Injustice

Injustice, in Scripture’s usage, is the wronging of another person — the denial of what is due someone in judgment, in economic dealings, or in the treatment of the weak — and it is treated as a violation of God’s own character rather than merely a breach of social etiquette. The Hebrew noun most often translated “justice” is mishpat, “judgment, right order,” and the words rendered “injustice” carry the sense of crookedness or wrong; the Torah’s case law is built on the assumption that a court can either render mishpat or bend it. Leviticus 19:15 says, “You shall do no injustice in judgment. You shall not be partial to the poor, nor show favoritism to the great; but you shall judge your neighbor in righteousness.” Exodus 23:2 forbids following a crowd to do evil or testifying in a way that sides with a multitude to pervert justice, and Deuteronomy 16:19 says, “You shall not pervert justice. You shall not show partiality. You shall not take a bribe, for a bribe blinds the eyes of the wise and perverts the words of the righteous.” The concern in these statutes is specifically judicial: the powerful and the numerous must not be allowed to decide what is right.

A second strand of the Bible’s teaching extends injustice beyond the courtroom to the treatment of the vulnerable. Jeremiah 22:3 says, “Execute justice and righteousness, and deliver him who is robbed out of the hand of the oppressor. Do no wrong. Do no violence to the foreigner, the fatherless, or the widow. Don’t shed innocent blood in this place.” Proverbs 17:15 names the perversion of verdicts an abomination: “He who justifies the wicked, and he who condemns the righteous, both of them alike are an abomination to Yahweh.” Economic injustice appears alongside judicial injustice — Proverbs 28:8 speaks of wealth increased “by excessive interest” — and Ecclesiastes 5:8 describes oppression of the poor as a bureaucratic chain in which “one official is eyed by a higher one,” so that no single official is innocent. Over against this, Psalm 12:5 gives the divine response: “Because of the oppression of the weak and because of the groaning of the needy, I will now arise,” says Yahweh; “I will set him in safety from those who malign him.” Zephaniah 3:5 makes the contrast explicit: Yahweh “will do no wrong. Every morning he brings his justice to light. He doesn’t fail, but the unjust know no shame.”

Scripture also treats injustice as a matter of small dealings, not only great crimes. Luke 16:10 says, “He who is faithful in a very little is faithful also in much. He who is dishonest in a very little is also dishonest in much.” One way to read this is that the verse states a principle of character rather than a case law, extending the same logic that the prophets apply to courts and markets down to ordinary transactions. First Thessalonians 4:7 sets the same contrast in terms of calling: “For God called us not for uncleanness, but in sanctification.”

Christian traditions have read this material with different emphases. Catholic social teaching has developed the language of social sin and structural injustice, reading passages such as Ecclesiastes 5:8 and Jeremiah 22:3 as warrant for analyzing systems and institutions, not only individual acts. Reformed and broader Protestant ethics have often stressed both the个人的 and the civil dimension, treating the magistrate as God’s appointed agent for mishpat while insisting that justification of the wicked (Proverbs 17:15) is condemned precisely because God is just. Liberation theologies read the prophets’ language of oppression as a preferential starting point with the poor, while other traditions caution that the biblical vocabulary of injustice is primarily covenantal and moral rather than a mandate for any particular economic program. Traditions also differ on whether injustice is best named first as personal sin requiring repentance or as a condition requiring reform; the texts themselves address both courts and hearts, and Christians have not agreed on which emphasis should govern.

AI-generated reference entry, grounded in the passages where this term appears — history and Scripture stated as such, interpretation labeled as interpretation. Not a substitute for the text itself.