Let the rivers clap their hands in glee! Let the hills sing out their songs of joy before the LORD. For the LORD is coming to judge the earth. He will judge the world with justice, and the nations with fairness. Psalms 98:8-9 NLT
In her novel The Bird in the Tree the English novelist, Elizabeth Goudge, has the following line “The universe was planned as an orderly thing and those forces that try to wreck its order are always on the losing side.” Whether Miss Goudge knew it or not she was talking about a Hebrew concept. That concept is expressed in the Hebrew noun mishpat and also in the participle shophet. The former is conventionally translated “justice,” or “judgment,” while the latter is conventionally translated “judge.” While neither of these translations is incorrect, what they convey in English is very inadequate.
The idea contained in the combination of the three consonants sh, p, and t is what Miss Goudge saw: design or order. Thus Samson is called a “judge,” not because he was an official who handed down legal judgments, but because, at least for a while, he delivered Israel from Philistine oppression and allowed them to live according to their Creator’s design for them.
In the same way, when crimes are allowed to go unpunished, God’s intended order for life is violated; injustice has occurred. “Justice” for the Hebrew is not an enforced social equality. It is life lived in the way Yahweh planned it, for the goal of human flourishing.
So what does this mean for you and me? It means that I obey God’s regulations, his mishpatim [-im designates the plural] not because he will “get me” if I don’t, but because that is the way the world has been made. The world functions rightly when I am faithful to my beautiful Karen and do not sneak off to have sex with my neighbor’s wife. By choosing to do something “unjust,” I am, in Miss Goudge’s words, trying to wreck the order that was built into the universe. In the same way, if I steal from my neighbor, perhaps by refusing to pay him what his work is worth, I am trying to wreck the “vast, eternal plan” [ala Tevya in “Fiddler on the Roof].
The “Judge” is coming, not to pass down some legal judgments, but to straighten up the mess that we have made of his plan. Rejoice!
Called To Be Transformed 