Torah Posting: שפטים
At this point, Mosheh’s retelling of the law takes a turn toward the nitty gritty, and this entire parashah consists of specifics. It starts off on a noble note, though, establishing that administering justice under God’s law is humans’ responsibility. The first lines of this parashah command the appointment of judges and officials in all settlements who will be impartial and unswayed by bribery, which is forbidden. Justice is established as a positive commandment, and not one that God establishes for people but one which they must bring about themselves:
צֶ֥דֶק צֶ֖דֶק תִּרְדֹּ֑ף לְמַ֤עַן תִּֽחְיֶה֙ וְיָרַשְׁתָּ֣ אֶת־הָאָ֔רֶץ אֲשֶׁר־יְהֹוָ֥ה אֱלֹהֶ֖יךָ נֹתֵ֥ן לָֽךְ׃
“Justice, justice shall you pursue, that you may thrive and occupy the land that your God יהוה is giving you.”
And with that so beautifully declared, Mosheh returns to the subject of crimes, specifically idolatry. No posts or poles or pillars, totems in the mode of the surrounding peoples, shall be constructed even as part of the altar to God. No animals with defects may be offered, as this shirks one’s duty to offer that which is most precious to them (and to God). If anyone amongst the people hears of someone who worships improperly — bowing to other gods, to the Sun or Moon, or any of the heavenly host — a thorough inquiry must be made. If the person’s guilt can be established, they shall be stoned to death.
Modern readers might be inclined to turn off their brains here, but if you keep reading, you’ll see that this crime and punishment — which we’ve already heard about so many times, anyway — is being situated within the context of the commandment for humans to pursue justice. This sentence cannot be carried out without two or more witnesses; one witness is not sufficient. And the witnesses themselves must be the first to throw stones! That’s how serious this testimony is.
If a criminal case is too overwhelming for the civil system to decide, the next step is to go to the Temple and appeal to the priests. Yes, religious law is the ultimate decider that cannot be disregarded, but it is the fallback position.
Then a fairly consequential and foreshadowing bit of law is included. Mosheh declares that, if the people decide once they arrive in the land that they wish to appoint a king over them, they may do so. Later in Tanakh, in the book of Shmuel, when it comes time to actually do this, the prophet and God seem to agree that this is a bad idea, but because the people demand it, God says to do it anyway in accordance with this law in Dvarim. While the reign of Israelite kings that follows is long and glorious, it is a reasonable place to point to as the beginning of the end of all these Promised Land promises.
It seems the Torah is trying to establish such a robust and well distributed system of divine law administered by human officials that an incarnate monarch is not necessary, but having one for simplicity’s sake is the one concession that is allowed for this nation to be like all the others. But after this permission is granted, many strict requirements for this king’s character are laid out: He shall not build up a cavalry in the manner of the Egyptians, for God has commanded the children of Yisra’el never to go back that way. He shall not have many wives lest his heart wander. He shall not covet excess material wealth. He shall have the Torah written for him by the priests on a scroll that sits next to him on the throne, and he must study it all his life. In short, if the children of Yisra’el are to have a human king, he must be an unwavering conduit, a transparently clear vessel for God’s rule.
We’ll see how that goes.
The next chapter goes back to the subject of the tribe of Levi and its priestly responsibilities, and how those change the tribe’s material circumstances. The Levites shall have no territorial portion; their portion shall be taken from everyone’s offerings at the Temple. Levites who reside anywhere else in the land may travel to the Temple whenever they please and jump right into the work. All Levites shall receive equal shares of the offerings; there’s no seniority, favoritism, nepotism, or rewards for making personal gifts.
After that upstanding description of what our religious service is like, Mosheh goes back to talk about the foreign and abhorrent practices of other peoples. This is arguably the most exhaustive list of the kinds of spiritual practices that are forbidden, which includes many words that are generally translated into English as kinds of divination. But remember, this sort of thing is always about imitating the practices of other peoples. The children of Yisra’el have our own practices. Some of them we’ve already seen from our ancestors in the Torah, our role models. Another significant alternative, which results in unfathomable volumes of later commentary on its precise nature and practice, is given right here:
נָבִ֨יא מִקִּרְבְּךָ֤ מֵאַחֶ֙יךָ֙ כָּמֹ֔נִי יָקִ֥ים לְךָ֖ יְהֹוָ֣ה אֱלֹהֶ֑יךָ אֵלָ֖יו תִּשְׁמָעֽוּן׃
“From among your own people, your God יהוה will raise up for you a prophet like myself; that is whom you shall heed.”
Prophecy! Human beings with the same kind of access to the divine as Mosheh himself! How exactly that works is, again, to be the subject of extensive future commentary and gatekeeping, but lest you come away from lists of laws in the Torah thinking that Jewish people are not allowed to communicate with and receive messages from God, the Torah is full of demonstrations of them doing that, and here Mosheh makes clear that it will continue to happen. All these words for divination refer to lesser and foreign forms of communication with the divine, from the Torah’s perspective.
Mosheh reminds the people that when they — along with all other Jewish souls from all spacetimes, as well as their parents, who were actually alive — were gathered at the foot of Horev (Sinai), and they could all hear God’s voice themselves, they begged for it to stop because they could tell it would blow them to smithereens. God thought that was very wise of them, and that is why prophets who could handle it would always be interposed thereafter. But — needless to say, perhaps — anyone who pretends to be a prophet shall be executed. Mosheh points out that the people will know which prophets are real simply because the things they prophesy come true.
Next the cities of refuge for fugitives accused of manslaughter are reintroduced. We first got these in parashat מסעי; their job is to prevent aggrieved parties from killing the accused before they get a trial. In keeping with the justice and due process themes of this parashah, this reintroduction specifies and clarifies the conditions that do and do not count as manslaughter for these purposes, and when someone who is not deserving of this asylum should be turned in. It’s understandable why such clarifications might have been added to the text later, if the sources are indeed different. This sort of careful legal parsing in the Torah is also the clear template for the later works of rabbinic law that become the way for Jewish people to adapt Torah law to future cultural contexts.
Honesty and honest dealing is a big theme throughout. There is discussion of the crime of moving property markers to infringe upon one’s neighbors, and then some more about the testimony of witnesses and what to do if there is a dispute. False testimony in a legal proceeding is punished harshly with the whole “eye for eye, tooth for tooth” bit trotted out for the third time in the Torah.
Chapter 20 turns to the conduct of war — which, remember, is looming in every Israelite’s mind due to their impending divinely commanded conquest. Mosheh describes how the priest will address the army before battle to encourage the troops, even if the enemy force is larger; the children of Yisra’el are commanded not to be afraid. But before the army is sent into battle, the political leaders query the troops to find anyone who has recently built a home without dedicating it, planted a vineyard without harvesting it, or gotten engaged without marrying. These men are relieved of duty to tend to their households. Then the leaders ask whether anyone is afraid or discouraged — even though they are commanded by God not to be — for they must also be sent home lest their low morale affect the others. After that, the army commanders take over.
When the army attacks a town, it must first offer terms of peace. If the town accepts, its residents are to be taken peacefully (and enslaved, but remember, the Torah has established that Israelites must be at least marginally nicer to their slaves than, for instance, their slavers in Mitzrayim were to them). If the town does not surrender, and God delivers it into the Israelites’ hands, the men are to be executed, and everything else (including the women and children) can be taken as spoils. But as for the towns of the specific nations whom God has commanded the children of Yisra’el to conquer, not a soul shall remain alive because of the risks of corrupting idolatry.
In case you’re wondering, yes, I find these parts hard to read. They can be taken and twisted in all sorts of ways to horrible ends. As always, I carry on with my little lamp in my hand lit by the flame of remembering that the animating soul of these laws is to instill an ethical attitude in place of pure barbarity.
As if anticipating that reaction, an injunction is placed here against destroying the fruit-bearing trees of a place that is conquered. Mosheh asks a strangely beautiful rhetorical question: “Are the trees of the field human, such that they could withdraw into the city when you attack?” No, of course not, and so they are not to be murdered on the way in. Permission is carved out for trees that bear no fruit, though; they may be used to build the siege weapons.
Then the topic turns to the discovery of a dead body lying in the open whose killer is unknown. A magical ritual is created to absolve the surrounding area of any guilt or impurity from this. The elders and leaders are to measure the distance from the corpse to the nearest settlements. The elders of the town nearest the body shall take a heifer who has never worked in the fields down to a flowing wadi that has never been tilled or sown, and there they shall break the heifer’s neck. Then the priests shall come forward in their capacity as judges, and before them the elders of the town wash their hands over the body of the heifer and declare that they did not shed the dead person’s blood, nor did they witness their killing. This ritual will absolve the place from the stain of the blood of the innocent.
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