Catholics and the evangelical left place great weight on the fact that the Hebrew word for justice, transliterated as mishpat. “Now these are the judgments [mishpat] which you shall set before them” (Exodus 21:1) and Moses goes on to list criminal activity.
When a theologian begins to slice and dice words in the original language you should grab your wallet; you’re about to get robbed. Greek tends to be a precise language compared to others, but even Greek words have multiple meanings so that speakers relied on the context to fit the appropriate meaning in place. Ancient Hebrew was a more ambiguous tongue, much like modern Arabic. Biblical writers often took advantage of the ambiguity to make puns in the same way that puns work in English.
