Justice, you say? Shofetim (Deuteronomy 16:18 - 21:9)

This stuff is obvious... right? ... Right? ... Oy.

(This is on last week’s reading, catching up to the delay imposed by a rather sobering brush with illness.)

This reading (Shofetim, Deuteronomy 16:18 - 21:9) contains many of Deuteronomy’s brightest jewels on justice – principles and practicalities, including the need for witnesses (and how to treat false ones), laws around manslaughter and unsolved murder, and even the establishment of something that looks remarkably like a Supreme Court, made up of priests and judges, to decide the most difficult cases.

Concentrated in all of three verses right at the start, we have a world of meaning.

This starts simply enough, with “You shall set up for yourself judges and officers in all your gates that the Lord your God is giving you for your tribes, and they shall judge the people [in] righteous judgment” (16:18 – see also 1:15 for similar language). Here again, we get a whiff of the modern notion of separation of powers: judges and officers, two different nouns presumably for two different positions with different powers and responsibilities.

These shall do nothing else than judge the people… which is interesting in and of itself, meaning as it does that (at least for mundane cases), man is to be judged by man… one might almost say, by his peers… and not, say, priests or augurs, or even (somehow) God Himself. But more, they are to judge the people ‘in righteous judgement’. This is more than just passing down a sentence, more that the exercise of authority or the punishment of crime. This is the exercise of righteousness, at the societal level. Society is to correct itself and its members, not based on convenience, and not on the whim of anyone in power – but based on righteousness, on the values and principles on which God is teaching us to build our civilization. God will set the rules and the standards. As we already know, they can be quite demanding. And as we will see, they will apply equally to everyone, no exceptions, in either direction.

Next, Moses explains: “You shall not distort justice; you shall not recognize faces, and you shall not take a bribe, for bribery blinds the eyes of the wise and warps the words of the just.” (16:19)

Implied is that there is such a thing as justice, straight and unbent; and that it is possible for man to do such justice… or at least come close… but, that he must guard himself well, lest he distort it. And how might that happen, you ask? Moses answers: Don’t ‘recognize faces’, meaning the identity of the people judged must not factor into your decision – people must be judged as if they were all faceless strangers, all equal. There must be no favor shown, or disfavor, whether that person is a friend or an enemy, whether we owe them a favor or hold a grudge against them, whatever their age, sex, race, feelings, self-identification, or other intersectional status, whatever their alleged historical privilege or oppression, whatever their politics… this is where we get the idea of blind justice. Not social justice, not the type of justice that seeks an equal result at the group level, but justice, the kind that stands blindfolded, holding scales and a sword, and seeks to restore the affairs of those involved in the case to a just outcome.

Speaking of blindness, turns out bribes will blind the eyes of the wise (ever heard of greasing a palm so as to turn a blind eye?), and make crooked the words of the righteous – this may mean either the words of a (formerly) righteous judge, or those of a righteous witness, plaintiff, or accused. Bribes, like power, are battery acid to the soul – one cannot take a bribe and remain righteous. Power corrupts, and even if you did not mean to, bribes will corrupt you. Good intentions will not matter. Righteous judgement does, judgement based on facts, and laws.

And then: “Justice, justice you will pursue, so that you may live and possess the land that the Lord your God is giving you.” (16:20).

“Justice, justice” – the repetition adds emphasis, urgency. So does the active verb ‘pursue’, meaning more than just passive preference. Imagine Moses striking the palm of one hand with the back of the other. “Justice, justice, get it? Focus, this is important.” Few other commands, if any, are emphasized in quite this way. Now imagine the Israelites lifting a jaded eyebrow, ‘Cool down, Moish. Of course we’ll have courts and stuff.’ After all, all societies had courts… didn’t they? Well, yes, but… well, they didn’t always necessarily serve justice, see. Not that this might still be happening here and now, no, rest easy. No, in the ancient world, see, courts sometimes served… well, the interests of the ruling class… more than those of justice, per se. The court favored the king, or the nobles, or the priests. The court favored the preservation of order, or the established order, more than they favored justice… much less equal justice.

This verse, however, goes even further – its second half, easily overlooked in the shadow of the first, explains: without true justice, we may not long ‘live and possess the land’. Without true justice, a just society (the only kind God is interested in) cannot maintain itself for long, and will rapidly degenerate into one form of tyranny or another at best… or lead to the people’s downfall. Injustice was a major component in the fall of the divided kingdoms of Israel and Judah (see the Book of Amos, for one); one could easily make the argument that perversion of justice played a role in critically weakening the social fabric of more modern empires (say, the USSR). Or, the same could happen to us – right now, if we let it.

Deuteronomy is where the Judeo-Christian West gets many of its notions of justice. Like others of the Bible’s gifts, because we’re steeped in millennia of this exact tradition, now these seem obvious enough to us Moderns that we believe they can be safely decoupled from their source. We understand this stuff. Come on, it’s obvious, and how could it be otherwise? Of course we have a justice system – doesn’t everyone? Officers, judges, the works. They judge… justly, right? They don’t do favoritism, or two-tier justice, or anything that might smack of… recognizing faces… right? And they all pursue justice, justice… don’t they? Do they?

God help us all.