{"id":1923,"date":"2007-02-26T02:10:25","date_gmt":"2007-02-26T02:10:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/jesuscreed\/2007\/02\/right-god-right-laws.html"},"modified":"2007-02-26T02:10:25","modified_gmt":"2007-02-26T02:10:25","slug":"right-god-right-laws","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/2007\/02\/right-god-right-laws.html","title":{"rendered":"Right God, Right Laws"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Psalm 119:137-144, each verse beginning with the Hebrew letter <em>tsade<\/em>, revolves around familiar themes for those who read Psalm 119: the Law of God is right, the psalmist is committed to observing the Law of God, his enemies are a nuisance, and he pleads with God to understand the Law. In part because the letter is <em>tsade<\/em>, the psalmist focuses this section on God being right (<em>tsadiq<\/em>) and therefore his Word being right. <!--more|inline--><br \/>\nInherent to the psalmist is not so much a theory of inspiration or inerrancy but of the utter truthfulness, righteousness and faithfulness of God. If God is right or righteous, then God&#8217;s laws (<em>mishpatim<\/em>) are right or righteous. This is the theme I want to explore today: Because God is right, his laws are right.<br \/>\nInherent to that connection is the conviction that the Torah comes from God; Moses may be responsible for his part, but the Torah comes from God. We don&#8217;t know how the psalmist thought God &#8220;gave&#8221; the Torah &#8212; except the belief that God spoke to Moses on the mount and Moses then passed on what God had told him to Israel (see Exod 19-20).<br \/>\nInherent to the entire psalm, to the entire Psalter, and to the entire history of Israel is a conviction: that Torah, Prophets, and Writings are from God.<br \/>\nAnd because God is righteous, God&#8217;s laws (<em>mishpatim<\/em>) are right &#8212; or run straight and true. Implications follow &#8212; and we will draw some of them out this week &#8212; from the conviction that because God is altogether righteous his laws are right and straight.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Psalm 119:137-144, each verse beginning with the Hebrew letter tsade, revolves around familiar themes for those who read Psalm 119: the Law of God is right, the psalmist is committed to observing the Law of God, his enemies are a nuisance, and he pleads with God to understand the Law. In part because the letter&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":298,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1923","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-psalm-119"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Right God, Right Laws - Jesus Creed<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/2007\/02\/right-god-right-laws.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Right God, Right Laws - Jesus Creed\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Psalm 119:137-144, each verse beginning with the Hebrew letter tsade, revolves around familiar themes for those who read Psalm 119: the Law of God is right, the psalmist is committed to observing the Law of God, his enemies are a nuisance, and he pleads with God to understand the Law. In part because the letter&hellip;\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/2007\/02\/right-god-right-laws.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Jesus Creed\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2007-02-26T02:10:25+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"xscot mcknight\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Right God, Right Laws - Jesus Creed","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/2007\/02\/right-god-right-laws.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Right God, Right Laws - Jesus Creed","og_description":"Psalm 119:137-144, each verse beginning with the Hebrew letter tsade, revolves around familiar themes for those who read Psalm 119: the Law of God is right, the psalmist is committed to observing the Law of God, his enemies are a nuisance, and he pleads with God to understand the Law. In part because the letter&hellip;","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/2007\/02\/right-god-right-laws.html","og_site_name":"Jesus Creed","article_published_time":"2007-02-26T02:10:25+00:00","author":"xscot mcknight","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/2007\/02\/right-god-right-laws.html","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/2007\/02\/right-god-right-laws.html","name":"Right God, Right Laws - Jesus Creed","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/#website"},"datePublished":"2007-02-26T02:10:25+00:00","dateModified":"2007-02-26T02:10:25+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/#\/schema\/person\/9c0db2eaf4d047d76276f907b62843f0"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/2007\/02\/right-god-right-laws.html#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/2007\/02\/right-god-right-laws.html"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/2007\/02\/right-god-right-laws.html#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Right God, Right Laws"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/","name":"Jesus Creed","description":"Scot McKnight on Jesus and orthodox faith for today","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/#\/schema\/person\/9c0db2eaf4d047d76276f907b62843f0","name":"xscot mcknight","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/1f0\/1f0cb0f88d1f99f6e05597a2de7f1949x96.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/1f0\/1f0cb0f88d1f99f6e05597a2de7f1949x96.jpg","caption":"xscot mcknight"},"url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/author\/xscot-mcknight"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1923","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/298"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1923"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1923\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1923"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1923"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1923"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}