Imputed Righteousness

CRITICAL: deliberately echoes Genesis 15:6’s own Masoretic wording (‘vayachsheveha lo tzedakah,’ ‘and he reckoned it to him as righteousness’) - the very proof-text Romans 4 builds on. This is the one context where tzedakah (rather than tzedek, see the general ‘righteousness’ entry) is correct and required, precisely because it is a direct citation; translators must not ‘modernize’ it and must add a note distinguishing Genesis 15:6’s Biblical-Hebrew sense from Modern Hebrew’s narrowed ‘charity’ sense of the same word.