Divine Justice

Prophet Moses (as) once asked God to show him how Divine Justice is meted out. God told him to go near a certain wellspring and to wait there. Prophet Moses (as) did as he was instructed. Awhile later, a man on horseback approached the wellspring, to drink water. He descended the horse, advanced towards the fountain and set his pouch of gold and silver coins aside, while he drank the water. Once he was finished, he ascended his horse, rushed away and left his pouch of coins behind. 

Afterwards, a young boy came along and drank some water from the wellspring. Seeing the pouch laying there unattended; he picked it up and left with it. No sooner had the boy departed then an old man approached the wellspring. As he neared the wellspring to drink water, the man on horseback returned in haste, in search of his pouch. Since the old man was the only one in sight, the man on horseback blamed him for taking his pouch. The old man pleaded innocent, but to no avail.

Failing to find his pouch, the owner of the coins killed the old man and left the wellspring. Shocked and dumbfounded, Prophet Moses (as) beseeched God to tell him how this murder represented Divine Justice. God replied that the man on horseback had stolen money from the boy’s father, who had passed away a few years earlier. Therefore, the boy had reclaimed his father’s wealth since he was the legitimate owner of the coins. In his youth, the old man had killed the father of the man on horseback; so now he had inadvertently avenged his father’s murder. Unbeknownst to all the individuals, God had exercised His Justice. (Bihar al-’Anwar, vol. 61, p.117)

Defining Justice

Justice (‘adl ) may convey different meanings. The most prominent senses in which the term justice is used are as follows.

• Observing equality and avoiding prejudice. When we use the term justice we often intend treating others equally and without favoring some to the exclusion of others. We should bear in mind that equality is good only if the parties involved are actually equal. That is, if some partake of greater merit than the others, it would be unjust, in fact, to treat all similarly. Those who are truly more deserving of our respect or attention should be given their appropriate due, and blind equality in such cases would be unwise and unethical. By practicing equality in such cases, we are actually being unjust to those who are more meritorious. Suppose a teacher gave the same grade to all the students in the class despite their drastically varying performance on a test. Would that constitute justice or injustice? The bottom line is that justice and equality are not always equivalent.
• Respecting the rights of others. Another sense in which the term justice is sometimes used is respecting people’s legitimate rights and abstaining from infringing on their rights. 
• Giving everybody and everything their due. A more comprehensive meaning of justice is to place everything in its rightful place, to give everybody his due. The ground for this definition of justice is the metaphysical notion that in objective reality, as well as in the Divine Law, everything has a certain and delimited place, and justice is to respect the harmony and equilibrium present in objective reality. This is the broadest sense of justice, which encompasses the prior two definitions of justice.Based on the above examination of the definition of justice, we may describe Divine Justice as God’s treatment of things and persons in accordance with what is their due and what behooves them. That is, God allots to all things their legitimate place in the grand scheme of the world based on their existential capacity and, in the case of free agents such as human beings, their earned worth.

  Let us now enrich the discussion further by considering ‘Allāmah S.M.H.Tabātabā‘ī’s analysis of the concept of justice and the idea of Divine Justice:

  “The essence of justice consists in maintaining or restoring the harmony and equilibrium among things so that everything receives its due. Justice in this sense signifies that all things are equal and similar in that they should be placed in their rightful positions...”