Hendiadys. Not a word beloved of football managers, computer geeks, bankers, call centre employees, politicians, bus drivers, or nearly everybody who has more important things to do than play around with the latinised form of a Greek phrase. Hendiadys indeed! Get a life!
I came across the word in a commentary on Isaiah the prophet, and it just may be that this strange hybrid word will help us make some sense of what's missing in the contemporary experience of many people in austerity Britain. An Isaianic hendiadys might, just might, empower and enable those most struggling with life just now, to get a life.
Hendiadys is the technical term for two different words, which when paired together by "and", convey one single idea. In Isaiah two such words are "justice and righteousness". For Isaiah, these are not two different values, but the conjoining of both into a single and singleminded commitment to public social justice.
The prophets had no patience for political rhetoric, expedient promises, and truth defying evasions. Whether the poor were badly represented in the law courts, or cheated and kept poor by an unjust economic system, the prophets demanded change from such oppressive decisions, closed systems and exclusive privileges. And what they demanded was "justice and righteousness", an overhaul of the system, a repentance of greed, a reconstructed economy built around humane practices aimed at human flourishing. The hendiadys "justice and righteousness" was a divinely minted sound byte; a theological strap line; a hashtag originating with Yahweh.
Here's a sample of Isaianic social critique:" Learn to do good; seek justice, rescue the oppressed, defend the orphan, plead for the widow." (1.17) What he's arguing for is "justice and righteousness" for the vulnerable poor in a society where power is vested in accumulated wealth. Social justice is not an option restricted to when a country has no deficit; the real deficit every time the poor are punished by the rich is a moral one, and it requires repentance. "Zion shall be redeemed by justice, and those in her who repent, by righteousness." (1.27) Repentance is a fundamental change of direction towards newness of possibility and policy.
"In their broadest sense 'justice and righteousness' have political, social, theological, moral and legal dimensions." (Patricia Tull, Isaiah 1-39, Smyth and Helwys, 2010), p.68. At least half a dozen times Isaiah voices the disappointment of God who, looking on the plight of the poor, "expected justice but saw bloodshed, righteousness but heard a cry." (5.17). It's all too easy for any of us to claim the moral high ground when quoting the Bible; and I'm well aware that I am part of a society in which I have become deeply implicated in the way things are, and in the oppression of the poor and the rejection of the stranger.
But Isaiah's hendiadys still brings diagnostic clarity to what is wrong at the heart of western capitalist consumer culture. When wealth is God, - and profit, deficit, debt, interest, cuts, savings, austerity reflect the liturgical language of its worshippers, then someone has to contest such liturgy with an alternative discourse: justice and righteousness, redemption and repentance, rescue the oppressed, defend the orphan, plead for the widow.
In the context of 21st Century Britain, single mothers with threatened cuts to tax credits for their children; people with disabilities and threatened reduction of support benefits; increasing numbers of people on wages so low they require working tax credit support from a shrinking benefits budget; and the growing numbers of hungry people depending on charitable food banks - these are our equivalent of orphans, widows, the oppressed and the poor.
One of the great challenges in commentary writing is to discover the contemporary relevance, the practical application, of a text like Isaiah, to those of us who read that ancient text now. I for one have no problem seeing the contemporary relevance of Isaiah's hendiadys to the social realities of an austerity ideology. When the Chancellor announces his Budget today, and the widely expected £12 billion savings from the welfare bill are detailed and justified, that same hendiadys will be a more imposing and perduring bottom line than the savings made at the expense of the poor. "I will make justice the line, and righteousness the plummet; hail will sweep away the refuge of lies, and waters will overwhelm the shelter". (28.17) Isaiah is speaking to the complacent rich, the scoffers who rule in their own interests, and presume upon their own future, while mortgaging that of others.
Whatever else Isaiah was about, in the name of God, the Holy One, he was right into politics, economics, lawmaking and the common good. He put into the mouths of the oppressed poor the complaint, "Justice is far from us, and righteousness does not reach us." That is now the deep and chronic feeling of millions in our country struggling to get by. The same Isaiah, with a hopefulness that was defiant of the oppressor, looked forward to the day when "See, a king will reign in righteousness, and princes will rule in justice." (32.1) Until then, those who are Isaianic in their politics will continue to live and embody grace, mercy, love and that hendiadys, so subversive of austerity focused on the poor: "justice and righteousness".
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