The verb, Tsadak to be righteous, has the sense in Hiphil of making righteous. This can be done in two ways either by justifying a person forensically, or by making him righteous practically. In this latter sense is it used in Dan. 12:3, and Isa. 53:11. As regards Dan. 12:8, this is no new thought. The Vulgate has rendered the passage, qui ad justitiam erudiunt multos, translated in the Douay version, “who instruct many to righteousness;” and the A.V. practically agrees with it, rendering the Hiphil participle, matsddikim “they that turn many to righteousness.” On the correctness of this sense, lexicographers, as Gesenius, Fuerst, Lee, and critics as Rosenmiiller, are at one as regards the passage in Daniel. The context, too, shows that it is the right meaning. For who of men could make righteous forensically their fellows before God?
About the true meaning of yatsdik in Isaiah 53:11, there is less of agreement. Grammatically speaking, the sense of making righteous practically, which the Hiphil participle teaches in Dan, 12:3, can be applied to the Hiphil future in this place; and with this Gesenius, Fuerst, and Itosenmiiller are of accord. But the A.V. has, by its translation, which here agrees pretty much with the Vulgate, made its readers familiar with a very different thought, viz., that the prophet is speaking of people being justified forensically and not practically. Now, is this the case? Let us examine into it.
According to the rendering of the A.V., the last clause of the verse is taken as explanatory of the preceding one, whereas really it is a statement in addition. For the prophet wrote, “By his knowledge shall my righteous servant make righteous many, and he shall bear their iniquities.” Two things the Lord is here described as doing. The last speaks of His atonement. The former tells of the effect of His ministry. By His knowledge He was to make many righteous. The prophet thus explains how it would be done—not by faith in Him, nor, be it remembered, by knowing Him, as it is so often thought, but by His knowledge. A clue to this thought we have in Psa. 40:9, where the Lord says, “I have preached righteousness in the great congregation.” This He did when on earth (Matt. 5:20), and the effect on those who received His teaching would be to make them righteous practically.
As grammatically there is no objection to this sense, so exegetically it is demanded, when one understands that by His knowledge means what He knew, and could teach; not that man knew Him. And the two clauses come out clearly and distinctly. As a matte, too, of doctrine, it would appear, that this is the only sense which is admissible. For, do we ever find that the act of justifying forensically before God is ascribed to any but God? It is God that justifieth. It is not the Father, the Son, or the Holy Ghost, but God. Now Isaiah is here writing of the Lord as man, who as such is never elsewhere surely said to justify souls before God. That God should justify seems fitting. That the Lord by His teaching should make many righteous practically we can all understand. But, that He justifies us before God, is a statement which receives no countenance from the New Testament, though we are justified by His blood, and He is made unto us of God righteousness, etc. (Rom. 5:9.; 3. 1 Cor. 1:30).