Justice, Justice

Two jobs, not one. The שופט, the judge, works out what is right. The שוטר makes sure it actually happens - because a decision nobody carries out is not really a decision. And they go in every town, not only in the big city, so that a person does not have to travel far to be heard.

Why does the verse need שוטרים at all? Because a verdict nobody enforces is just an opinion. Rashi is blunt about what the שוטר does: he brings the people into line behind the judge’s ruling with a stick and a strap until the ruling is accepted. That is uncomfortable and it is meant to be. The word is still alive in modern Hebrew - a שוטר is a police officer - and the verse is admitting up front that a legal system needs someone with authority standing behind the reasoning, and that this is exactly where a legal system becomes dangerous. The rest of the passage is about keeping that power honest.

Rashi separates the two offices precisely: שופטים are the דיינים הפוסקים את הדין, those who rule on the case, while שוטרים are הרודין את העם אחר מצותם במקל וברצועה until the judge’s ruling is accepted. Adjudication and coercion are two functions, and the Torah names them separately. On לשבטיך Rashi, following the Sifrei, derives that courts are seated for each tribe and each city - jurisdiction is both territorial and tribal. The Sifrei on the same phrase also preserves Rabban Shimon ben Gamliel’s sharper version: מצוה על כל שבט ושבט להיות דן את שבטו, each tribe is commanded to judge its own. Sforno reads the whole verse as the point where Moshe stops addressing the people and turns to their leaders. The closing clause is the standard: מִשְׁפַּט־צֶדֶק. Rashi does not read it as a fresh command to the judges but as part of the obligation on whoever appoints them - מנה דיינין מומחים וצדיקים לשפוט צדק, appoint judges who are expert and righteous so that they will judge righteously. On that reading the responsibility for a just court belongs to the community that staffs it before it belongs to the judge who sits in it. Note also that this is the first appearance of צדק in the passage; the root will appear three more times in the two verses that follow.

A judge is not allowed to take presents from the people in the case. Not even a small one, and not even if the judge is sure it will not change anything. The verse says a present makes you unable to see straight - and the person it says that about is a clever, good person, not a bad one.

The interesting word is Rashi’s on the bribe: it is forbidden אפילו לשפוט צדק, even in order to judge correctly. That sounds strange until you see what the verse is actually claiming. A bribe does not buy a wrong verdict; it damages your eyes. Once you have taken it, Rashi says, you cannot help leaning towards the giver and hunting for reasons in his favour - and you will experience that hunt as thinking clearly. The Talmud pushes this a long way past money. In Ketubot 105b, the bribery sugya Rashi is drawing on here, the rabbis rule that שוחד דברים, a bribe made only of words or of a favour, is forbidden too - and then they tell it as a story. Shmuel was getting off a ferry and a stranger put out a hand to steady him. Shmuel asked what he was doing there. The man said he had a case coming up. Shmuel disqualified himself from hearing it. Nothing had changed hands except a hand. And notice who the verse says all this happens to: חכמים and צדיקים, the wise and the righteous. It is not a warning to corrupt people. Corrupt people do not need it.

Rashi reads the three clauses as three distinct offences. לא תטה משפט he leaves כמשמעו, at face value. On לא תכיר פנים he adds אף בשעת הטענות, even during the pleadings: the judge may not be soft to one litigant and harsh to the other, because the one handled roughly will lose the nerve to state his case - מסתתמין טענותיו. That is a striking standard - partiality is already a violation before any ruling exists, located in tone of voice rather than in outcome. On ולא תקח שחד he rules it out אפילו לשפוט צדק, even where the judge means to rule justly, and explains why in the next comment: משקיבל שוחד ממנו אי אפשר שלא יטה את לבו אצלו להפוך בזכותו, once he has taken it he cannot but incline towards the giver and turn the case over looking for merit in him. Ketubot 105b supplies both the etymology and the mechanism - מאי שוחד, שהוא חד, and איקרבא ליה דעתיה לגביה והוי כגופיה, ואין אדם רואה חובה לעצמו: the giver has become, in effect, the judge’s own person, and nobody finds against himself. The verse’s two verbs describe the damage in stages: יְעַוֵּר, it blinds, and וִיסַלֵּף, it twists. And its objects are חכמים and צדיקם. The Sifrei presses exactly there: כי השחד יעור עיני חכמים - ואין צריך לומר עיני טפשים, and ויסלף דברי צדיקם - ואין צריך לומר דברי רשעים. The warning is aimed at the top of the profession, because that is where nobody thinks it is needed. Rashi glosses דברי צדיקים as דברים המצודקים, משפטי אמת - the words twisted are true rulings, ones that were already correct. The Torah’s assumption is not that a bribed judge decides badly on purpose but that wisdom and integrity offer no protection against a compromised eye.

The word צדק, which means what is fair and right, is said twice in a row. One old explanation is that you have to chase after fairness again and again, all your life, not decide once that you are a fair person and stop. And the verb is תרדף, which means to chase - the same word you would use for running after someone. Fairness has to be caught.

So why is the word doubled? Rashi’s answer sends you out of the room: הלך אחר בית דין יפה, go after a good court. On that reading the line is not aimed at judges at all - it is telling you to take the trouble of finding the best court rather than the nearest one. Ibn Ezra, unusually, gives three answers and refuses to pick one: pursue justice whether the just outcome gains you something or costs you something; or pursue it over and over, all the days of your life; or the repetition is simply for emphasis and means nothing more. He also says outright what Rashi’s reading only implies - that Moshe here is speaking to the litigants, not to the judges. And the Talmud in Sanhedrin offers something different again: one צדק for strict law and one for compromise, which would mean that a settlement is a second kind of justice rather than a failure to reach the first. That is five readings of one repeated word, and they pull in different directions. Deciding which one you hold is not a technicality; it changes what the most quoted sentence in Israeli public life is actually asking you to do.

The doubling is the crux, and there is no consensus. Rashi, following Sifrei Devarim 144 and Sanhedrin 32b, glosses it הלך אחר בית דין יפה - go after a good court; the Gemara there names the destinations, אחר רבי אליעזר ללוד, אחר רבן יוחנן בן זכאי לברור חיל. On that reading the verse turns from the judges to the litigant: pursuing justice means the effort of taking your case to the finest court available rather than the nearest. Or HaChaim sharpens it into a rule about not settling: where a city has two outstanding scholars and two who are merely competent, a man may not say that since the competent pair can rule justly he will spare the great ones the trouble - צדק צדק teaches that הגם שהשגת לדיינים שהם ראויים, עליך לחזור אחר היותר ראויים מהם, even once you have found judges who are fit, you must go after the more fit. Sanhedrin 32b also preserves a quite different reading, אחד לדין ואחד לפשרה, one for strict law and one for compromise, which makes the second צדק a distinct species of justice rather than a repetition of the first. Ibn Ezra states plainly that Moshe here addresses the parties to the dispute - עם בעלי הריב ידבר - and offers three possibilities for the doubling: pursue what is just whether you profit or lose by it; or פעם אחר פעם, again and again, all your days; or the word is doubled לחזוק, for emphasis alone. Rabbeinu Bachya’s peshat takes the two words as speech and deed, the two instruments by which a person damages himself or others. Ramban gathers the strands - the judges are to judge righteously, and you are to pursue justice constantly by going from your place to the place of the great sages - and then adds a further, mystical layer following the Midrash of Rabbi Nechunya ben Hakanah, in which the two words become a lower justice and a higher one. What hangs on the disagreement is the address: whether the sentence indicts the bench or the person standing in front of it. On the closing clause Rashi, again from the Sifrei, is startlingly concrete - כדאי הוא מינוי הדיינין הכשרים להחיות את ישראל ולהושיבן על אדמתן: appointing fit judges is by itself sufficient merit to keep Israel alive and settled on its land. Ibn Ezra notices that the two verbs have two audiences: תחיה is said to those about to enter, וירשת to their children, והטעם שתעמוד לך זו הירושה, the point being that the inheritance will hold. The promise is pitched a generation past the people hearing it.