This week’s Torah portion covers Deuteronomy 16:18 to 21:9. The portion takes its name from its opening command: “You shall appoint judges (shoftim) and officers within all your gates” (16:18). In this portion of Moses’s final address, he lays out the structural foundations of a just society. As he establishes the leadership framework that will sustain the covenant people over the centuries, the mantra is “Justice, and only justice, you shall pursue” (16:20).
The portion outlines the shared and separate responsibilities of Israel’s future leaders: judges, priests, prophets, and kings. These are the four authority structures intended to govern the covenant nation.
Judges and Priests
First, Moses describes Israel’s ideal judicial system. He instructs, “You shall appoint judges and officials throughout your tribes, in all your towns that the Lord your God is giving you, and they shall render just decisions for the people” (16:18). He forbids the judges from taking bribes or showing partiality.
Deuteronomy 16 reinforces the judicial system that had already been established during the wilderness wanderings. In the beginning of that period, Moses was the only leader who adjudicated cases among the people. If you recall, when Jethro, Moses’s father-in-law, visited the encampment, he saw that Moses risked total burnout (Exod. 18). Jethro, a leader himself of the Midianites, advised Moses to delegate responsibilities to other tribal leaders. The leaders had to be righteous and integrous. Under this framework, lower-tier judges could resolve everyday civil and interpersonal disputes. Complex or unprecedented cases would escalate up the chain to Moses.
Until this moment, Moses has served the people as their judge and prophet, but he will not be there to shepherd them through the formation of the new state. The judicial system set up by Jethro in the wilderness will sustain them when they settle in the land.
Of course, Moses understood that times would arise when a judge would feel incapable of making a ruling on his own. In those cases, the people were to go to the political and spiritual capital of the nation, what Deuteronomy calls the place of God’s choosing. There, the parties will consult with both a judge and priest who will come to a final decision (17:9).
The Torah’s delineation of spheres of power is a precursor to our own system of government, which divides authority between separate branches so that no single office holds absolute control. Rabbi Reuven Travis has a series of books pointing to this commonality between American governance and the Torah. Rabbi Travis argues that the structural and philosophical foundations of American constitutional democracy were heavily influenced by the Founders’ reading of the Hebrew Bible. Jethro’s advice to divide judicial and administrative burdens among officers created a tiered judiciary and a system of delegated, decentralized authority. American thinkers viewed the ancient Israelite system of governance as a proto-democratic model for preventing tyranny and diffusing political power.
One example of how early Americans drew from the Bible is evident in a speech by Samuel Langdon in 1788. Langdon was a Congregationalist preacher and the thirteenth president of Harvard College. He preached that ancient Israel offered a far superior blueprint for the newly formed American states than Greco-Roman models or Enlightenment philosophy. In one sermon, he pointed directly to our text in Deuteronomy 16 about judges:
To complete the establishment of civil government, courts were to be appointed in every walled city, after their settlement in Canaan, and elders most distinguished for wisdom and integrity were to be made judges, ready always to sit and decide the common controversies within their respective jurisdictions. The people had a right likewise to appoint such other officers as they might think necessary for the more effectual execution of justice, according to that order given in Deuteronomy 16.
Prophets
Just as the judicial structure was designed to endure beyond Moses, the spiritual guidance of the nation required a continuing institution. From the time of the Exodus until his speeches on the plains of Moab, Moses served as God’s direct mouthpiece to the people. He was a prophet greater than any other, speaking with God face to face (34:10–12). Moses promises the people that after he is gone, God will raise up another prophet. God assures them, “I will put my words in the mouth of the prophet, who shall speak to them everything that I command” (18:18).
The most immediate successor to Moses is Joshua, but the prophetic line neither culminates nor stops with him. After Joshua’s death, Israel entered a decentralized era where divine guidance was raised up on an as-needed basis.
During the centuries of the Judges, figures like Deborah demonstrated that the prophetic voice remained active. Unnamed prophets also emerged at key moments to confront Israel’s covenant unfaithfulness, such as the anonymous messenger sent before Gideon’s calling or the man of God who announced judgment upon the house of Eli. These individuals were non-writing, oral prophets.
Samuel was the first major prophet who transitioned Israel out of the period of the judges and into the reign of kings. Samuel organized communities known as the benei hanevi’im—the sons of the prophets or schools of the prophets. Located in places such as Ramah, Bethel, and Jericho, these bands of prophets lived, worshiped, and trained together. This movement ensured that a continuous, trained body of divine spokespersons existed outside the royal court and the priesthood.
From these prophetic traditions came figures like Nathan and Gad during the reign of David, and later Elijah and Elisha in the Northern Kingdom. These prophets did not leave behind written books of their own, but they played a vital constitutional role. Acting as an independent moral check on executive power, they confronted kings over abuses of authority, economic injustice, and idolatry. Their authority rested not on royal appointment or hereditary lineage, but on their ability to declare thus says the Lord.
By the eighth century BCE, as regional empires threatened Israel and Judah, the prophetic office underwent its final major transformation into the era of the literary prophets. Prophets such as Amos, Hosea, Isaiah, and Jeremiah began committing their oracles to writing. While earlier prophets focused primarily on immediate national events and court advice, the classical prophets addressed the entire nation and surrounding empires.
Kings
At this point in the narrative, the people are familiar with the offices of judges, priests, and prophets. Across their forty years in the desert, all three institutions have served as a critical guide to the civil order of the camp. What makes this portion of Deuteronomy unusual is the introduction of kingship. The text predicts that when the people take possession of the land, they will eventually hanker for a king. Moses says, “When you have come into the land that the Lord your God is giving you and have taken possession of it and settled in it, and you say, ‘I will set a king over me, like all the nations that are around me’” (17:14).
While Israel will eventually be ruled by a monarchy, it takes centuries to happen. From Joshua to Samuel, Israel navigates the period of the judges without a king.
God does not endorse kingship. The Bible remains lukewarm to the idea at best. When the people ask Samuel to appoint a king so they can be like all the other nations, Samuel balks. But God tells him, “It is not you they have rejected, but they have rejected me as their king” (1 Sam. 8:7). God allows them to choose a king even though they should be relying on his divine authority alone. Instituting a monarchy is one of the few instances where God does not explicitly forbid the people from copying the practices of their neighbors.
The compromise suggests an early democratic ideal where the people of Israel choose their own form of government. Driven by a lack of foresight and a desire for security against burgeoning empires, they choose kingship over a federation of judges, asking Samuel for someone to fight their battles and lead an army.
As the Torah portion outlines the political makeup of a settled Israel, it sets strict guidelines for the monarchy. Israel’s king will not mirror the dynasties of Egypt or the future empires of Babylon. Deuteronomy forbids the king from accruing many wives, great numbers of horses, or massive stashes of gold and silver (17:16). Deuteronomy demands humility, insisting that the king is not to consider himself better than his brothers. Rabbi Jonathan Sacks notes that the idea of a humble king is one of the genuine revolutions Judaism brought to the history of spirituality. Genuine Jewish leadership is defined by service and humility. Sacks observes, “Humility is the essence of royalty, because to lead is to serve. The greater your success, the harder you have to work to remember that you are there to serve others; they are not there to serve you.” Colossal statues of pharaohs in Egypt and kings in Mesopotamia show no such humility. Not even Greek thinkers considered humility a virtue.
The king of Israel is a servant to the people and to God. He cannot claim divinity like the pharaohs, nor should he lust for empire like the Babylonians. His power is not infinite. The king is also commanded to keep the biblical writings with him and read them all the days of his life. The Torah functions as the governing constitution of the land, holding a higher position of authority than the king himself.
Israel’s future kings will struggle with these principles and frequently succumb to the temptations of power. However, the ideal of a servant leader reaches its ultimate fulfillment in Jesus. He took the paradoxical call for a humble king and embodied it completely. Rejecting the power of earthly empires, Jesus turned worldly hierarchy on its head, teaching his followers that “whoever wants to be first must be last of all and servant of all” (Mark 9:35). In Jesus’s own mission statement, he declared, “For the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life a ransom for many” (Mark 10:45). In his divinity and in his personhood, he was the prophet greater than Moses, the judge of the living and the dead, the high priest who serves in the heavenly sanctuary, and the king who marched under the banner of radical humility.
That’s it for this week. If you would like to get the study questions that go with the reading, please visit our website at www.thejerusalemconnection.us
Shabbat Shalom
Study Questions
1. The Administration of Justice (Deuteronomy 16:18–20)
Moses commands Israel to appoint judges and officers across all their towns, commanding: “Justice, and only justice, you shall pursue.” What does the repetition of the word justice imply about the human tendency regarding the legal system? How does the strict prohibition against bribes and partiality protect the vulnerable in a community?
2. The Limits of Human Authority: Kingship (Deuteronomy 17:14–20)
The Torah outlines strict rules for an eventual king, forbidding him from accumulating excessive horses, wives, or wealth. Why do you think these specific limitations were placed on the highest office of executive power? The king was commanded to write his own personal copy of the Torah and read it every day. How does this requirement establish the rule of law over the rule of man?
3. Prophetic Authority and the Future (Deuteronomy 18:15–22)
Moses promises that God will raise up a prophet like him from among the people. Based on the historical evolution from Moses to the oral prophets and literary prophets, how did God continue to provide spiritual oversight to the nation?
