Ulangan 16:18-20

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  16:19 You must not pervert justice or show favor. Do not take a bribe, for bribes blind the eyes of the wise and distort ⁴  the words of the righteous. ⁵  16:20 You must pursue justice alone ⁶  so that you may live and inherit the land the Lord your God is giving you.

Ulangan 17:8-9

Appeal to a Higher Court

17:8 If a matter is too difficult for you to judge – bloodshed, ⁷  legal claim, ⁸  or assault ⁹  – matters of controversy in your villages ¹⁰  – you must leave there and go up to the place the Lord your God chooses. ¹¹  17:9 You will go to the Levitical priests and the judge in office in those days and seek a solution; they will render a verdict.

Ulangan 19:17-19

19:17 then both parties to the controversy must stand before the Lord, that is, before the priests and judges ¹²  who will be in office in those days. 19:18 The judges will thoroughly investigate the matter, and if the witness should prove to be false and to have given false testimony against the accused, ¹³  19:19 you must do to him what he had intended to do to the accused. In this way you will purge ¹⁴  evil from among you.

[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.”

[16:19]  ⁴ tn Heb “twist, overturn”; NRSV “subverts the cause.”

[16:19]  ⁵ tn Or “innocent”; NRSV “those who are in the right”; NLT “the godly.”

[16:20]  ⁶ tn Heb “justice, justice.” The repetition is emphatic; one might translate as “pure justice” or “unadulterated justice” (cf. NLT “true justice”).

[17:8]  ⁷ tn Heb “between blood and blood.”

[17:8]  ⁸ tn Heb “between claim and claim.”

[17:8]  ⁹ tn Heb “between blow and blow.”

[17:8]  ¹⁰ tn Heb “gates.”

[17:8]  ¹¹ tc Several Greek recensions add “to place his name there,” thus completing the usual formula to describe the central sanctuary (cf. Deut 12:5, 11, 14, 18; 16:6). However, the context suggests that the local Levitical towns, and not the central sanctuary, are in mind.

[19:17]  ¹² tn The appositional construction (“before the Lord, that is, before the priests and judges”) indicates that these human agents represented the Lord himself, that is, they stood in his place (cf. Deut 16:18-20; 17:8-9).

[19:18]  ¹³ tn Heb “his brother” (also in the following verse).

[19:19]  ¹⁴ tn Heb “you will burn out” (בִּעַרְתָּ, bi’arta). Like a cancer, unavenged sin would infect the whole community. It must, therefore, be excised by the purging out of its perpetrators who, presumably, remained unrepentant (cf. Deut 13:6; 17:7, 12; 21:21; 22:21-22, 24; 24:7).