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Law is a system of rules and principles that regulate important external behavior of people in social relationships2 3 and because of that, the purpose and content of law can not be arbitrary: »Therefore, any law must be oriented to the common good.«3 Radbruch says: »Law is a reality whose purpose is to serve legal value - the idea of law /.../And the idea of law can be no other that the idea of justice.«4 But what is justice? Aristotle's justice is twofold:5 justice in a broad and in the narrow sense.6 General justice (justice in a broader sense) is in compliance with the norm,7 particular justice (justice in the narrow sense) corresponds to equality. The latter is further divided into three sub-forms:8 distributive (iustitia distributiva),9 commutative (iustitia commutativa)10 and corrective (iustitia correctiva)11 justice. In this article I am aiming to present the meaning of justice (especially Aristotelian traditional forms of justice) in the Old Testament.
The most important Hebrew terms in the Old Testament for justice are mishpat12 (also mispäf) and sedeq (also sedäqäh,13 tzedek,14 tsedeq15).16 Mishpat has several different meanings; it most often indicates judgement,17 decision, temperance;18 conformity with law, moral justice, penalty;19 judging between parties in dispute;20 divine rule, God's verdict, etc.21 Sedeq derives from the root sdq,22 which has extremely wide meaning.23 It most often refers to an abstract idea of justice,24 legitimacy, general loyalty, benevolence, proper personal relationship, proper divine operation, mercy,25 holiness, moral honesty, etc. It can also mean measure, weight, judgement, etc.26 Although translations are not very consistent,27 mishpat is most often translated to Greek as krima / krisis and sedeq is most often translated as dike / dikaiosune28 In Latin they are both translated as iustitia.29 It is interesting that in non-biblical text dikaiosyne is often translated as justice,30 while in the Old Testament jus tice is more often a translation of mispat31 (sedeq is most often translated as righteousness).32
Different use of terms has an effect on different perception of the content of the Old Testament justice of God (God's righteousness). Two ideas are prevailing among commentators: God's retributive justice (which is derived from the concept of the last judgement33) and God's righteousness as a salvation.34 Retributive God's justice is based on the idea of equality...