God’s Hierarchy of Justice. (Deuteronomy 16: 18-22)

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Episode Notes: God's Hierarchy of Justice (Deuteronomy 16:18-22)

Introduction

God desires justice and fairness, a theme consistent throughout the Bible. In Deuteronomy 16:18-22, God outlines a system to ensure justice among His people. Although ancient, the principles of this passage remain relevant today.

Establishment of Judges and Officials (Deuteronomy 16:18: )

• Judges and officials were to be appointed in every town.
• These leaders were to ensure fair judgment according to God's laws.

Historical Context:

• • Initially, Moses judged all disputes himself (Exodus 18:19-23).
  • Due to the overwhelming number of cases, capable men were appointed to assist him.
  • As the Israelites prepared to enter the Promised Land, Moses instructed them to appoint judges.

Fair and Impartial Justice

• Deuteronomy 16:19: "Do not pervert justice or show partiality. Do not accept a bribe, for a bribe blinds the eyes of the wise and twists the words of the innocent."
  • Key Points:
    • Judges must avoid perverting justice by showing partiality or accepting bribes.
    • Bribery and partiality undermine the integrity of justice.

The Principle of Justice

• Deuteronomy 16:20: "Follow justice and justice alone, so that you may live and possess the land the Lord your God is giving you."
  • Key Points:
    • The pursuit of justice is vital for societal well-being.
    • Just societies prosper under God's guidance.
• Application:
  • Leaders and citizens alike must strive for justice in all areas of life.
  • Just leadership is essential for maintaining order and fairness.

Warnings Against Idolatry

• Deuteronomy 16:21-22: "Do not set up any wooden Asherah pole beside the altar you build to the Lord your God. And do not erect a sacred stone, for these the Lord your God hates."
  • Key Points:
    • Judges must not tolerate idolatry within their communities.
    • Idolatry corrupts the justice system and society.
• Historical Context:
  • Judges in ancient Israel often dispensed justice at city gates.
  • Pagan practices like setting up Asherah poles were common in Canaan.

Hierarchical Structure of Justice

• Historical Context:
  • Moses' delegation of judicial responsibilities prevented tyranny and promoted shared governance.
  • The hierarchy of judges ensured disputes were resolved at the appropriate level.

Conclusion

• Relevance of God's Hierarchy of Justice:
  • The principles outlined in Deuteronomy remain crucial for contemporary societies.
  • Integrity in leadership, the importance of family, and the rejection of idolatry are foundational for just communities.
• Call to Action:
  • Strive to act with integrity and fairness in all roles.
  • Pray for just leaders and seek to reflect God's justice in personal

Transcript

God’s Hierarchy of Justice.  (Deuteronomy 16:18-22)

Transcript.

God wants justice, that He wants people to be treated fairly and justly, is clear from across the whole Bible and here in Deuteronomy, He set the basics things in order to accomplish that. 

What He did is rather simple: He appointed judges and instructed them to judge justly. This is recorded in the second half of Deuteronomy 16 and we'll look at that passage today.

When we do, you'll recognize that while much of this may not at first seem to directly apply directly to us today, the principle remains crucial in it saving us both from injustice and from tyranny.

Given today's supposed emphasis on justice, this passage becomes even more relevant…. Welcome to TBPDP….

God’s Hierarchy of Justice.

Turn with me to Deuteronomy 16:18.

Moses says,

Appoint judges and officials for each of your tribes in every town the Lord your God is giving you, and they shall judge the people fairly.

(Deuteronomy 16: 18)

We need to unpack this verse because there's a lot in it. Essentially, the idea here is that they were to appoint judges and officials in each and every town and city.

The latter part of the verse says, "and they shall judge the people with just judgments/fairly.

Let's back up and look at the main point of the verse, but also consider a couple of things. First, Moses says to the people, "You shall appoint judges and officials."

Originally, when they got out of Egypt and into the wilderness, there were all kinds of conflicts, and Moses was making all these judgments by himself. It was just too much. As you will recall, the Lord told him to pick out some other men to share his load. 

Listen now to me and I will give you some advice, and may God be with you. You must be the people’s representative before God and bring their disputes to him. Teach them his decrees and instructions and show them the way they are to live and how they are to behave. But select capable men from all the people—men who fear God, trustworthy men who hate dishonest gain—and appoint them as officials over thousands, hundreds, fifties and tens. Have them serve as judges for the people at all times but have them bring every difficult case to you; the simple cases they can decide themselves. That will make your load lighter, because they will share it with you. If you do this and God so commands, you will be able to stand the strain, and all these people will go home satisfied.”

(Exodus 18: 19-23)

So, at the beginning, only Moses was doing the judging. Then, when the load got too big, leading men from each tribe assisted him in that job. Now, in preparation for entering the land, Moses says, "You shall appoint judges."

I want to remind you that initially, Moses took the job himself, then he delegated it to others, and now he's instructing them to appoint judges. 

Commentators make some interesting observations here. One said these men were probably the chief elders of each tribe, so the judges appointed in each city were likely taken from the City Council of elders. Another said it was the people who chose the judges, pointing to the phrase "you shall appoint."

Regardless, it was the leaders of the nations who became the judges. The verse also mentions officials. Who are these officials? We may not know for sure, but some say they were likely assistants to the judges, clerks, or administrators in charge of enforcing the judgments.

The crucial point of this verse and the extended passage that continues to the end of Deuteronomy chapter 16 is that they were to judge the people with just judgment. They were to judge fairly, according to the standard that God had laid out in the law.

In the next verse, this point is emphasized even more. Deuteronomy 16:19 says.

Do not pervert justice or show partiality. Do not accept a bribe, for a bribe blinds the eyes of the wise and twists the words of the innocent.

What an interesting statement! Verse 18 talks about just judgment, and verse 19 elaborates by warning against perverting justice. 

How might one pervert justice? Two ways are given: 

By showing partiality or by taking a bribe. 

Showing partiality could be tempting if the person standing before the judge charged with an offence is a relative, friend, or neighbour.

Worse yet, taking a bribe can pervert justice completely.

The essence of verse 19 is that each person should be judged as if the judge had no prior knowledge of them and had no financial entanglement with them. 

This principle is highly relevant today. One author noted that while we see it as obvious that judges should not take gifts from litigants, historically, this idea was far from apparent. 

In many ancient societies, judges taking gifts was considered moral and legitimate.

In Israel, however, judges were to be different, serving as proxies for the divine judge.

I think this issue is very prevalent not only in other parts of the world but also in Western Democracies as well. Bribery is rampant, even if it often subtly disguised these days or goes unnoticed. 

However, every once in a while, a case of bribery surfaces, but anyone knowledgeable about how things work knows that bribery happens all the time. 

It could be something as simple as needing a permit or planning permission to build. Slip the right person a little gift, and you might get your planning permission heard faster. Or the supplying of gifts to influential politicians.

More often these days it not a direct bribe but a contribution to a campaign or party fund, which I think essentially amounts to the same thing—perverting justice by seeking favouritism.

Our society is riddled with this more than most people realize. This issue is highly pertinent and relevant today. More than ever, we need judges who can deliver just and unbiased judgments, not just in the courtroom but also in the civil service, local government, and in all political realms.

Some would argue that justice can also be perverted by money and influence, allowing those with wealth to afford the best attorneys and manipulate the system more easily.

We need just judges. Deuteronomy 16:20 says.

Follow justice and justice alone, so that you may live and possess the land the Lord your God is giving you.

The sequence is clear: appoint judges, instruct them to judge justly, and avoid perverting justice. This was crucial for the Israelites about to enter the Promised Land. Impartial justice was necessary for them to prosper and inherit the land, and it remains crucial for us today.

How it could ever be other than dangerous for a single person to sit at the top of a political system where the presumption was that the ruler was the fundamental final source of ethical evaluation and the law. 

There's no difference between that and tyranny. 

You also see in the Exodus account the inclination of the people was to degenerate in hedonistic direction when they lost their moral guidance just for a few days when Moses went up onto the mountain top to receive the law.

In the story Exodus when Moses departs from the camp to go to receive the 10 commandments, the people are left under the control of Aaron.

Aaron is in many ways the first political leader of the early emerging nation of Israel. He is someone who it becomes clear is beholden to the whims of the people.

What happens in the Exodus story is that the Israelites immediately degenerated to worship of the golden calf, which means they end up dancing naked in an drunken orgy worshipping the golden calf, which itself is a manufactured symbol of their material wealth. 

One of the implications there is that in the absence of a God’s embodied leadership in Moses the majority inclination is going to be to demand gratification of their immediate desires. 

And you have to have a reason not to do that if you don’t have a higher calling or a leadership that has a higher calling. You have to have a reason to forgo immediate gratification otherwise a society will degenerate, and quickly. 

Because if I want to gratify myself and I have power, then I can force you to comply, and you can become an agent of my wins. And that's why you always get this relationship between hedonists and tyrants (Real Dictators).

So, the absence of an upward oriented Godly hierarchy always leads to abominations carried out first in the individual life of the dictators and then in the name of the state.

Hitler, Stalin, Kim Jong-il, Mao Zedomg, Papa Doc, General Tojo, Franco, Colonel Gaddafi, Idi Amin, Pol Pot, Robert Mugabe, Manuel Noriega, Saddam Hussein. Pinochet. And that only in the last 100 years. 

So later there's this time when the Israelites are lost and wandering when they set up Moses as a judge because there are fractures and squabbling because they don't have the capacity for self-governance, being recently freed slaves who were now lost wandering in the desert wilderness living for 40 years is a state of post tyrannical confusion. 

So, they really try to make Moses into a sort of new Pharaoh, because they set him up as a single judge someone they bring all the disputes to when they can't reconcile themselves to each other they will then ask him to make a ruling. 

The Moses father-in law Jethro a good man, a good foreigner and he says to Moses, you have to stop doing this because you're going to be reestablished yourself as a new type of Pharoah like single authority figure and you will have all the problems of the previous tyrant. 

But also by putting yourself above the people in adjudicating all their disputes, you infantile lies them, and they'll likely become slaves again.

You can call this incidence the first big idea in the history of political thought because the question that's being asked in a very immature form is what is the alternative society to that of tyrant and slavery. 

Moses is advised to divide his people into. Groups and make a hierarchy in that he puts everybody in groups of 10 and has each of those 10 elect a leader from amongst themselves.

Then to make a group out of those leaders and then to take the leaders leaders and make another tier above all the way up to that, all the way up to groups of 1,000’s. 

And at every level they are to adjudicate the disputes from the bottom up, letting only those that can't be adjudicated at a lower level get to the higher level.

So, it's the construction of a sort of proto-demographic hierarchy and the formulation of an order of accountability and responsibility. 

That's the civic alternative to the slave and the tyrant.

The same was applied by God right in the very beginning of the creation story with the establishment of the family.

Grandparents, Fathers and Mothers, Sons and daughters. The well-structured family shapes the way you see the world and it. It offers you a set of meaningful responsibilities at every level.

But it's not only the family, , it’s bigger than that, here in the Pentateuch we see it in the establishment in the promised land of the town, it's the city, it's the state, and it's the nation.

The problem has always been that if you eradicate all the subsidiary structures from a person’s identity, you begin to dismantly the family unit as the stable bedrock of society and political system gets corrupted and you begin to turn the people towards slaves and the rule of the tyrant. 

When you start to understand that your identity is found within your family and also that of the nation then that gives you a place and a understand that your identity is also that of the wider family and also that of the nation, and the place of the nation in the human race as part of the family of God.

For those who don’t have that heavenly model of family, you can seek it out and find it within the Christian church.

The rest of the narrative, which will extend into chapter 17, provides specific examples of judgments that need to be made, but we will get to that tomorrow.

In verse 21, Moses says

Do not set up any wooden Asherah pole beside the altar you build to the Lord your God.

(Deuteronomy 16: 21)

Why mention planting a tree or setting up a wooden image?

In ancient times, judges usually dispensed justice at the city gates, in the open air, not in fancy courthouses. In the land the nation of Israel are about to enter into they also often planting a wooden image or an Asherah Pole in a high place above the location were the people were going to live.

This represented a pagan goddess, an idolatrous practice common in Canaan.

The judges are told not to tolerate this type of idolatry within the communities they had responsibly for because these wooden images were linked to pagan worship.

Verse 22 reinforces this: 

And do not erect a sacred stone, for these the Lord your God hates.

(Deuteronomy 16: 22)

This makes it clear that all forms of idolatry were strictly forbidden. Judges were to ensure that no idolatry influenced the justice system or the community.

So here, we find God's directives for establishing a just society through a structured hierarchy of justice. Moses instructs the Israelites to appoint judges and officers in all their towns, ensuring that justice is administered fairly and without partiality across the nation. 

These appointed leaders are tasked with upholding righteousness and equity, reflecting God's own nature and His standards for His people.

This emphasizes the importance of integrity in leadership. Judges are to avoid perverting justice through bribery or favouritism, which otherwise can blind the eyes of the wise and distort the words of the righteous.

The pursuit of justice is shown here not just to be a civic duty but a divine mandate, meant to ensure that the land the Lord gives them will be a place of peace, prosperity, and divine favour.

But included in this the text highlights the significance of proper worship. True justice, according to God’s standards, is intertwined with proper worship and reverence for Him

For it is that alone which benefits all and protects the people from the danger of tyranny.

It’s clear to me that God's hierarchal view of justice is as relevant today as it was in the time of Moses. 

The principles of fair and impartial justice, the integrity of leadership, the importance of the family unit, and the rejection of idolatry form the foundation of a society that honours God, and places him upon the highest tier

We are called to be people of justice in our own communities and nations Whether in our roles as members of a family, leaders, employees, or just citizens, we must strive to act with integrity, fairness, and a commitment to fairness and Godly righteousness. 

We must not to be swayed by bribes or favouritism in area of our lives, but instead, let our actions reflect the character of our just and holy God who sit atop the highest place in the throne room of heaven.

In our worship, let us also reject any form of idolatry, whether it be materialism, power, or the most dangerous of all, religion.

Idolatry means that anything another false god seeks to take the place of the Lord God in our lives. By doing so, we ensure that our pursuit of justice is rooted in our devotion to God.

But this also means we should pray for our leaders, that they may govern with wisdom and fairness, and let us also pray for ourselves, that we might live justly, love mercy, and walk humbly with our God. 

As we seek to apply these principles in our lives, may we contribute to building families, and communities that reflect the justice and righteousness of God's kingdom here on earth.

May the Lord grant us the wisdom and strength to uphold His standards of justice, and may our lives be a testament that.