Here it is, my Shoftim commentary. Or listen to it!
Shabbat Shalom.
Our parashah for today is Shoftim or “judges” and covers Deuteronomy chapter 16, verse 18 through chapter 21, verse 9. While there are many potential topics one could discuss out of this week’s parashah, the one that I found most compelling are the requirements the L-RD establishes here for an earthly king ruling these people once they enter the Promised Land.
I find it compelling because it represents a tragic moment in the history of Israel, because it demonstrates how the L-RD desired for His people something far better, and how far they have fallen from that ideal. The L-RD’s ideal relationship to the people of Israel is actually set down in:
Leviticus 26:9-12
“‘I will look on you with favor and make you fruitful and increase your numbers, and I will keep my covenant with you. You will still be eating last year’s harvest when you will have to move it out to make room for the new. I will put my dwelling place among you, and I will not abhor you. I will walk among you and be your God, and you will be my people.
This is exactly the sort of relationship one would expect believers to desire with their creator. To have the L-RD dwelling among them and to be rightly related to Him is what we all want, what we anticipate will be the nature of the World to Come. And yet, that ideal relationship is not what came about; not because the L-RD failed to live up to His promise, but because the people – all of us – failed to live up to ours.
You see, the L-RD did not originally desire Israel to be like the nations that surrounded it. He wanted it to be a kingdom of priests and a holy nation so that Israel would be an example to all the other nations of the Earth, and that all people would come to know the L-RD through them. In the L-RD’s original plan, there would be no earthly king or ruler in Israel; there would only be the L-RD in control, and all who lived in Israel would serve him faithfully. There should never have been a need to appoint an earthly king over Israel.
But things went astray almost from the start. The L-RD speaks to the children of Israel, giving them His Ten Commands by speaking to each of them directly at Horeb. And it was apparently a terrifying experience for most of the people gathered there, because, as we read in this week’s parashah, in:
Deuteronomy 18:16-19
For this is what you asked of the L-RD your God at Horeb on the day of the assembly when you said, “Let us not hear the voice of the L-RD our God nor see this great fire anymore, or we will die.” The L-RD said to me: “What they say is good. I will raise up for them a prophet like you from among their brothers; I will put my words in his mouth, and he will tell them everything I command him. If anyone does not listen to my words that the prophet speaks in my name, I myself will call him to account.
So, the covenant between the L-RD and his people, in which the L-RD would dwell among them and they would be His people and He would be their God didn’t exactly work out as planned, did it? In a very brief amount of time, the people ask for a change to the terms of the covenant and the L-RD’s response is recorded here in this week’s parashah. He accepts their change; He shall no longer speak to them directly.
But now, instead of dwelling with them, instead of being their sole ruler, the L-RD begins to indicate here that their special status as a kingdom of priests and a holy nation has changed, also. Those terms won’t even be mentioned again in Scripture until the letter of first Peter.
Yet we also can observe in the text that another change has taken place; instead of not having an earthly king, as originally planned, the L-RD anticipates that they will indeed desire one. You see, not only have they replaced the voice of the L-RD speaking to them directly with Moses as the human mediator between God and man, but they also have displaced Him as their ruler.
In the passage I’m about to share from this week’s reading, we see the L-RD establish rules for how the people are to select an earthly king to rule them, and in much of the Jewish commentary on this passage I have studied, it is taken for granted by most of the rabbis that the L-RD desired and even commanded Israel to have a human king. And yet that assumption, I believe, is somewhat mistaken.
To really get a good handle on this, I’ll share the first verse as it is rendered in the Complete Jewish Bible by David Stern, because I believe it captures a level of meaning missed by the NIV rendering. We read this in:
Deuteronomy 17:14 (CJB)
“When you have entered the land the L-RD your God is giving you, have taken possession of it and are living there, you may say, ‘I want to have a king over me, like all the other nations around me.’
Pay close attention to how that last sentence is phrased. The Torah here does not say, “When you have entered the land, I, the L-RD, want you to set up a king over you, like all the other nations around you.” No. It is not the L-RD’s desire that is being communicated here. Instead, it is the desire of the people to be like the other nations, rather than set apart and unique, as the L-RD originally desired them to be! So the L-RD here is anticipating this further distancing that’s coming between the L-RD and his chosen people.
It’s another step away from how God wanted things to be. So while some scholars and rabbis will argue that the L-RD commanded Israel to select a king over them when they entered the Promised Land, that’s not exactly correct. Instead, it is as though the L-RD is saying to them, “Well, this is what you want to do… so if you’re going to insist on doing things this way and being like other nations around you and having an earthly ruler over you… then fine, here’s how I want you to do it.”
Let’s take that mindest into consideration as we study the rest of the passage. We continue on, going back to the NIV, in:
Deuteronomy 17:15-20
be sure to appoint over you the king the L-RD your God chooses. He must be from among your own brothers. Do not place a foreigner over you, one who is not a brother Israelite. The king, moreover, must not acquire great numbers of horses for himself or make the people return to Egypt to get more of them, for the L-RD has told you, “You are not to go back that way again.” He must not take many wives, or his heart will be led astray. He must not accumulate large amounts of silver and gold. When he takes the throne of his kingdom, he is to write for himself on a scroll a copy of this law, taken from that of the priests, who are Levites. It is to be with him, and he is to read it all the days of his life so that he may learn to revere the L-RD his God and follow carefully all the words of this law and these decrees and not consider himself better than his brothers and turn from the law to the right or to the left. Then he and his descendants will reign a long time over his kingdom in Israel.
What I find interesting about this passage is how the L-RD continues to find a way to work with the Israelites and keep His promises to them, even as they fail over and over again to keep up their end of the agreement. Here he warns them of the dangers to having an earthly king, the ways in which one can go astray, and we know from our knowledge of Israel’s history that everything the L-RD warns about here is fulfilled in those who sit on the earthly throne of Israel. Solomon, for example, is the most notable fulfillment of what can happen if a king ignores the commands the L-RD gives here and takes many wives. Indeed, Solomon’s heart was led astray by his many wives, just as the L-RD predicts. And that’s just one example.
But the thing that really captures my attention here, because I think it really presents a picture of the promise rather than the curse, a picture of the Messiah rather than a picture of the ruler of this evil age, is where it talks about the scroll requirement for each king of Israel.
The command here says that he who is an earthly king over Israel must write out a copy of the Torah on his own, carry it with him always and read it daily. Can you imagine what that must have been like?
We at Beth Yeshua go through the Torah once a year, using the reading schedule developed by the rabbis called parashahs. It’s what we base our Torah commentaries on each week. When one first comes into the Messianic movement, it can seem like a daunting task! I mean, getting through those five books the first time – it took me two or three years to do it successfully, so that I didn’t get off track, fall behind, or give up part way through the year.
But when you really think about it… even the longest parashahs are maybe four or five pages in length. That’s not even one page of text per day! And all we’re doing when we do this is, we read it. And once we finally accomplish this, it becomes second nature and we feel closer to the text each time we go through it again.
Some of you may not yet have reached this point, but trust me, persevere and you’ll get there.
But this was not the case for the human kings of Israel. Not only were they expected to read the Torah daily, but they had to write out their own copy of it in their own hand! And this was not an era of copying and pasting off the Internet into a Microsoft Word document. There were no typewriters or even ball-point pens!
No, a Torah scroll is made from the skin of an animal, and carefully written out by hand. Furthermore, it must be copied precisely; if an error was discovered by a soferim, and it was a minor error, it had to be repaired; if it was an error to the name of the L-RD, that entire section of parchment would be discarded and redone. So it was very exacting.
Now ask yourself: how well would I know the Torah if I had to make my own copy and write it out by hand, like the kings of Israel were supposed to do? I suspect one would grow even closer to the Torah than they do by reading it; they would gain a closer appreciation for it simply by writing it out.
You know, I went to college for creative writing and one time I decided to type out the first chapter of a published novel, just to see what it felt like to craft words that were deemed good enough to be published. In doing so, I began to notice things my eyes skipped over when merely reading the chapter; I observed the author’s economy of language more than ever before, and gained an appreciation for how he built suspense in the scene with each word.
It’s the same with the Torah. Writing it out – each and every word, without error – would have made the person who did it come to a very deep and personal appreciation of Torah. So you may think, “Wow! The kings of Israel really must have known Torah well to have written out their own copy by hand and then read it daily.”
And they did. We know David, at least, followed this command of the L-RD from hints in his instructions to Solomon while David is on his death bed, urging his son to follow the L-RD in all his ways.
And yet, we know that even this closeness with the Torah did not prevent men from falling into sin, did it? Even David was led astray by the temptation of Bat’Sheva. Solomon ended up even worse. And then we read this tragic turning point in:
II Kings 10:31
Yet Jehu was not careful to keep the law of the L-RD, the God of Israel, with all his heart. He did not turn away from the sins of Jeroboam, which he had caused Israel to commit.
This was written of Jehu even after he cleverly destroyed many of the priests of Ba’al. By his actions, Jehu appeared to be a king faithful to the L-RD and familiar with his Torah, and yet this is his epitaph. The path of appointing earthly kings only gets worse for Israel as time goes on, as we read in:
Hosea 8:2-4
Israel cries out to me, ‘O our God, we acknowledge you!’ But Israel has rejected what is good; an enemy will pursue him. They set up kings without my consent; they choose princes without my approval.
You see, they continued to drift further and further, failing to obey even the command to consult the L-RD and set up as king whomever He appoints. So none of Israel’s kings ever really fully live up to the L-RD’s ideal. But this picture of a king who is so close to the Torah is indeed a picture of the Messiah Yeshua. He is the perfect fulfillment of this command, because he is the living Torah. This is why we should seek to observe the Torah and not rely on grace in a way that cheapens it. As Solomon wrote in:
Proverbs 28:4, 9
Those who forsake the law praise the wicked, but those who keep the law resist them. If anyone turns a deaf ear to the law, even his prayers are detestable.
This week’s reading is a reminder never to turn a deaf ear to the Torah of God, for when we do, we also turn a deaf ear to Messiah Yeshua, who is the living Torah.
Shabbat Shalom.
My 2009 Shoftim Commentary
Monday, August 24th, 2009
Here it is, my Shoftim commentary. Or listen to it!
Shabbat Shalom.
Our parashah for today is Shoftim or “judges” and covers Deuteronomy chapter 16, verse 18 through chapter 21, verse 9. While there are many potential topics one could discuss out of this week’s parashah, the one that I found most compelling are the requirements the L-RD establishes here for an earthly king ruling these people once they enter the Promised Land.
I find it compelling because it represents a tragic moment in the history of Israel, because it demonstrates how the L-RD desired for His people something far better, and how far they have fallen from that ideal. The L-RD’s ideal relationship to the people of Israel is actually set down in:
This is exactly the sort of relationship one would expect believers to desire with their creator. To have the L-RD dwelling among them and to be rightly related to Him is what we all want, what we anticipate will be the nature of the World to Come. And yet, that ideal relationship is not what came about; not because the L-RD failed to live up to His promise, but because the people – all of us – failed to live up to ours.
You see, the L-RD did not originally desire Israel to be like the nations that surrounded it. He wanted it to be a kingdom of priests and a holy nation so that Israel would be an example to all the other nations of the Earth, and that all people would come to know the L-RD through them. In the L-RD’s original plan, there would be no earthly king or ruler in Israel; there would only be the L-RD in control, and all who lived in Israel would serve him faithfully. There should never have been a need to appoint an earthly king over Israel.
But things went astray almost from the start. The L-RD speaks to the children of Israel, giving them His Ten Commands by speaking to each of them directly at Horeb. And it was apparently a terrifying experience for most of the people gathered there, because, as we read in this week’s parashah, in:
So, the covenant between the L-RD and his people, in which the L-RD would dwell among them and they would be His people and He would be their God didn’t exactly work out as planned, did it? In a very brief amount of time, the people ask for a change to the terms of the covenant and the L-RD’s response is recorded here in this week’s parashah. He accepts their change; He shall no longer speak to them directly.
But now, instead of dwelling with them, instead of being their sole ruler, the L-RD begins to indicate here that their special status as a kingdom of priests and a holy nation has changed, also. Those terms won’t even be mentioned again in Scripture until the letter of first Peter.
Yet we also can observe in the text that another change has taken place; instead of not having an earthly king, as originally planned, the L-RD anticipates that they will indeed desire one. You see, not only have they replaced the voice of the L-RD speaking to them directly with Moses as the human mediator between God and man, but they also have displaced Him as their ruler.
In the passage I’m about to share from this week’s reading, we see the L-RD establish rules for how the people are to select an earthly king to rule them, and in much of the Jewish commentary on this passage I have studied, it is taken for granted by most of the rabbis that the L-RD desired and even commanded Israel to have a human king. And yet that assumption, I believe, is somewhat mistaken.
To really get a good handle on this, I’ll share the first verse as it is rendered in the Complete Jewish Bible by David Stern, because I believe it captures a level of meaning missed by the NIV rendering. We read this in:
Pay close attention to how that last sentence is phrased. The Torah here does not say, “When you have entered the land, I, the L-RD, want you to set up a king over you, like all the other nations around you.” No. It is not the L-RD’s desire that is being communicated here. Instead, it is the desire of the people to be like the other nations, rather than set apart and unique, as the L-RD originally desired them to be! So the L-RD here is anticipating this further distancing that’s coming between the L-RD and his chosen people.
It’s another step away from how God wanted things to be. So while some scholars and rabbis will argue that the L-RD commanded Israel to select a king over them when they entered the Promised Land, that’s not exactly correct. Instead, it is as though the L-RD is saying to them, “Well, this is what you want to do… so if you’re going to insist on doing things this way and being like other nations around you and having an earthly ruler over you… then fine, here’s how I want you to do it.”
Let’s take that mindest into consideration as we study the rest of the passage. We continue on, going back to the NIV, in:
What I find interesting about this passage is how the L-RD continues to find a way to work with the Israelites and keep His promises to them, even as they fail over and over again to keep up their end of the agreement. Here he warns them of the dangers to having an earthly king, the ways in which one can go astray, and we know from our knowledge of Israel’s history that everything the L-RD warns about here is fulfilled in those who sit on the earthly throne of Israel. Solomon, for example, is the most notable fulfillment of what can happen if a king ignores the commands the L-RD gives here and takes many wives. Indeed, Solomon’s heart was led astray by his many wives, just as the L-RD predicts. And that’s just one example.
But the thing that really captures my attention here, because I think it really presents a picture of the promise rather than the curse, a picture of the Messiah rather than a picture of the ruler of this evil age, is where it talks about the scroll requirement for each king of Israel.
The command here says that he who is an earthly king over Israel must write out a copy of the Torah on his own, carry it with him always and read it daily. Can you imagine what that must have been like?
We at Beth Yeshua go through the Torah once a year, using the reading schedule developed by the rabbis called parashahs. It’s what we base our Torah commentaries on each week. When one first comes into the Messianic movement, it can seem like a daunting task! I mean, getting through those five books the first time – it took me two or three years to do it successfully, so that I didn’t get off track, fall behind, or give up part way through the year.
But when you really think about it… even the longest parashahs are maybe four or five pages in length. That’s not even one page of text per day! And all we’re doing when we do this is, we read it. And once we finally accomplish this, it becomes second nature and we feel closer to the text each time we go through it again.
Some of you may not yet have reached this point, but trust me, persevere and you’ll get there.
But this was not the case for the human kings of Israel. Not only were they expected to read the Torah daily, but they had to write out their own copy of it in their own hand! And this was not an era of copying and pasting off the Internet into a Microsoft Word document. There were no typewriters or even ball-point pens!
No, a Torah scroll is made from the skin of an animal, and carefully written out by hand. Furthermore, it must be copied precisely; if an error was discovered by a soferim, and it was a minor error, it had to be repaired; if it was an error to the name of the L-RD, that entire section of parchment would be discarded and redone. So it was very exacting.
Now ask yourself: how well would I know the Torah if I had to make my own copy and write it out by hand, like the kings of Israel were supposed to do? I suspect one would grow even closer to the Torah than they do by reading it; they would gain a closer appreciation for it simply by writing it out.
You know, I went to college for creative writing and one time I decided to type out the first chapter of a published novel, just to see what it felt like to craft words that were deemed good enough to be published. In doing so, I began to notice things my eyes skipped over when merely reading the chapter; I observed the author’s economy of language more than ever before, and gained an appreciation for how he built suspense in the scene with each word.
It’s the same with the Torah. Writing it out – each and every word, without error – would have made the person who did it come to a very deep and personal appreciation of Torah. So you may think, “Wow! The kings of Israel really must have known Torah well to have written out their own copy by hand and then read it daily.”
And they did. We know David, at least, followed this command of the L-RD from hints in his instructions to Solomon while David is on his death bed, urging his son to follow the L-RD in all his ways.
And yet, we know that even this closeness with the Torah did not prevent men from falling into sin, did it? Even David was led astray by the temptation of Bat’Sheva. Solomon ended up even worse. And then we read this tragic turning point in:
This was written of Jehu even after he cleverly destroyed many of the priests of Ba’al. By his actions, Jehu appeared to be a king faithful to the L-RD and familiar with his Torah, and yet this is his epitaph. The path of appointing earthly kings only gets worse for Israel as time goes on, as we read in:
You see, they continued to drift further and further, failing to obey even the command to consult the L-RD and set up as king whomever He appoints. So none of Israel’s kings ever really fully live up to the L-RD’s ideal. But this picture of a king who is so close to the Torah is indeed a picture of the Messiah Yeshua. He is the perfect fulfillment of this command, because he is the living Torah. This is why we should seek to observe the Torah and not rely on grace in a way that cheapens it. As Solomon wrote in:
This week’s reading is a reminder never to turn a deaf ear to the Torah of God, for when we do, we also turn a deaf ear to Messiah Yeshua, who is the living Torah.
Shabbat Shalom.
Tags: Shof'tim, Torah commentary
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