The concept of justice is so deeply imbued in the writings of the prophets that an exploration of this subject finds itself in many different places. For the purpose of this essay I have attempted to group them into three key areas.

Firstly, the concept is enmeshed in the covenantal relationship the people of Israel had with YHWH, and the expectations and obligations that attached to them because of the covenant.

Secondly, the prophets spoke into communities that had a variety of approaches to the concept of theodicy. If God is good, then why is this happening to us? The way the community responded to this question influenced prophetic notions of divine and social justice.

Thirdly, the concept was carried within a theological framework, which defined the role of God, the prophet and the king and/or ruling powers. The expectations attached to this triangulation of authority are the basis for the prophet’s calls and claims for justice.

Jeremiah7:5-7
For if you truly amend your ways and your doings, if you truly act justly one with another, if you do not oppress the alien, the orphan, and the widow, or shed innocent blood in this place, and if you do not go after other gods to your own hurt, then I will dwell with you in this place, in the land that I gave of old to your ancestors for ever and ever.

Micah 6:6-8
6‘With what shall I come before the LORD, and bow myself before God on high? Shall I come before him with burnt-offerings, with calves a year old?
7Will the LORD be pleased with thousands of rams, with tens of thousands of rivers of oil? Shall I give my firstborn for my transgression, the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul?’ 8He has told you, O mortal, what is good; and what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?

The communities to whom the prophets spoke all saw themselves as being in a special or distinct relationship with YHWH. The requirement to be faithful to this covenant was inherent in their self identity, and that faithfulness included the concept of mishpat. Heschel writes;
“Justice as an interpersonal relationship, involving a claim and a responsibility, a right and a duty, applies … to both God and man. In its fundamental meaning, mishpat refers to all actions which contribute to maintaining the covenant, namely, the true relation between man and man, and between God and man.”

Thus maintaining the norm of justice and righteousness was not a matter of quid pro quo with God, but was elemental to the right ordering of creation. Brueggemann names this as part of “wisdom theology” where “YHWH is portrayed as a creator God who orders and maintains a visible coherent fabric of life that produces well-being in which that order is honoured.”

Heschel summarises the theology when he writes
“Justice is not an ancient custom, a human convention, a value, but a transcendent demand, freighted with divine concern. It is not only a relationship between man and man, it is an act involving God, a divine need…It is not one of His ways, but in all His ways. Its validity is not only universal, but also eternal, independent of will and experience.”

The community’s response to this was expected to be overt, and worship was not seen as something different or apart from acts of justice or righteousness. Worship without action was expected to have consequences. Hence the call to protect the vulnerable becomes a key theme in the prophetic writings. Brueggemann points to Jer.7:5-7, where “the prophet issues a series of requirements that are conditions for remaining in the land of promise.” Dillard writing about Amos notes, “a just God demands justice among his covenant people (5:15), obedience rather than sacrifice (5:18-24).”

And Gowan, when referring to Micah 6:6-8 writes:
“The text, with its emphasis on justice (mishpat) and kindness (hesed), thus lies in two lines of tradition; the cultic, represented by Psalms 15 and 24, and the prophetic, in which righteousness is exalted above sacrifice.”

So the relationship between YHWH and the community is made overt and explicit in the manner in which the community cared for the vulnerable in their society. As such, the prophets spoke of the care for widows, orphans and the alien (refugee or stranger) as exhibiting justice and righteousness. These elements of the covenantal relationship had to be maintained as rigorously as cultic practice.

However the stories of the people of Israel tell of their inability to maintain the covenant with YHWH. Gowan, in explaining the nature of the prophetic books writes;
“(God) had given them priests to instruct them, kings to maintain justice, sages to guide them, and prophets to warn and exhort them when they forgot who they were. It had not worked.” What had not worked? The right ordering of relationships with each other, with God and with creation. The prophets spoke into communities that were experiencing social, political and religious failure. In this framework, the concept of divine justice is constructed as the inevitable consequence of their own behaviour.

Stuhlmann in his commentary on Jeremiah writes that this took the form as a defense of God’s character. “Given the terrible suffering of the Judean people, God’s justice came into disrepute. The interpretive community of Jeremiah responds with a compelling theodicy.”

The concept of theodicy describes a process where the meaning, value and significance of suffering, guilt, and experiences of evil are explored and constructed within theological discourse. As we have seen, primarily, the prophets appeared to operate in “primal order” model where divine justice springs from this elemental ordering. Brueggemann writes;
“Lacking wisdom, Israel engages in self-destruction through its foolish disregard of life’s elemental ordering…YHWH is no active agent of Israel’s punishment, but only the guarantor of a system of “deeds and consequences” that leave death and termination as the inescapable outcome of foolishness.”

However, Stuhlmann, suggests that the situation of the community produced another and more ambiguous theodicy.
“The conflicting responses to suffering in Jeremiah generally fall under one of two categories: the first maintains that the universe is orderly and congruent, moral and stable, and exacts punishment on wrongdoers; the second raises questions regarding the character of God and the morality of the universe. Influenced to a large measure by Deuteronomic theology, the prose sermons most clearly articulate the former perspective…Next to these orderly arrangements, one finds a theology of protest that is far more comfortable with ambiguity and moral dissonance. Those engaged in this “anti-theodicy” are less inclined to exonerate God of responsibility for human suffering and are more open to the possibility of innocent suffering. Belonging to this category are the confessions of Jeremiah and also portions of the book that depict the prophet’s persecution at the hands of enemies.”

Within this second theological framework, the concept of divine justice becomes much more diffuse and takes us back into the notion of the covenant with YHWH as a relationship, rather than a contractual arrangement. Heschel, poetically captures this when he writes;
“The prophets do not speak of a divine relationship to an absolute principle or idea, called justice. They are intoxicated with the awareness of God’s relationship to his people and to all men.” and
“…righteousness is not just a value; it is God’s part of human life, God’s stake in human history.”

Within these parameters then, we come across the triangulation of authority that is intimately associated with mishpat, and which gave the prophets their tremendous voice. The three players; God, the ruler (or King) and the prophet are each essential to each other. So intimately bound that they cannot ignore or reduce the power and authority of each without bringing all down together. Each of these is necessary for the naming and exhibition of divine and social justice. Stuhlmann, breathtakingly summarises as he claims that the voice of the dissident prophet is essential to every part of the life of the community.

“When prophets fail, kings go down in ruin. When prophets flounder, alternatives to royal power cease. Without the prophetic presence there is no poetry, imagination, generosity, or testimony to transcendence. Kings avert their eyes to human needs, economic inequities, and broken social systems. And there remain only “horses and chariots,” unbridled greed, brutality, technology and stinginess. When prophets fail no one sees beyond the superficial to grasp life at its depth…No one introduces God’s viewpoint and God’s passion into public discourse. Life flattens into settled categories, undisturbed and insensitive to what is truly going on. When prophets avoid the divine counsel and compromise their vocation, nations have their way and no one dares to bring them to their senses. When prophets cease being God’s voice, sweatshops make sense, gaps between the rich and poor are merely the result of market voices, murdered civilians are collateral damage, and landmines tearing off arms and legs are just security burdens. Some celebrate the demise of prophets. Who wants to hear their disturbing speech? Yet when dissident and oppositional voices are silent, when accommodation wins out and ethical angst is soothed, all suffer, including kings.”

So what roles do the three characters in this triangle play? Firstly God. Brueggemann succinctly captures the community’s theology in his commentary on Jeremiah. He writes;
“The God who does wonders is the God who will enact a disaster on YHWH’s own people. Quite clearly, the God of the prophetic tradition, unlike the idols who can be “nailed down as patrons,” is a free God who is not bound to Israel in any ultimate way. This God can act freely, even devastatingly, to exhibit divine freedom and sovereignty.”

Thus the prophets continually reassert the claim that whilst the behaviour of people will have consequences, what those consequences will be is in God’s domain, not the king’s.

Secondly, the King. The ruler or governor of the land held a sacred duty to uphold and maintain overt justice in the community. Cook states that
“The responsibilities and privileges of the king are summarised in (Jeremiah) 22:15-16 … (focusing)on his faithfulness to the covenant which entailed living justly and righteously and caring for the vulnerable members of the kingdom.”

Thus the failure of the ruler to uphold this duty is a predominant theme of the prophets. Heschel writes that “the prophets were shocked not only by acts of injustice on the part of scoundrels but also by the perversion of justice on the part of the notables.”

Finally, the prophet. Their role was to make the voice of God heard in public utterance and as such become a social truth teller, a counter cultural nuisance. Heschel describes the words of the prophet as so confronting that they are (and were) considered hysterical. However, he writes that this is because they see so deeply that “even a minor injustice assumes cosmic proportions” and that they feel so fiercely because the prophet is “a form of living, a crossing point of God and man. God is raging in the prophet’s words.”

The voice of the prophet then was to counter the “kingly consciousness.” This is the deep and resonant theme developed in Brueggemann’s book The Prophetic Imagination where he describes the “alternative consciousness of Moses.” Jeremiah he argues is an embodiment of this.
“He articulated what the community had to deny in order to continue the self-deception of achievable satiation. He affirmed that all the satiation was a quick eating of itself to death. Jeremiah knew long before the others that the end was coming and that God had had enough of indifferent affluence, cynical oppression, and presumptive religion.”

A canvassing of the concept of justice within the writings of the prophets, in the end leads us to a place where what seems to matter most is the intimacy and quality of the relationships that people have with each other and how God is inextricably bound up in those relationships. Thus justice is not an element of the covenantal relationship, but is threaded intimately within each action within that covenant. Justice does not have a life or order of its own, but is a function of life. The explicit teaching and condemnation by the prophets of those who ignored or mistreated the vulnerable, pointed to the signs of a deeper malaise in the community and their relationship with YHWH.

For our own time, such a reading asks us to place ourselves in the triangulation of authority which represents mishpat. Is the balance right? Do we heed the call of the prophet, or ignore it altogether? Do we name ourselves as the king, or refuse to acknowledge that we have any authority? Do we recognise the divine in the divine, or try to constrain divinity to our own domestic purposes? In the contemporary arena of global warming, distorted distribution of wealth and opportunity, and domesticated religion, who dares to name themselves as the essential truth teller?

Bibliography

Brueggemann, Walter. The Prophetic Imagination. Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1983.

________. The Theology of the Book of Jeremiah Old Testament Theology. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2007.

Cook, Joan E. Hear O Heavens and Listen O Earth. Collegeville: Liturgical Press, 2006.

Dillard, Raymond B., and Tremper Longman III. An Introduction to the Old Testament Leicester: Apollos, 1995.

Gowan, Donald E. Theology of the Prohetic Books: The Death and Ressurection of Israel. Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 1998.

Heschel, Abraham. The Prophets: Two Volumes in One. Peabody: Hendrickson Publishers, 2007.

Stulman, Louis. Jeremiah Abingdon Old Testament Commentaries. Nashville: Abingdon Press, 2005.