righteousness put into action: doing what is right, the concrete deed or settled practice that puts a relationship, a community, or God's own dealings in their proper order
This is the active, lived-out side of righteousness. Where its partner word names righteousness as the right order or standard in the abstract, this word leans toward righteousness as it actually happens: a deed done, a cause upheld, a person treated rightly. That concrete bent is why this is the form that can be counted (a people's righteous acts) and why English Bibles reach for so many different words to carry it.
The senses below are facets of one thing, not separate words. At its base it is right conduct, living and acting as one ought. Pressed toward the courtroom and the throne it becomes the right cause that is upheld and the just rule a king and judges are meant to deliver, especially to the poor, the widow, and the orphan. In the prophets of the exile it tilts further still, until God's righteousness is His saving act, the rescue that sets His people right, standing side by side with the word for salvation (ישׁועה). And in the latest books it narrows to a particular deed of right dealing, giving to the needy, the seed of what later Judaism would simply call charity.
What holds the range together is that this righteousness does something. It is not first a quality one has but an action one performs or receives: a right done, a wrong put right, a cause vindicated. The same word can name a person's own upright record, God's faithfulness to His covenant, and a coin pressed into a beggar's hand, because in every case righteousness is being enacted, not merely possessed.
Readers should resist collapsing this whole field into a single English word. The text genuinely uses it for moral conduct in one place and for divine deliverance in another, and the standard lexicons have argued for over a century about which of these is most basic.
Nuances
Disputed
Scholars have argued for over a century over what this word, and the whole righteousness family, basically means: whether it is fundamentally relational (faithfulness to the demands of a relationship, so that God's righteousness is by definition saving and never punitive) or forensic and distributive (rooted in the law court and a real standard, so that it can include judgment). Further proposals read it as a comprehensive cosmic and social order, or as concrete social-justice policy toward the poor.
- contestedRelational: righteousness is the fulfillment of the demands of a relationship; God's righteousness is therefore saving, never punitive; Hermann Cremer, Die paulinische Rechtfertigungslehre im Zusammenhange ihrer geschichtlichen Voraussetzungen (Gütersloh: Bertelsmann, 1899); Gerhard von Rad, Old Testament Theology, trans. D. M. G. Stalker (Edinburgh: Oliver & Boyd, 1962), 1:370-383; Klaus Koch, "צדק ṣdq gemeinschaftstreu/heilvoll sein," in Theologisches Handwörterbuch zum Alten Testament, vol. 2 (München: Kaiser, 1976), cols. 507-530
- contestedForensic / distributive: the word's home is the law court and a real norm, so God's righteousness can include judgment on Israel itself; Mark A. Seifrid, "Righteousness Language in the Hebrew Scriptures and Early Judaism," in Justification and Variegated Nomism, vol. 1 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2001), 415-442; Charles Lee Irons, The Righteousness of God, WUNT II/386 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2015); Stephen Westerholm, Perspectives Old and New on Paul (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2004)
- minorityCosmic order (Weltordnung): righteousness names a comprehensive right order of world and society set up by the creator, on the pattern of Egyptian and Mesopotamian order concepts; Hans Heinrich Schmid, Gerechtigkeit als Weltordnung, BHTh 40 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1968)
- minoritySocial justice: the pairing "justice and righteousness" is concrete social-policy language, the protection of orphan, widow, poor, debtor, and slave, not the courtroom; Moshe Weinfeld, Social Justice in Ancient Israel and in the Ancient Near East (Jerusalem: Magnes / Minneapolis: Fortress, 1995)