Psalm 4 begins by naming God with a phrase most English Bibles translate “God of my righteousness” — or, filling in the sense, “my righteous God.” It sounds like a courtroom word: innocence, a verdict, a legal standing. But the Hebrew word, tsedeq (צֶדֶק), may be pointing somewhere kinder.

The Scriptura scholars argue that “righteousness,” with its legal weight, is the wrong flavor here. In the world of this psalm, tsedeq (צֶדֶק) keeps company not with judgment and acquittal but with words like peace, security, and well-being. It shows up elsewhere alongside shalom (שָׁלוֹם) — famously in another psalm where “righteousness (tsedeq) and peace (shalom) kiss each other” (Psalm 85:10 NIV). In that psalm they appear in a scene that turns out to be about rain and a good harvest. Tsedeq (צֶדֶק) is less a ruling handed down than a state of things being set right: fields yielding, a people safe, life ordered the way it should be.

So the phrase, with this reading, isn’t “the God who declares me innocent.” It’s closer to the God who makes things right for me — the one who takes a situation that has gone wrong (here, most likely a drought) and restores it to flourishing. The grammar even supports it: God is the one who brings about a state of rightness, for the sake of “me.”

It’s a small reframing with a large effect. The psalm doesn’t open in a lawcourt. It opens in a field after the rain has finally come.

Read more on psalms.scriptura.org → Psalm 4: Verse by Verse