Shabbos Parashas Shoftim - 5777

Shabbos Parashas Shoftim - 5777

Rabbi Hal Miller

You shall surely set over yourself a king whom Hashem, your G-d shall choose, from

among your brethren shall you set a king over yourself; you cannot place over yourself

a foreign man who is not your brother. [Devarim 17:15]

Our parsha begins with "Judges and officers shall you appoint in all your cities." [16:18]

It isn't for another full chapter that the Torah gets around to the appointment of a king. It

would seem they should go together. If the intervening verses were somehow related,

we could understand the progression, but most of what comes in the middle is not at all

related to the leadership issues. We might have thought that the earlier verse may have

applied to individuals or to local groups, such as the commands about judges over tens

and fifties and hundreds, and would expect that the commands about the king would

apply instead to the entire people, but the language in both cases is in the singular. So

what difference causes this separating out of our verse from that of earlier similar ones?

Certainly we can find one difference from the verse immediately before ours, [17:14] "When

you come to the land that Hashem, your G-d, gives you, and possess it, and settle in it, and

you will say, 'I will set a king over myself, like all the nations that are around me'." Appointing

a king only happens after the conquering of the land, where the other officials are appointed

even in the desert and during the war of conquest.

A second difference is that the earlier verse says "shall you appoint", and our verse says,

"whom Hashem your G-d shall choose". The people are involved completely in the first

instance, but only marginally, "you shall surely set over yourself", in the second. Who

selects the leaders depends on the role the leaders are to play.

Rav Moshe Feinstein sees another difference, who holds the political power within the

nation. In the earlier verse, G-d is assigning that power directly to the people, but in the

later verse, He assigns it to the king.

Rav Hirsch has a similar view. In the earlier verse, the people retain the power, and could

presumably replace the officers they select. In our verse, the people are subordinating

themselves to one man. In that case, this man must be a prophet or similar, one who G-d

has chosen, and whom the people cannot replace at their whim. Rav Hirsch also notes

that the only war that a king should be involved in is the war against Amalek. All the wars

of conquest were to be completed before the king's appointment, and under the leadership

of the officers chosen by the people.