Justice! Justice!

“Justice, justice shall you pursue in order to thrive and occupy the land that HaShem your God gave to you.” Deut. 16:20

Several important halachic points have been drawn from this verse. For instance, Midrash Rabba interprets it as meaning that judges and officers of the law must be above reproach, and cannot have any convictions themselves. However, there are two views that speak directly to us today.

R. Simcha Bunem points out that, in Hebrew, nouns, adjectives and adverbs can look the same. That is to say, “justice” might not look any difference than “justly.” So he reads this verse, “You shall pursue justice justly in order to thrive and occupy the land that HaShem your God gave to you.”

According to R. Bunem this means that we should only try to do good by good means. Rather than pursuing the right goal by whatever means possible, we should only puruse the right goals through the right means. Pursue justice with justice. Too many times I’ve caught myself thinking “It’s okay, something good came out of it.” What this verse teaches is that no, it’s not okay. If we do the wrong thing, even if something good comes of it, we are still wrong.

Abraham Joseph Heschel points to the word “pursue,” which indicates that we ought to do more than simply respect justice. We must actively pursue justice in our world. It is not enough to simply think of justice as the right way to do things, we must work to make justice a reality in the world, seeking to end injustice whenever we encounter it. R. Daniel David associates this with Isaiah 41:6, saying that no one can be righteous, that is why we should pursue justice (the words for “justice” and “righteousness” are the same in Hebrew). Since we cannot completely be righteous, we ought to pursue it, instead. R. Daniel David goes on to associate this verse with Matthew 5:6, “Blessed are they who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be filled.”

This verse teaches us to actively pursue justice in the world, but only by the proper means.