καὶ τὸ δίκαιον τοῦ δικαίου αἴροντες.
They justify the ungodly for the sake of bribes and take away the rights of the righteous.

Exod 23:7: ἀπὸ παντὸς ῥήματος ἀδίκου ἀποστήσῃ, ἀθῷον καὶ δίκαιον οὐκ ἀποκτενεῖς καὶ οὐ δικαιώσεις τὸν ἀσεβῆ ἕνεκεν δώρων.

Keep away from unjust sentences, you shall not execute the innocent and righteous, and you shall not justify the ungodly³ for the sake of bribes.

Ro 4:5: τῷ δὲ μὴ ἐργαζομένῳ πιστεύοντι δὲ ἐπὶ τὸν δικαιοῦντα τὸν ἀσεβῆ λογίζεται ἡ πίστις αὐτοῦ εἰς δικαιοσύνην.

But to one who without works trusts him who justifies the ungodly, such faith is reckoned as righteousness. (NRSV)

So how can Paul claim that God justifies the ungodly when his Bible seems to say the exact opposite? I would propose that the problem comes from translating δικαιόω/tsadaq as “declare righteous” in Romans. This is clearly the sense in Isaiah and Exodus above (which is condemned), but unless we want to suppose that Paul is contradicting Scripture, this cannot be what he means. The answer I would propose is that Paul is using the term δικαιόω/tsadaq in a different sense. He is not speaking in a legal forensic sense of acquittal, but is proclaiming, as he says, a righteousness “apart from law.” This is in contrast a righteousness of/from God which is “testified to in the law and the prophets” (Ro 3:21). Indeed when we continue to look at how δικαιόω/tsadaq is used in the Old Testament, this is precisely what we find.

Because of the connection in Hebrew of the idea of righteousness to the character of God, there is a sense of tsadaq meaning shown to be innocent or good that can get lost when translated with the English “right”. For example when the Psalmist says “The judgments of Yahweh are true and altogether δικαιόω” the sense is not so much that God’s judgments are accurate, as that they are good. Similarly, the book of Job draws a parallel between being declared righteous (tsadaq) and being called pure: “Can mortals be righteous (tsadaq) before God? Can human beings be pure before their Maker?” (Job 4:17 NRSV).⁴ This same parallel form equating tsadaq with purity is found in Job 15:14 & 25:4 as well. Similarly, David complains “in vain I have kept my heart pure” (Ps 73:13, =LXX 72:13), the Hebrew here for “pure” is zakah (זָכָה) but in the LXX it is translated with δικαιόω: “I have kept my heart right.”

Paul’s use of δικαιόω

We also find that δικαιόω/tsadaq takes on the sense not only of declaring someone to be pure or righteous, but of making them pure and righteous. We read in Isaiah 53 for example that the servant “will make righteous (δικαιόω/tsadaq) many, for he bore their sin” (Isa 53:11). Here we have the picture of the priest who bears the sins the people, that is, we have a picture of purification. Daniel similarly speaks of the temple itself being “made tsadaq” (Dan 8:14), which various English translations have interpreted to mean “cleansed” (KJV, ASV), “restored” (NRSV, NLT), or “reconsecrated” (NIV). In both of the above cases what is at play is some sort of transformation. God will not simply declare that a person is righteous when they are not. As Paul says in Romans 3:20 (quoting from Psalm 143:2 =LXX 142:2), “Do not enter into judgment with your servant, for no one living is will be justified (δικαιόω/tsadaq) before you.” But then Paul adds, “by observing the law.” On our own we cannot turn our ungodliness into righteousness and purity. But God can. The prophet Micah writes:

“I bear the wrath of the Lord because I sinned against him. Until he δικαιόω my case, and will decide for me, and leads me into the light. I will see his righteousness.” (Micah 7:9)⁵

Here δικαιόω cannot simply mean “declare righteousness” because it immediately follows a confession of sin. Even if we translate δικαιόω as “defend my cause” we know that God has declared in no uncertain terms that he will not defend the ungodly. God will not participate in a legal fiction. The speaker here confesses their own sin, and that they stand under wrath, but nevertheless puts their hope in God’s righteousness not their own. I will see his righteousness. This is the same faith which Paul speaks of, “such faith is reckoned as righteousness” (Ro 4:5). It is a faith which – in spite of our sin – entrusts its cause to God’s righteousness. But how exactly will are we “brought into the light” as Micah says?

In a similar passage Isaiah writes, “All the descendants of Israel will be δικαιόω from the Lord and glorified in God” (Isa 45:25). Again the context is that of being sinners. God has just said to wayward Israel a few verses earlier “turn to me so you can be delivered” (v 22), and in verse 21 God declares “there is no one righteous, and no savior besides me”⁶ There is no one righteous. For those familiar with Romans this surely evokes Paul’s florilegia where he declares that all of humanity is under sin. God is not promising to declare sinful Israel righteousness, but to make them righteousness. Because of the righteousness of God our savior, Micah tells us, we are “made righteous/pure from God” – ἀπὸ κυρίου δικαιωθήσονται.

“I am God and there is no other besides me. There is no one righteous, no savior besides me. Turn to me and you shall be saved...” They will be made righteous by the Lord. All the offspring of the sons of Israel will be glorified in God⁷. (Isa 45:21-22,25 LXX)

As we have seen, there is a range of meaning in the OT for δικαιόω, and likewise there is a range of meaning in Paul. There are times where Paul does clearly appear to use the term δικαιόω in the sense of declaring or recognizing someone as righteous. For example quoting Psalm 51:4 (=LXX 50:6), Paul writes, “That you may be vindicated (δικαιόω) in your words, and will prevail when you are judged” (Ro 3:4)⁸. Since this passage refers to God, it is evident that God is not being made right, but simply that God’s words are being recognized as right. So δικαιόω can mean declared right or good, just as it can in the OT. However, just as in the OT δικαιόω has a range of meaning, it has that same range of meaning for Paul as well.

In his first letter to Corinth, Paul writes, “you were washed, you were sanctified, you were made righteous in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God” (1 Cor 6:11). Here (as we have also seen in several OT passages) Paul directly juxtaposes and connotes δικαιόω with purification and holiness. In other words, the δικαιόω which comes “in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God” means being washed and sanctified.⁹ When passages such as Roman 5:9 are translated as “since we have now been made righteous by his blood, we will be saved through him from God’s wrath” they not only make more sense, (if we have been made righteous, then the cause of God’s wrath has clearly been removed), but they are also in line with Scripture. Alternatively, to translate verses like Rom 5:9 and others
as “declared righteous” is not only logically convoluted, but as we have seen blatantly contradicts Scripture.

In Romans 6:6-7 Paul writes, “We know that our old self was crucified with him so that the body of sin might be destroyed, and we might no longer be enslaved to sin. For whoever has died is freed (δικαιόω) from sin” (NRSV). Because we are co-crucified with Christ in baptism, sin in us has been abolished, removed (καταργέομαι) and as a result we are δικαιόω from sin Paul says. The BDAG gives for this use of δικαιόω the definition, “make free/pure.”¹⁰ A change has taken place that is not simply legal. As a result of that real change, because our sin has been removed, the cause of God’s righteous anger is also removed. God has made Jesus “to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God ” (2 Co 5:21 NRSV). Let me underline every word here: we have in Christ become the righteousness of God – γενώμεθα δικαιοσύνη θεοῦ. Paul writes, “if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation: everything old has passed away; see, everything has become new! (2 Co 5:17 NRSV). That is what the δικαιόω from God means in Romans. As Paul writes, “Therefore just as one man’s trespass led to condemnation for all, so one man’s act of righteousness leads to δικαίωσις¹¹ and life for all. For just as by the one man’s disobedience the many were made sinners, so by the one man’s obedience the many will be made righteous” (Ro 5:18-19 NRSV). Paul’s understanding of δικαιόω is unmistakable here. As he explicitly spells out for us, it means “made righteous” δίκαιοι κατασταθήσονται. As Paul says, no human being will be recognized as righteous before God by observance of the law (Ro 3:20), but we can be made righteous by God’s righteousness. When δικαιόω is read in this way, what Paul writes in Romans 4:5 is no longer a contradiction to what we read in the law (Ex 23:7) and the prophets (Isa 5:23), but its solution.

“But to one who without works trusts him who makes the ungodly righteous/pure, such faith is reckoned as righteousness” (Ro 4:5).

God’s saving goodness makes the ungodly good. To paraphrase what Paul writes in Romans 3:20, we find in Paul the proclamation of a righteousness that comes from God – apart from a forensic legal understanding – which is testified to in the law and the prophets. It is about justification in the sense of being set right. It is about a real ontological change effected in us by the indwelling life of God. It is about becoming a new creation in Christ.

NOTES

1 The LXX here is δικαιώσωσιν τὸν δίκαιον καὶ καταγνῶσιν τοῦ ἀσεβοῦς “declare right/good the righteous and condemn the wicked”.

See also 1 Kings 8:32, Isa 43:9, Job 33:32, Gen 44:16, Isa 43:26, Ps 51:4 (=LXX 50:6)

2 The Hebrew here in Proverbs for “justify the ungodly” is exactly the same as in Isaiah :
מַצְדִּיק רָשָׁע The LXX however is different: ὃς δίκαιον κρίνει τὸν ἄδικον.

3 LXX. In the Hebrew MT God declares “I will not justify the ungodly” לֹא־אַצְדִּיק רָשָׁע

4 This is a form typical of Hebrew verse known as doubling. See W. Gesenius, et al, Hebrew Grammar, (2nd English ed.) 475 §150.h

5 My translation from the LXX: ὀργὴν κυρίου ὑποίσω, ὅτι ἥμαρτον τῷ, ἕως τοῦ δικαιῶσαι αὐτὸν τὴν δίκην μου, καὶ ποιήσει τὸ κρίμα μου καὶ ἐξάξει με εἰς τὸ φῶς, ὄψομαι τὴν δικαιοσύνην αὐτοῦ.

6 δίκαιος καὶ σωτὴρ οὐκ ἔστιν πάρεξ ἐμοῦ

7 Compare this to Rom 8:30 where Paul makes a progressive connection between election, justification (being made right), and glorification, “And those he predestined, he also called; and those he called, he also set right; and those he set right, he also glorified.”

8 Note that in the same Psalm David prays to God, “create in me a clean heart” (v 10) expressing the same basic idea of δικαιόω meaning making righteous or pure.

9 The BDAG
states that δικαιόω in this verse specifically means “you have become pure” (s.v. at 3 on 1 Co 6:11)

10 BDAG s.v. at 3

11 δικαίωσις is the noun form of the verb δικαιόω