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The word is many times translated "upright"; and from Eccles 7: 29 we learn that
this is how God made man, his departure from the straight or upright way being sin.
Other passages beside Deut. 32: ascribe uprightness to the Lord:--
"Good and upright is the Lord" (Psa. 25: 8).
"To show that the Lord is upright: He is my Rock, and there is no unrighteousness in
Him" (Psa. 92: 15).
"The way of the just is uprightness: Thou, Most Upright, dost weigh the path of the
just" (Isa. 26: 7).
The symbol of this "rightness" and "straightness" is the plumb line. The symbol of
"righteousness" is the balance and the weight:--
"Judgment also will I lay to the line, and righteousness to the plummet" (Isa. 28: 17).
The word "plummet" is mishgeleth, from shagal "to weigh", and shekel, a weight.
Even the test of the perpendicular is really by "weight", for the same force that operates
in the process of weighing, operates on the plumb line.
The Scripture emphasize this aspect of truth, and help us to see that, primarily,
righteousness or justice is something even, equal and balanced:--
"Ye shall do no unrighteousness in judgment, in meteyard, in weight, or in measure.
Just balances, just weights, a just ephah, and a just hin shall ye have" (Lev. 19: 35, 36).
"Thou shalt not have in thy bag divers weights, a great and a small. Thou shalt not
have in thine house divers measure, a great and a small. But thou shalt have a perfect and
just weight, a perfect and just measure" (Deut. 25: 13-15).
Here we have vividly brought before us the underlying meaning of tsadik,
"righteousness". It is something that when weighed in the balance is found accurate, just,
correct. When, therefore, the Scriptures declare of God that "just and right is He", we
have the idea of unswerving uprightness, a state in which "crookedness" cannot exist, an
idea of perfect equity, even balance, accurate weight. If God be like this, there can be no
respect of persons with Him.
We should never forget, in thinking of the doctrine of justification as taught in the
epistle to the Romans, that there is as much insistence upon the "justification" of God in
His work of salvation, as there is upon the "justification" of the sinner who is saved:--
"Whom God hath set forth to be a propitiation through faith in His blood, to declare
HIS RIGHTEOUSNESS for the passing over of sins that are past, through the
forbearance of God; to declare, I say, at this time HIS RIGHTEOUSNESS; that HE
MIGHT BE JUST, and the Justifier of him which believeth in Jesus" (Rom. 3: 25, 26).
To this same truth Isaiah bore testimony centuries before:--
"There is no God else beside Me; a JUST God and a SAVIOUR" (Isa. 45: 21).