To complete our study of _righteousness_ it is necessary to touch still upon one point. In Isa. xl.-lxvi. both the masculine and feminine forms of the Hebrew word for righteousness are used, and it has been averred that they are used with a difference. This opinion is entirely dispelled by a collation of the passages. I give the particulars in a note, from which it will be seen that both forms are indifferently employed for each of the many shades of meaning which _righteousness_ bears in our prophecies.[138]
That the masculine and feminine forms sometimes occur, with the same or with different meanings, in the same verse, or in the next verse to one another, proves that the selection of them respectively cannot be due to any difference in the authorship of our prophecy. So that we are reduced to say that nothing accounts for their use, except, it might be, the exigencies of the metre. But who is able to prove this?
[126] It is only by confining his review of the word to its applications to God, and overlooking the passages which attribute it to the people, that Krüger, _Essai sur la Théologie d'Isaïe xl.-lxvi._, can affirm that the prophet holds throughout to a single idea of righteousness (p. 36). On this, as on many other points, it is Calvin's treatment, that is most sympathetic to the variations of the original.
[127] In Arabic the cognate word is applied to a lance, but this may mean a sound or fit lance as well as a straight one. "Originem Schult. de defect. hodiernis § 214-224 ponit in _rigore_, _duritia_, coll. [Arabic: **] lancea dura, al. aequabilis" (Gesenii _Thesaurus_, art. צדק).
[128] It is not certain whether righteousness is here used in a physical sense; and in all other cases in which the root is applied in the Old Testament to material objects, it is plainly employed in some reflection of its moral sense, _e.g._, _just_ weights, _just_ balance, Lev. xix. 36.
[129] "Der Zustand welcher der Norm entspricht." Schultz, _Alt. Test. Theologie_, 4th ed., p. 540, n. 1.
[130] _Cf._ Robertson Smith, _Prophets of Israel_, p. 388, and Kautzsch's paper, which is there quoted.
[131] "Die Begriffe צדקה und צדק ... bedeuten nun wirklich bei Amos mehr als die juristische Gerechtigkeit. Indirect gehen die Forderungen des Amos über die blos rechtliche Sphäre hinaus" (Duhm, _Theologie der Propheten_, p. 115).