Psalm 58 - The Importance of Injustice to Motivating Justice

This morning I read this psalm in the New Living Translation on my phone, and then started pondering it and considering the role of injustice in our world. As I sat down to write about it, I opened up the New King James Version and started to skim through it, but got no further than verse 1.

Justice- do you rulers know the meaning of the word? Do you judge people fairly? (NLT)

Do you indeed speak righteousness, you silent ones? Do you judge uprightly, you sons of men? (NKJV)

What immediately struck me was the term silent ones in the NKJV. While I had originally considered this psalm in the light of people making choices that were actively unjust, that new term caused me to consider those who don't actively see justice.

Does this change anything for you? For me, it causes pause because it means I suddenly need to consider whether I have been silent while an injustice has gone on. I have to consider whether I am in the number that this psalm is speaking about. 

The other thing this highlights, is translational differences. In fact, before I looked at the second translation and started typing this, a conversation ensued this morning about translations, which was started with the comment made by a Biblical scholar who referenced the New English Version version of a scripture in his writings but then in a side note mentioned that that particular writer didn't see it as a accurate version, presumably because it is a translation that is based on ideas not a word by word translation. This progressed into a conversation as to whether adjustments that were made by scribes and scholars who were writing down oral records and transcribing religious writings that are included in the Bible were divinely managed...which led to a discussion of whether a sentient God could make the translations or adjustments that were not divinely inspired fade away...which led to talk about free will...and on iy went, but I digress from where we started. All this is to say that my morning prepared me to notice and be sensitive to the differences in translation.

So let's go back to this psalm, while the psalm starts with this question, it very quickly answers it with no and goes on to tell of the wickedness of the men this psalm is directed towards. But as I pondered all of this, I started to think of the role of wickedness and injustice. Some of the thoughts I had were:

• If there wasn't injustice, would we appreciate and understand the importance of justice?
• Because we have injustice, we have opportunities to speak out for and practice justice, how important is that is develop into the people we were created to be? Without injustice, could we reach and become all that God ordained us to be?
• If the world was just (which would alleviate many struggles that exist in the world), would we appreciate that state of affairs, or would we not realize the beauty of that state and just see wickedness in a different form?

I don't know about you, but if I look at my decisions, I can see times when I stood up for justice and times that I failed to. I believe that it is more the former than the latter, but I guess that I am not the best judge of that. What about you? What do you think about some of the questions above and what questions are you left with?