92 HEBREW LIFE AND CUSTOM
down divine wrath), has the pretence of a trial, which is
held before the elders and nobles of JezreeL1 Nevertheless
Ahab imprisons Micaiah merely on the ground that he
does not prophesy good concerning him, but evil.
But for our present inquiry the most important adminis-
tration ofjustice was the Summaryjurxsdiction administered
in what corresponded to a forum, viz. the open space just
inside the city gate.
The sight of the administration of justice, whether in
criminal or in civil cases, was so familiar to the people and,
if they resembled the modem Bedouin, was so much
enjoyed by them, that metaphors drawn from the law-
court—or what did duty as such—have profoundly affected
Hebrew diction. Unfortunately these metaphors, which
the Hebrew, as he used them, knew to be such, have been
taken literally, and incalculable harm has accordingly been
done to the cause of religion.
In the first Lecture it was stated that in Hebraic meta-
phor attention is almost always directed not to the process
but to the effect. This is true in connexion with all those
words and expressions for that for which a man might be
brought to trial. The words which are commonly rendered
‘ iniquity ’, ‘ sin ’, ‘ trespass ’, ‘ transgression ’ {rebellion
would be a better translation for this last), are used to
express the status of one found guilty of any misdemeanour,
one against whom the verdict has been given, and they
may be used metaphorically to describe the status of one
against whom the divine verdict is supposed to have been
given as manifested in trouble which has come upon him.
In other words, the words are used for the status of one
who is unsuccessful. In accordance with the same use of
metaphor the words which we render ‘righteousness’, &c.,
are used to denote the status of one who has secured a
favourable verdict, one who has won his case. An illustra-
tion of this is found in the statement concerning Cyrus,
that ‘ righteousness ’, i.e. the winning of his case, meets him
1 ɪ Kings χχi. 8-14.
SIN, MISDEMEANOUR, JUDGEMENT 93
wherever he goes,1 or (as we might say in modern English)
whatever he does he turns up trumps. Thus it can be
said that a man receives ‘righteousness’, or has ‘ righteous-
ness ’ imputed to him. A consideration of the forensic
metaphor in words translated ‘ righteousness ’ and ‘ sin ’
will explain how Job can vehemently deny that he has
sinned, and yet intreat that his ‘ sin ’ may be taken away.
In like manner the poet of Ps. li, like Job, is unconscious
of sin in our sense of the word. He knows that he has not
wronged his fellow man in any way which would bring
down upon him the divine judgement indicated by his
calamities. He concludes therefore that it must be some
inadvertent sin against God that he has committed, and
like Job in the Prologue—but not in the Poem itself—he
deems it impious to charge God with waywardness. Rather
than that he declares that his father and mother before
his birth were under divine sentence of punishment indi-
cated by their suffering, which has also come upon him.
There is no idea whatever in the Psalm of ‘ original sin ’.
Another illustration of the influence of legal procedure
on popular diction is the word commonly rendered ‘judge-
ment which means primarily the act of judging and then,
since sentence, if the court was a just one, was given in
accordance with the law—frequently traditional custom—
‘judgement ’ comes to mean justice or custom.
In the older period legal procedure probably simply
followed tradition, but in the Deuteronomic period certain
rules are laid down.2 The mere agreement of two wit-
nesses or their disagreement on some unimportant detail
to our sense of legal justice may seem insufficient either to
confirm or disprove their evidence. For example, the
slight disagreement in the trial of Susanna, when one of
the two witnesses, who in other respects agreed, stated that
he had seen Susanna under a mastic tree,3 while the other
stated he had seen her under a holm tree,4 would scarcely
, See Isa. xli. 2, xlii. 6. * Deut. xvii. 6, 7, xix. ɪʒ, ι6.
3 Susanna 54 (υπo σχιvov). ♦ Susanna 58 (ι½ro πplvov).