Tzedakah | Not Righteousness. Justice.

Your Bible has been quietly mistranslating a word that shows up over 150 times, and the gap has shaped centuries of Christian formation. This week: tzedakah. Usually translated as "righteousness." Almost always meant something closer to justice.

We trace it from the Hebrew prophets through to the Greek New Testament, where tzedakah becomes dikaiosynē, the same word your English Bible renders "righteousness" 92 times. Same gap, just one language removed. Along the way: Micah 6:8, Amos 5:24, MLK's "I Have a Dream," and why "blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness" means something different than you were taught.

Theology Unleashed is a summer series of short Greek and Hebrew word studies from Jesus, Justice + Mercy. Justice-rooted, seminary-informed, and considerably less scripted than usual. Dogs present.

See the full series at kristenabrock.com/theology-unleashed

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Transcript

Welcome to Theology Unleashed, a summer series from Jesus, Justice, and Mercy. I'm Kristen, and this summer we're doing short Greek and Hebrew word studies, justice-rooted and seminary-informed, with my very theologically gifted dogs. Together, let's go unleash something.

Hey friend, welcome to the official first episode of the 2026 summer series Theology Unleashed. Today I want to talk about a word that shows up over 150 times, and your Bible may have been quietly mistranslating this. First, I should introduce my co-theologians, Scamp, Bandit, and Athena. They have been in every planning meeting for this series. They've heard the full pitch. And honestly, based on their level of engagement this week, I think they're really excited about this summer.

It might have been because I exchanged cheese sticks for their attention, but still, they were present and in this house that counts. Okay, so I want to give you a quick disclaimer before we start. I am not a Hebrew or Greek scholar. I'm gonna be doing my best on pronunciation here, and if you are a scholar and I completely mangle something, just go gentle on me. I had a professor last year correct me in class on something that I had been mispronouncing my entire life. So we are all learning together.

 Anyway, back to today. This word is not maliciously translated, but the gap has shaped centuries of Christian formation. And the word is Tzedakah, and that's where we're gonna start. Tzedakah is a Hebrew word that appears 157 times in the Hebrew Bible. It's almost always rendered as righteousness in English. Sometimes justice in newer translations, but that's pretty inconsistent.

In English, the word righteousness almost always lands as a personal moral purity or a right standing before God. It's really seen as an internal holiness or individual virtue. It's me and God in most Christian formation. So a familiar verse like, Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness from the Beatitudes in Matthew 5:6 names what most listeners heard growing up was be a good and holy person. But what does it actually mean?

This word is rooted in the Hebrew word tsedek. It's viewed in Judaism as a moral obligation rather than a generous optional act. And it's really an essential part of living an ethical life. And here's where it gets a little bit interesting. 

In Jewish practice today, Tzedakah is often translated as charity, but that word can mislead us a little bit too. Just differently than righteousness does. Western charity is optional. It's generous. It's something we do when we feel moved or when our heart is in it and we have some extra. Tzedakah isn't optional. It's actually the law. The poor have a claim on you, whether you feel charitable or not. The root is about right relationship, not an abstract moral virtue, but a concrete right ordering between people.

The same Hebrew word covers giving to the poor in Psalm 112. It covers God's own character in Isaiah 45, the king's obligation to the vulnerable, Psalm 22, and economic fairness in community. Some of you have probably heard me talk about Micah 6:8 more than once, Mishpat, Hesed, and then that third word that's usually translated as righteousness. That's Tzedakah.

We've been circling this word for a couple seasons without me ever stopping to hand it to you directly. And today I want to fix that. Because this word almost never appears alone in the prophets. It runs alongside Mishpat as a pair. They belong together. Amos 5:24. Let justice roll like a river, righteousness like a never-failing stream. That second word is Tzedakah.

Martin Luther King knew exactly what he was quoting when he quoted this verse in his “I Have a Dream” speech. And here's the thread that ties it all together. Jesus draws heavily on this Hebrew concept of Tzedakah, but the New Testament wasn't written in Hebrew, it was written in Greek. So Tzedakah appears 92 times in the New Testament as dikaiosynē. Same concept, same weight, just dressed up in Greek instead of Hebrew.

And dikaiosynē is the word our English Bibles translate as " righteousness all through the New Testament. It's the same translation gap, just one language removed. So if we come back to Matthew 5:6, “blessed are those who hunger and thirst for Tzedakah or dikaiosynē,” that verse lands completely differently. Because Jesus isn't blessing the personally devout, he's blessing the people who ache for the right ordering of the world. Looking at it that way changes something in me. 

I want to be clear on something here, though. Righteousness isn't a wrong translation. It's not really a mistake. It's just incomplete. The English word carries that weight toward personal piety that the Hebrew and Greek never intended to carry alone. I often talk in church about how our English translations don't give us the entire picture of the word that was originally used. When your Bible says righteousness, our brain goes interior: Am I a good person? When the Hebrew says Tzedakah, the question is exterior. Are my neighbors okay? Is the community rightly ordered? That one translation decision has given generations of Christians a permission structure to focus on personal holiness while the rest of the world burns. I want to name it.

Plainly, this is not a footnote issue. It's a formation issue. And I don't think there is a better time than to bring that forward than right now. If this is your first time here, I really want to welcome you. I'd also suggest you go back to season one, episode three, Church, Race, and Justice, which is where I first introduced the family of words Tzedakah belongs to. And if you've been around for a while, you've heard me quote Amos 5:24 or Micah 6:8 a ton of times in the last few seasons. Now you have the Hebrew word behind that. 

So with that, next week we're gonna pick up Tzedakah's closest friend, Mishpat. All of these summer episodes will be less than 10 minutes long, so I hope you enjoy the structure. And as always, Scamp, Bandit, and Athena will be here with me. See you next week. That is Theology Unleashed.

 All 13 episodes live at kristenabrock.com. Get on the email list while you're there. Season four drops in the fall and you don't want to miss it. Thanks for listening. Jesus, Justice, no apologies.