Righteousness and Salvation

Abstract

‘A Twentieth-Century reader encountering the word righteousness in Semitic texts must always be careful to adjust his thought and not to place this term in the categories to which our word righteousness has accustomed us.’ These cautionary words may well be given for any study of Old Testament terms but they are especially appropriate for the study of righteousness. We are accustomed to associate righteousness with some kind of impartial and impersonal dispensing of reward and blame by which the moral rectitude of society is maintained. Righteousness in the Old Testament does have something of our modern concept of justice but it cannot be restricted to that for we will find to our surprise that other concepts have important significance in our understanding of righteousness. As we shall see, righteousness shines forth in a spectrum of meaning that cannot be reduced to one line of thought. It behooves the student of the Old Testament, to free himself from any kind of bondage, whether it be an adherence to prevailing scholastic categories of thought or a reaction against them.