Ulangan 16:18

Provision for Justice

16:18 You must appoint judges and civil servants ¹  for each tribe in all your villages ²  that the Lord your God is giving you, and they must judge the people fairly. ³ 

Ulangan 17:5

17:5 you must bring to your city gates ⁴  that man or woman who has done this wicked thing – that very man or woman – and you must stone that person to death. ⁵ 

Ulangan 21:19

21:19 his father and mother must seize him and bring him to the elders at the gate of his city.

Ulangan 25:7

25:7 But if the man does not want to marry his brother’s widow, then she ⁶  must go to the elders at the town gate and say, “My husband’s brother refuses to preserve his brother’s name in Israel; he is unwilling to perform the duty of a brother-in-law to me!”

[16:18]  ¹ tn The Hebrew term וְשֹׁטְרִים (vÿshoterim), usually translated “officers” (KJV, NCV) or “officials” (NAB, NIV, NRSV, NLT), derives from the verb שֹׁטֵר (shoter, “to write”). The noun became generic for all types of public officials. Here, however, it may be appositionally epexegetical to “judges,” thus resulting in the phrase, “judges, that is, civil officers,” etc. Whoever the שֹׁטְרִים are, their task here consists of rendering judgments and administering justice.

[16:18]  ² tn Heb “gates.”

[16:18]  ³ tn Heb “with judgment of righteousness”; ASV, NASB “with righteous judgment.”

[17:5]  ⁴ tn Heb “gates.”

[17:5]  ⁵ tn Heb “stone them with stones so that they die” (KJV similar); NCV “throw stones at that person until he dies.”

[25:7]  ⁶ tn Heb “want to take his sister-in-law, then his sister in law.” In the second instance the pronoun (“she”) has been used in the translation to avoid redundancy.