Home » Posts tagged 'justice'
Tag Archives: justice
A Hot Thing Today in Evangelical Hermeneutics Is Now To See Social Justice All Over the Minor Prophets
Was God angry with Israel for its lack of social justice? No doubt God was angry with Israel and through His prophets He warned them. The Bible, including the Minor Prophets, doesn’t mention “social justice.” It mentions just “justice.” Those who point out social justice in the Minor Prophets, or “The Prophets” as the Hebrews referred to it, say that God punished Israel for its social injustice. What they most often don’t say is that social justice itself is injustice according to its definition:
Social justice refers to a fair and equitable division of resources, opportunities, and privileges in society. Originally a religious concept, it has come to be conceptualized more loosely as the just organization of social institutions that deliver access to economic benefits.
Many different factors change the economic and social outcome of individuals. Scripture and, therefore, God doesn’t guarantee equality of resources or privileges. God doesn’t ensure equal opportunity. Bringing social justice into the Minor Prophets alters the meaning of justice, reads something corrupt into scripture.
When I say, “justice,” I’m speaking of the Hebrew word mishpot, found 421 times in the Old Testament. Translators translate mishpot both “justice” and “judgment.”
Evangelical social justice warriors use a prophet like Amos, where in 5:7 he says,
Ye who turn judgment to wormwood, and leave off righteousness in the earth.
“Righteousness” (tsidaqa) in the second half relates to “judgment” (mishpot) in the first half. A warning occurs later in verse 15:
Hate the evil, and love the good, and establish judgment in the gate: it may be that the LORD God of hosts will be gracious unto the remnant of Joseph.
“Establish judgment” (mishpot) and the “LORD God of hosts will be gracious.” Same chapter, verse 25, was a common refrain from civil rights leaders, used according to what became called “liberation theology,” which spiritualizes these Old Testament passages with a form of amillennialism.
But let judgment run down as waters, and righteousness as a mighty stream.
Social justice advocates now use these verses in a wide ranging manner, that is hardly justice. The “judgment,” that is mishpot, is the judgment of God. How does God judge what occurs? Israel doesn’t follow God’s laws, which are His righteousness. Israel falls short of the glory of God.
Micah is another prophet who confronts the same theme as Amos in such verses like 3:9:
Hear this, I pray you, ye heads of the house of Jacob, and princes of the house of Israel, that abhor judgment, and pervert all equity.
“Equity” at the very end isn’t a contemporary understanding. The Hebrew word means “straight, right, level, or pleasing,” as in pleasing to God. Israel was making crooked what was straight. That’s injustice.
When some people get away with lawbreaking because they’re rich, that is injustice. It’s not judging like God does. When that occurs, the straight becomes crooked. It’s also allowing people to get away with such activity.
Today the social justice warriors are championed by the rich, who get off the hook for their injustice. They cover for criminal evidence on a laptop of the President’s son. They tear up public property in Seattle and Portland without arrest. Illegals flow across the border. A homeless man urinates on the street without justice. Yet, all of this is “social justice.”
A verse in Micah equal in fame to Amos 5:25 is Micah 6:8:
He hath shewed thee, O man, what is good; and what doth the LORD require of thee, but to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God?
People “do justly” or they don’t. In other words, they characteristically do what pleases God or they don’t. Justice relates to God. Doing justice means no one gets away with unrighteousness, which is what God says it is. If he does break God’s law, he repents. When a boy dresses like a girl or a girl dresses like a boy, that’s not mishpot. Abortion violates mishpot too. I can keep going a long time with such examples of the transgression of God’s law.
Calling the contents of the preaching of the Minor Prophets “social justice” perverts the point and meaning of the Minor Prophets. It sounds like impressive exegesis to a woke audience. It panders to that group. However, it corrupts justice. It makes the straight crooked in contradiction to Micah 3:9. It promotes redistribution of wealth, taking from those who earned it and giving it to those who didn’t, a form of thievery. This corresponds to a now famous statement by President Obama when he ran for reelection in 2012, speaking of small business owners, “You didn’t build it.”
The prophets preach repentance too. Amos 5:4 says, “Seek ye me, and ye shall live.” 5:6, “Seek the LORD, and ye shall live.” 5:9, “Seek him that maketh the seven stars and Orion.” 5:14, “Seek good, and not evil, that ye may live: and so the LORD, the God of hosts, shall be with you, as ye have spoken.” The road to justice starts with personal repentance, seeking the LORD and, therefore, His ways.
Perhaps the greatest abuse of justice is idolatry, elevating man’s lust above God. False worship. Rather than loving God, loving your self. None of this is mishpot. This isn’t justice. This isn’t seeking after God.
An Analysis of Supreme Court Overturn of Roe and the Lie of the Dissenting Opinion
Early Friday my phone notified me the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade. It brought great happiness, comparable to the 2016 election. I knew it was happening, but it got off my radar, so when I saw it, it was adulation. Praise God! I looked for a copy of the decision, downloaded the pdf, and started to read. My mind gobbled Alito’s text with delight and refreshment. Outside of the Bible, this doesn’t happen much.
I celebrate Samuel Alito and the four other justices. They showed great courage. They did something that I will never forget, a highlight of my life. I was eleven years old at the Roe v. Wade decision and did not even know it happened. I’ve lived almost my entire life under its evil effects.
Even as I say that, the most courageous was Clarence Thomas. I separate him from the entire group with his concurring opinion. Same sex marriage is not in the constitution either. He wrote (p. 119):
For that reason, in future cases, we should reconsider all of this Court’s substantive due process precedents, including Griswold, Lawrence, and Obergefell. Because any substantive due process decision is “demonstrably erroneous.”
Obergefell decided same sex marriage. The court passed that on the same basis as Roe. On the other hand, Kavanaugh in his concurring opinion, to distinguish himself, wrote:
First is the question of how this decision will affect other precedents involving issues such as contraception and marriage—in particular, the decisions in . . . . Obergefell v. Hodges, 576 U. S. 644 (2015). I emphasize what the Court today states: Overruling Roe does not mean the overruling of those precedents, and does not threaten or cast doubt on those precedents.
I hope he reconsiders this point if same sex marriage comes to the court again.
The decision showed three basic opinions, represented by a majority of five, minority of three, and then Chief Justice Roberts alone. The majority said nothing personal about the morality of abortion. The five wrote the Constitution says nothing about abortion and contains no right to abortion therein. The Constitution neither commends or condemns abortion. Roe v. Wade found a right where there was none. It was unconstitutional.
Roberts upheld the Mississippi law as constitutional based upon a generous interpretation of Casey. Even though the arguments required to choose one way or the other, he chose silence on an abortion right. Roberts kicked the abortion can down the road, siding neither way on its constitutionality, attempting, it seems, to please both sides.
The minority of three wrote:
Today, The Court . . . says that from the very moment of fertilization, a woman has no rights to speak of. A State can force her to bring a pregnancy to term, even at the steepest personal and familial costs.
The Court did not say that. These three Supreme Court justices lied. The Court said nothing about whether a woman has a right to abortion. It said the Constitution does not say anything about a right to abortion. The Supreme Court does not decide what rights people have or do not have. It does decide constitutional rights. Is a constitutional right to abortion in the constitution? The majority said, no.
Right now a state cannot force a woman to bring her pregnancy to term. She can travel to another state with legal abortion and get one. Everyone knows this. The governor of California says it will give sanctuary to pregnant women who want to kill their babies.
As you and I read opinions such as written by the minority, perhaps you ask, “What is a woman?” Or, “Who is ‘her’?” The three liberal judges function according to outdated language and meaning. Doesn’t the patriarchy force its bias and its meaning of existence and reality through gendered language?
Feminists could support the Dobbs decision. It establishes the existence of women. For the court to force women to have their babies, there must be women. What does that mean for transgender rights? The Casey decision argued in 1992 a constitutional “right to define one’s own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life.” These words followed Justice Anthony Kennedy’s now very famous sentence from the Casey opinion:
At the heart of liberty is the right to define one’s own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life.
Yes, Kennedy was apparently one of the conservative faction of justices, seen as a moderate, appointed by Ronald Reagan. Kennedy was no conservative in the spirit of William Buckley.
Donald Trump did a better job choosing justices than Ronald Reagan, who also chose Sandra Day O’Connor. Take a moment to thank Donald J. Trump. He picked three of these justices in the majority. Three for three. Let’s hear it for Trump. True conservatives should give Trump credit, but many won’t.
Mitt Romney tweeted out support of the Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe. Could we trust him to have made the choices Trump did? I don’t think so, but he could impeach Trump for an appropriate call to the Ukrainian president.
The Supreme Court majority that overturned Roe was no thanks to Anti-Trumpers, who did not vote for Trump in 2016. Most are further to blame for the horrific consequences of 2020. This includes John Piper and David French. I concur with this Mollie Hemingway answer to French.
So thankful your anti-Trumpist obsession and damaged ego failed to keep the country from this moment. If you had gotten your way, this day would have never happened. You should repent for your continual slanders against those who had far more courage and wisdom.
— Mollie (@MZHemingway) June 24, 2022
George Bush selected David Souter and George W. Bush did Chief Justice Roberts. Thankfully the latter also picked Samuel Alito, the author of Dobbs. This decision would not have happened under Romney or McCain and didn’t under the Bushes.
Liberty Magazine writes the following about Anthony Kennedy’s words in Casey, the infamous abortion decision after Roe:
Though sounding more like a discourse on Spinozean metaphysics than on constitutional jurisprudence, this sentence has reached the level of notoriety among judicial and political conservatives that “separate but equal” once did among civil libertarians, or “material substratum” did among post-Enlightenment idealists.
No U.S. Supreme Court dictum in decades has faced such vilification as has poor Justice Kennedy’s 28 words. Robert Bork called the phrase indicative of “New Age jurisprudence”; William Bennett derided it as an “open-ended validation of subjectivism” that paves the way for drug abuse, assisted suicide, prostitution, and “virtually anything else”: George Will said it was “gaseously” written; Michael Uhlman labeled it a “thing of almost infinite plasticity”; the editors of First Things called it the “notorious mystery passage”; and on and on.
Kennedy’s take on liberty fits very nicely with a naturalist’s view of the world, turning language and meaning into one’s personal Gumby toy.
If I could brag about any one aspect of a reading of Dobbs by Samuel Alito, it’s the return to objective, plain writing. He wrote like words meant something. No one can follow that sentence by Kennedy, but it allowed for the perverseness we see in modern culture. Your truth is your truth. Your liberty is your liberty. That’s not a baby, but a fetal, clump of cells.
The argument buttressing a right to abortion now undermines the definition of woman. Most of those out there protesting the decision could and should protest both sides of the decision. Both sides used oppressive and sexist language that uphold the patriarchy. The liberal side does it in a more subtle and insidious way, thereby causing even worse damage to the LGBTQIA agenda.
The new, correct word for mother, or its replacement, abandoning the former meaning of woman, is gestator. It’s obvious that this movement does not have everyone on the same page. Their gender is fluid and the movement itself is too. It’s changing and mutating so fast, it doesn’t have time to finish its handbook. This forces liberal judges to use the outdated terms like “woman” and “her.” You think I’m joking.
In a refreshing bit of honesty, unlike Roe and Casey, a gestator calling their self Sophie Lewis, in answer to Dobbs provides unmitigated clarity with her The Nation article: “Abortion Involves Killing–and That’s OK!” This entity (person, whatever) says: “Dishonest sugar-coating did not work. Let’s stop. It didn’t work. Let’s call it what it is, killing.” Another word I would use, that Sophie did not, is “murder.” So here we have it. Samuel Alito was clear and so was Sophie Lewis. Exhilarating truthfulness.
When you and I look at the protestors, they represent a profane culture. They wear their piercings, falsely colored hair, and they speak streams of expletives and destroy private and public property. This reflects the postmodern philosophy of Sartre, the French existentialist, who said that existence preceded essence. Humans have no essential nature, thus no morality besides what every man makes for himself. They don’t see themselves as accountable to God. The appearance of Dobbs protestors mirrors this existential philosophy aligned with the Anthony Kennedy statement in Casey. Their costumes are the uniform of their view of reality. They define their own essence.
Not everyone will say it like Sophie Lewis, but the reason why an assassin could show up at Justice Kavanaugh’s house after the leak of the Dobbs opinion was because “killing is OK.” That is also why a large majority of the media says little to nothing in opposition. Their liberty allows for murder. A baby may exist but cannot define his essence. A critical theory justifies killing as the essence of liberty.
Since the Supreme Court announced the ruling on Friday, plain language came to the surface. At a pro-abortion protest a man says, ala Sophie Lewis, he “loves killing babies.” Many women call it the best decision they ever made. Over ten years ago, I walked in a large pro-life march in San Francisco. Those protesting the march on the side of the road were the most vile and lewd people I’ve ever seen in my life. Their signs, language, and appearance were as bad as I’ve ever seen as an attempt to intimidate the march.
The overturning of Roe v. Wade is so good. The war, however, is just begun. Hopefully, it won’t be a real war with real bullets, one that the Supreme Court provided the previous day with its concealed carry decision.
Does God’s Justice Make You a Victim?
While at the gym I was listening to Leviticus and knowing the book of Lamentations, something struck me at the end of Leviticus about the justice of God. The next to the last chapter, Leviticus 26:18-22, say:
18 And if ye will not yet for all this hearken unto me, then I will punish you seven times more for your sins.
19 And I will break the pride of your power; and I will make your heaven as iron, and your earth as brass:
20 And your strength shall be spent in vain: for your land shall not yield her increase, neither shall the trees of the land yield their fruits.
21 And if ye walk contrary unto me, and will not hearken unto me; I will bring seven times more plagues upon you according to your sins.
22 I will also send wild beasts among you, which shall rob you of your children, and destroy your cattle, and make you few in number; and your high ways shall be desolate.
I mention Lamentations, because this warning was at least fulfilled at the siege of Jerusalem, chronicled in Lamentations. Here are examples from the five chapters:
1:5 Her adversaries are the chief, her enemies prosper; for the LORD hath afflicted her for the multitude of her transgressions: her children are gone into captivity before the enemy.
1:16 For these things I weep; mine eye, mine eye runneth down with water, because the comforter that should relieve my soul is far from me: my children are desolate, because the enemy prevailed.
2:11 Mine eyes do fail with tears, my bowels are troubled, my liver is poured upon the earth, for the destruction of the daughter of my people; because the children and the sucklings swoon in the streets of the city.
2:19 Arise, cry out in the night: in the beginning of the watches pour out thine heart like water before the face of the Lord: lift up thy hands toward him for the life of thy young children, that faint for hunger in the top of every street.
4:4 The tongue of the sucking child cleaveth to the roof of his mouth for thirst: the young children ask bread, and no man breaketh it unto them.
4:10 The hands of the pitiful women have sodden their own children: they were their meat in the destruction of the daughter of my people.
5:13 They took the young men to grind, and the children fell under the wood.
Maybe nothing stands out more than consequences affecting children. God listed many in Leviticus 26. The heavens will be as iron, meaning no rain, which turns the ground to brass. Land will not bring increase. Trees do not yield fruit. Multiple plagues come. Wild beasts rob families of their domestic animals and their children.
The Lamentation quotes focus on one aspect of the judgment, what occurs to the children. All the rest are in there, bookending the list of expectations.
Why do these things occur? The people do not listen to God. They walk contrary to God. They do no obey Him.
The people are not victims. They caused this. They are responsible. The people suffer for unrighteousness.
Many times, thoughts begin with the imagination of victimhood. Before someone gets there, he should consider whether he listens to God, walks contrary to God, or does not obey Him. In Lamentations, God says through Jeremiah that He brings these consequences out of His faithfulness.
God’s justice doesn’t make you a victim.
My Acceptance of Hell
Hell is a common atheist argument, usually made with disdain. It’s even got a name, “The Problem of Hell.” You’ve got to say it in mocking tones, because scorn is part of the argument. It can be done in one statement something like this: “You’ve got to love God or else He’ll torture you in Hell.” Or, “If God is so insecure, that He needs everyone to love Him, or He’ll send them to Hell, I wouldn’t believe in Him even if He did exist.”
The Hell argument against Theism sets the atheist up as morally superior to Bible believers and God Himself, justifying atheism. It could be a kind of dress rehearsal for an argument before God Himself at the final judgment. It could too serve as an emotional appeal to support a bankrupt position. Others will cheer this on.
Someone is judging in his judgment of Hell. What is this standard for judgment in a random world of matter and motion, atoms colliding with one another? How does someone put even two related thoughts together by a cosmic accident of naturalism? He doesn’t. How does naturalism cause the ability to provide a nuance of disdain? It doesn’t. The atheist mocking Hell borrows from theism by using words, which are abstract, nonmaterial ideas. He constructs a moral system to account for behavior that doesn’t exist in the arbitrary world of the naturalist.
Even so, Hell could at least feel difficult to defend in the world in which we live. The atheist frames it as though you enjoy the future pain and anguish. For that reason among others, people won’t talk about Hell. They call it perhaps eternal death or just eternal separation from God. Knowing how offensive it might sound, thinking it might just shut down a conversation, it’s given little mention, even though Jesus was the one who talked about it more than anyone. There is a Heaven. There is a Hell.
How some people have dealt with Hell is eliminating almost any opportunity for anyone to go there except for someone almost everyone thinks deserves it. Hitler comes to mind. A general audience might choose for a child molester or a serial killer. Almost everyone else goes to, you know, “a better place,” even if they don’t know what or where it is or why that person will go or should be going there. It’s not helpful to give someone false assurance related to Hell. Assigning someone to a better place, when he’s really on his way to Hell, hurts him in an eternal way.
I’ve titled this, my acceptance of Hell, because in a personal way, Hell is acceptable to me. There are general reasons for acceptability. The Bible teaches Hell. Jesus taught Hell. It is also taught in so many different ways. The opposition to Hell isn’t persuasive. It amounts to “I don’t want it” or “I don’t like it,” which is a version of rejection of justice for sin.
Here are my personal reasons for acceptance of Hell.
One, how bad we are.
People just don’t think they deserve Hell. This is very common. When I’m evangelizing, it’s the second greatest stumbling point. I ask, “Do you think you deserve Hell?” 90 plus percent answer, “No.” The idea here is the punishment doesn’t fit the crime. It’s way too severe, reflecting on the nature of God, His righteousness, and His justice. People do not think they’re bad enough to deserve Hell. That’s for very bad people, and few think they’re that bad.
I say I deserve Hell, and I accept that, because I do think I’m bad. How bad we are starts with the nature of God. The Bible compares us to God. I fall very far short of the glory of God. It’s not an accident. I also do the things offensive to God and then just don’t please God on a regular basis.
God created me for His purpose and not only do I not fulfill that, but I don’t want to do it. I want to serve myself. I can give many examples of this. Today at church, while someone was praying, I caught myself thinking about something else. I was thinking about something temporal and superficial and suddenly I awoke out of that trance, not even hearing what someone was praying. I’ve done that many times.
God’s judgment turns us over to our own lusts. Romans 1 uses the language of “gave them up” (vv. 24, 26, 28). God lets people have what they want. He lets them go. They’re getting what they want. They don’t want God. They don’t want what He wants. If you get that, it ends in Hell, because that path leads to where God isn’t. His love is absent from Hell. Where God isn’t, it’s a very terrible place. That’s how the Bible describes it. Hell is the final destination for those God gives up.
I think of this aspect too. In going my own way, I disobey, even ignore, the great command, to love Him with all my heart, soul, mind, and strength. God loves me. No one is better to me than Him. It’s not even close, but I live for myself.
Two, it’s a necessary motivation.
Sin ruined man. It ruins men. Men easily live for themselves. They move from one lust to the next. This is all so strong, that Hell is a necessary impetus to reject that.
I know there’s all the positive too: Heaven, God’s goodness, the death, burial, and resurrection of Christ, and the truth of the Bible. That’s all important. I still see Hell as necessary motivation in spite of all those good things, on the negative side. The flesh is that strong. Human desire is that strong.
You could call all that the world offers, what Jesus calls, gaining the whole world. Even if man doesn’t gain the whole world, the whole world is still out there offering its invitation. The eternal loss of a soul counteracts the lie of the world. It’s a nagging reality. Even if someone wants to block it out, it disquiets and afflicts.
When Jesus told the story of the rich man in Hell, someone sees a man who did have everything in his short lifetime, who would gladly give it all up for even a drop of water, while he’s in Hell. If there’s one thing he wants to do, even when he can’t escape Hell, it’s to get a warning to his brothers. This is a warning to all the living.
Hell is not over the top. Even with it, people still choose to go there with the knowledge of its existence. As severe as it is, it’s still not enough for a vast majority of people. Many atheists would rather mock Hell and God than receive the Lord, despite the reality of Hell.
Hell makes total sense to me personally for these two reasons.
What Does God Say Is Cured By the New Covenant? The Blame Game
People have their favorite verses in the Bible, beloved ones they commit to memory. They know them well. Every verse, every word of the Bible is important, but there are key passages in it. If you think of Jeremiah, certain texts stand out. One of those is Jeremiah 31:31-34, the classic location for the new covenant.
I read Jeremiah again recently in my Bible reading. Something else stood out. If you google, “new covenant,” the first paragraph of the first link, which is the Wikipedia article, reads:
The New Covenant (Hebrew ברית חדשה berit hadashah; Greek διαθήκη καινή diatheke kaine) is a biblical interpretation originally derived from a phrase in the Book of Jeremiah (Jeremiah 31:31-34), in the Hebrew Bible (or Old Testament in Christian Bible).
31 Behold, the days come, saith the LORD, that I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel, and with the house of Judah: 32 Not according to the covenant that I made with their fathers in the day that I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt; which my covenant they brake, although I was an husband unto them, saith the LORD: 33 But this shall be the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel; After those days, saith the LORD, I will put my law in their inward parts, and write it in their hearts; and will be their God, and they shall be my people. 34 And they shall teach no more every man his neighbour, and every man his brother, saying, Know the LORD: for they shall all know me, from the least of them unto the greatest of them, saith the LORD: for I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more.
28 And it shall come to pass, that like as I have watched over them, to pluck up, and to break down, and to throw down, and to destroy, and to afflict; so will I watch over them, to build, and to plant, saith the LORD. 29 In those days they shall say no more, The fathers have eaten a sour grape, and the children’s teeth are set on edge. 30 But every one shall die for his own iniquity: every man that eateth the sour grape, his teeth shall be set on edge.
Adonibezek: The Lost Believe in Justice
The beginning of Judges tells the story of the heathen king, Adonibezek. Joshua had died and now God spoke directly to the tribes of Judah and Simeon to go up and fight the Canaanites as a whole and among them the Perizzites, and to take their land. They attack the town of Bezek, which is apparently a little ways West of Bethlehem, if you can visualize that on a map. They killed ten thousand Canaanites in Bezek and captured Adonibezek, whose name means, lord of Bezek. They cut off his thumbs and big toes.
When I think of that, I sometimes think of Rocky Bleier, a running back for the championship Pittsburgh Steelers, during their four Super Bowl wins. He had fought in Vietnam and the shrapnel from a hand grenade had blown off part of his foot, yet he still played running back in the NFL. I think, how did he play running back without part of his foot? How could Adonibezek fight without two big toes? That was the point, of course. And without thumbs, he couldn’t hold on to a sword either.
Upon this occurrence, Judges 1:7 says:
And Adonibezek said, Threescore and ten kings, having their thumbs and their great toes cut off, gathered their meat under my table: as I have done, so God hath requited me.
No pun intended, but this stuck out to me in Bible reading, mainly the last part, his saying, “So God hath requited me.” Adonibezek believed in justice. Not karma. I’ve found this to be the case with the lost. They believe in justice, they just don’t like it when it applies to them. It’s very often in the back of someone’s head that there will be payback for the things that they have done.
I have a feature on a Bible program, when looking up the usage of the Hebrew word, either “search on this form” or “search on all forms of lemma.” A lemma is a form of a set of words, what you might call the root word. It looks up all the forms of a word. “This form” would be letter for letter that particular word, the same in every way. All forms of this lemma are found 236 times in the Hebrew Old Testament and this exact form only twice, the other translated “finished” in 1 Kings 9:25.
The Hebrew word for “requited” is shaw’lam (my transliteration), which in its root means to be complete or sound. It is the root idea of justice, the idea of something coming full circle, whatever you’ve done coming back on you, completing the circle. It means “perfect,” an end being met, or “full” or “finished.” Adonibezek’s cutting off the toes and thumbs of seventy other kings wasn’t the end of the story.
The law of lex talionis, the law of equal retribution, is an eye for an eye or tooth for a tooth. This is equal justice. The expression lex talionis was written in 450 BC in Roman law known as the Twelve Tables and written: “If a man has broken the limb of another man, unless he makes his peace with him, there shall be like for like, talio esto.” The very beginning of the concept of lex talionis used the example of the breaking of a limb of another man, something close to what Adonibezek had been doing.
Adoni means “lord,” but Adonibezek knew that he wasn’t the highest law. There was a higher law than him, a lord that was higher than what he was. Adonai is one of the names of God in the Old Testament. Adonibezek fancied himself a regional or local lord and the God of Heaven was the Lord of all.
The laws of nature and nature’s God, the language of the Declaration of Independence, penned by Thomas Jefferson, include this law of equal retribution. I’ve found everybody believes in justice. They know what it means and they want it for themselves, but they don’t like it when it applies to themselves. In this case, Adonibezek knew he was getting it though.
Adonibezek says, “God hath requited me,” so the thought could be that he was acknowledging God. It’s unlikely. He uses Elohim, the Hebrew name for “God,” but also used by the heathen to refer to the god of their own imagination. He did believe in god at least. He at least believed in justice, and God Himself inspired this to be written. These words were recorded in scripture. God had requited Adonibezek, actual God.
Man has God’s law written in his heart as a default position by which he may judge truly. The world functions according to Divine standards. This is our Father’s world, no matter what happens, and that is a presupposition that is useful in the conviction of every unbeliever, Adonibezek being an example. His conscience admitted to him that this was justice from God for what he had done. The world operates according to the laws that God both set in motion and in which He directly intervenes.
Recent Comments