[Note: This is the prepared text of a message given to The Dalles congregation of the United Church of God on Sabbath, February 10, 2024.]

When I last spoke here I talked about the power of a teacher, and how it is that a position that we in the United States tend to not view as a very powerful position is, in fact, a position that is viewed as very powerful within the scriptures. Today I will begin a discussion on the power of a position that no one will view as not being powerful. In all places and times, judges have been viewed as being immensely powerful. So powerful is the institution of being a judge that it is considered to be one of the three branches of government, albeit the third most important of them, after the legislative and executive branches of government. If you will pardon my review of basic principles of civics, the legislative branch is responsible for making law, which is the most powerful aspect of government. The executive branch is concerned with enforcing law, which is next in importance. The judicial branch’s task is to interpret law. 

This power is far more broad than one might think at the outset. It is easy to think of people in black robes, and in other countries in powdered wigs, as being judges, but being a judge is not a particularly uncommon task. Anyone who engages in arbitration or mediation of disputes is a judge. Anyone who referees in sports is engaged in the task of interpreting conduct by the rules of a game. Anyone who critiques or reviews the performance of people is similarly engaging as a judge, in comparing the evidence or reality before our eyes–dim as they may be–with what we judge to be the standard by which things should be or should be done. 

We live in a day and age that has contradictory thoughts and opinions when it comes to judges and judging. On the one hand, everyone (myself certainly included) considers ourselves to be a skilled and qualified judge of all kinds of matters. People consider themselves as having a God-given gift to critique anything and do so with insight and wisdom, with the expectation of being thanked for our constructive criticism, often given ungraciously and speaking with the voice of absolute truth. Yet on the other hand, we can easily see all around us that judges are corrupt and make evil judgments, that referees are blind and may in fact be bought and paid for to produce the desired outcomes of games rather than to fairly adjudicate them. Similarly, the people of our age, while freely judging everything and everyone else by our own standards, absolutely hates being judged by anyone else, which makes perfect sense since others judge with the same maladroit harshness and tactlessness that we do, which we are lot more sensitive to receiving then we are to dishing out on others.

When we speak, therefore, of the power of a judge, we are not talking about power over others, or a power that we wish to have someday, but we are rather talking about a power that we regularly exercise, frequently criticize, and struggle to use well. Judgement is an exceeding broad issue, and though we are looking at the power and the responsibility of judgment as it is expressed in the Bible, this is broad enough that it will take considerable time to work our way through it. Today, I would like to lay a groundwork for what we mean by the position of a judge, the act of judging, and the reality of judgment as they appear in the Bible. This will, of necessity, be an introductory account, and we will return to many of these passages to look at deeper layers of the issue of being a judge and judging righteous judgment and explore the complexities of the topic. It would be too much to expect, and the wrong thing to expect, that we should not be judges at all. Indeed, the Bible is very emphatic that we should judge, though this is hedged about with all kinds of qualifications and limitations as to what we are competent to judge here and now as human beings. What is a reasonable expectation is that by examining the biblical discussion on judges and judging, we may be better judges and more competent in a task that we all have appointed to ourselves in this present age and that we hope to continue doing in the age to come.

If we look in our Bibles, written as they likely are in English, the first time we come across the word judge, it comes in what might seem to us to be a strange context in Genesis 15:14. Let us, in order to better understand what is being meant by judging here, give the more complete context in Genesis 15:12-16, which concerns a prophecy given to Abraham by God. Genesis 15:12-16 reads: ”Now when the sun was going down, a deep sleep fell upon Abram; and behold, horror and great darkness fell upon him.  Then He said to Abram: “Know certainly that your descendants will be strangers in a land that is not theirs, and will serve them, and they will afflict them four hundred years.  And also the nation whom they serve I will judge; afterward they shall come out with great possessions.  Now as for you, you shall go to your fathers in peace; you shall be buried at a good old age.  But in the fourth generation they shall return here, for the iniquity of the Amorites is not yet complete.”” This particular passage concerns judgment on several layers. First, God tells Abraham that his descendants, the children of Israel, will go into Egypt as strangers and will be oppressed in a land that does not belong to them for hundreds of years. Given the genealogies in the Bible, this time period had apparently already begun when Abraham and Sarah themselves went to Egypt. Be that as it may, God promised that He would judge Egypt for oppressing Israel, as he did with the ten plagues. It is interesting to note, though that Israel would then enter into the promised land, a land that would belong to them, as the instrument of God’s judgment upon the Amorites, but because the iniquity of that people had not risen to the level (yet) of being wiped off the face of the earth, that judgment would be delayed until it was fully deserved.

Considering that judgment is connected with the ten plagues as well as with the removal of the Amorites from the land because of their sin, it is clear that the power of this judgment is one that many people have longed to wield for themselves. The thought that one could be the vessel through whom God would bring destruction and curses on the wicked has been an appealing one throughout history, and has led to a proliferation of self-appointed prophets and judges over humanity. We will see, later on, why this is a bad thing, not least for those who appoint themselves to such positions. In the meantime, though, it would be worthwhile to look at the first three passages in the Bible in which judge appears as a noun, all of which occur, as we might expect, in the book of Genesis. In looking at these three passages, we are reminded of three of the essential aspects and dangers of seeking to be a judge and of being viewed as a judge by others.

The first of these passages is found in Genesis 18:16-26. This passage concerns the beginning of Abraham’s negotiation with God over the fate of Sodom and Gomorrah. Genesis 18:16-26 reads ”Then the men rose from there and looked toward Sodom, and Abraham went with them to send them on the way.  And the Lord said, “Shall I hide from Abraham what I am doing, since Abraham shall surely become a great and mighty nation, and all the nations of the earth shall be blessed in him?  For I have known him, in order that he may command his children and his household after him, that they keep the way of the Lord, to do righteousness and justice, that the Lord may bring to Abraham what He has spoken to him.”  And the Lord said, “Because the outcry against Sodom and Gomorrah is great, and because their sin is very grave, I will go down now and see whether they have done altogether according to the outcry against it that has come to Me; and if not, I will know.” Then the men turned away from there and went toward Sodom, but Abraham still stood before the Lord.  And Abraham came near and said, “Would You also destroy the righteous with the wicked?  Suppose there were fifty righteous within the city; would You also destroy the place and not spare it for the fifty righteous that were in it?  Far be it from You to do such a thing as this, to slay the righteous with the wicked, so that the righteous should be as the wicked; far be it from You! Shall not the Judge of all the earth do right?” So the Lord said, “If I find in Sodom fifty righteous within the city, then I will spare all the place for their sakes.””

Let us note that, appropriately, the first being described in the Bible as a judge is God. It should be obvious that among the most important aspects of being a judge is judging righteously. Let us examine, though, how Abraham conceives of this duty to judge righteously. It does not consist in condemning the wicked, but rather in delivering the innocent. Just as Abraham did, we are faced in our own present evil age with cities in which great evil and perversity can be found. Abraham had Sodom and Gomorrah in his neighborhood, and we have cities like Portland, Seattle, and San Francisco. Can we see ourselves doing what Abraham did, and asking God to spare cities God knows and we know are wicked? Would we ask for Portland to be saved, despite its grave wickedness, for the sake of fifty, much less of ten? Would we do as Abraham did in bargaining down God from an already pretty low number of righteous to a truly staggeringly low number of people that Sodom, Gomorrah, Admah, and Zeboiim still did not have. These cities did not contain ten righteous people–ultimately, there was only one, Lot, and his daughters, themselves not particularly righteous, were saved due to their father’s righteousness and not their own. That is, however, getting ahead of the story.

Interestingly enough, the second person referred to as being a judge is Lot himself, and this ought to remind us of the ominous nature of what it means to be a judge or to be viewed as a judge. We find this reference in the next chapter of the Bible, in Genesis 19:1-11. Genesis 19:1-11 reads: ”Now the two angels came to Sodom in the evening, and Lot was sitting in the gate of Sodom. When Lot saw them, he rose to meet them, and he bowed himself with his face toward the ground.  And he said, “Here now, my lords, please turn in to your servant’s house and spend the night, and wash your feet; then you may rise early and go on your way.” And they said, “No, but we will spend the night in the open square.” But he insisted strongly; so they turned in to him and entered his house. Then he made them a feast, and baked unleavened bread, and they ate. Now before they lay down, the men of the city, the men of Sodom, both old and young, all the people from every quarter, surrounded the house.  And they called to Lot and said to him, “Where are the men who came to you tonight? Bring them out to us that we may know them carnally.” So Lot went out to them through the doorway, shut the door behind him, and said, “Please, my brethren, do not do so wickedly!  See now, I have two daughters who have not known a man; please, let me bring them out to you, and you may do to them as you wish; only do nothing to these men, since this is the reason they have come under the shadow of my roof.” And they said, “Stand back!” Then they said, “This one came in to stay here, and he keeps acting as a judge; now we will deal worse with you than with them.” So they pressed hard against the man Lot, and came near to break down the door.  But the men reached out their hands and pulled Lot into the house with them, and shut the door.  And they struck the men who were at the doorway of the house with blindness, both small and great, so that they became weary trying to find the door.””

We should remember from our last passage that Abraham spent a considerable amount of time haggling over the lives of the people who, unbeknownst to him, were trying to sexually assault the two angels who came to visit his nephew Lot. As you might guess, this was a bad idea. I commented earlier that one of the phenomena of our age is that people do not like others to act like judges over them, and while this may be a consistent aspect of human nature, it is certainly true that people in ages where there is much to criticize and condemn are particularly unwilling to be criticized or condemned. Judgment is one of those areas where it is tolerated best by those who deserve and receive the least of it, and most hated by those who deserve and receive it the most. This is not something we often consider, though, when we appoint ourselves as judges of others. We feel proud to be judges because it makes us feel good to critique others, and puts us in a position of superiority over them. On the other hand, people who are judged feel as if they are being belittled and attacked, and unless one is very gracious and polite about one’s comments, they are not going to be happy to hear or take into account what someone has to say who is judging them. However much this may have been true in the past, it is even more true now. We may consider it to be a great thing to be a judge, but other people may not be as thrilled to hear that we have appointed ourselves to be judges over their district.

The third example of someone who is called a judge is going to need a bit of context to explain. To do that, we will have to explain a little bit about the household of Jacob. Jacob loved Rachel, but God granted Leah fertility, which Rachel was denied, and so the two rival sister-wives sought to compete with themselves through the naming of their children. We see one of the examples of this in Genesis 30:1-6. Genesis 30:1-6 reads: ”Now when Rachel saw that she bore Jacob no children, Rachel envied her sister, and said to Jacob, “Give me children, or else I die!” And Jacob’s anger was aroused against Rachel, and he said, “Am I in the place of God, who has withheld from you the fruit of the womb?” So she said, “Here is my maid Bilhah; go in to her, and she will bear a child on my knees, that I also may have children by her.”  Then she gave him Bilhah her maid as wife, and Jacob went in to her.  And Bilhah conceived and bore Jacob a son.  Then Rachel said, “God has judged my case; and He has also heard my voice and given me a son.” Therefore she called his name Dan.” This may seem like a trivial thing to mention, but Dan’s identity as a judge is something that would come up again.

It is worth mentioning the relationship between Dan and judging because when we read Jacob’s blessing of his children in Genesis 49, his references to Dan, which can be found in Genesis 49:16-18, connect with that role as a judge. Genesis 49:16-18 reads: ”“Dan shall judge his people as one of the tribes of Israel. Dan shall be a serpent by the way, a viper by the path, that bites the horse’s heels so that its rider shall fall backward. I have waited for your salvation, O Lord!” We might think that being a judge would be a good thing, but it does not appear to be so, at least for the people of Dan. Being a judge of his people as one of the tribes of Israel does not work out well for Dan, for a variety of reasons. During the time of the Judges, about which we will discuss a lot more shortly and later on, the tribe of Dan had to evacuate their allotted territory due to their inability to defeat the Philistines and many of the tribe settled in the area around a city named after the tribe that was famous for its idolatrous practices. Moreover, the tribe of Dan is the only one of the thirteen groupings within Israel that is not included as part of the 144,000 either under its own name or, as is the case with Ephraim, under another name. Dan’s role as a judge over its own people did not allow the tribe to be delivered at all from the Great Tribulation. Perhaps it would have been better to spend more time judging its own tribal behaviors and not the behavior of others, advice that many other people should take to heart as well.

Since we have introduced the initial situation where judging was listed as well as some of the issues that are brought up when we look at the term judge is attached to people–issues that remain with us to this day–it is worthwhile for us to examine the language that the Bible uses to refer to judges and judging. When we understand the language that the Bible uses in order to describe the subject, we can better deal with the complexity that has always been attached to the role of judge in the Bible. As is true in our own society, judges have a broad role, and what we consider as being in charge of interpreting law and successfully dealing with conflict is only one part of the role of a judge, and not even the role that one sees the most when one looks at how judges are portrayed in the Bible. When we understand how it is that judges are portrayed in the bible we can understand what is it we want from judges, and why it is that the way we see ourselves when we think about judging and the way that others see judges as being worthwhile and important are often at odds with each other.

The main word used for judge in Hebrew is transliterated shâphaṭ (shaw-fat), which has a variety of meanings relating to judge, such as to vindicate, to punish, to have authority over, to govern, to litigate, to plead, to reason, and to rule. The word is used 203 times in the Hebrew Bible, but it is interesting to note that while we often see the term used as being a noun, in referring to God, Lot, or Dan as a being who is a judge, the Hebrew term is a verb. Judging is an action, not an identity. We would be better served to reflect upon this difference as well, because we often judge as an activity but struggle to understand how this can create problems with others who resent our having an identity as if we are somehow qualified to pass judgment on them when we obviously do not have that credibility or title.

Things are a bit different when we look at the Greek. The term krino (kree-no) is used 114 times in the New Testament, and it is used to mean to distinguish, to condemn, to sue in court, to avenge, to condemn, to think (critically), to call into question. There is, however, a specific word in Greek, krites (kree-tess), which refers to someone who has the title or position of judge, and it is a rarer word, used only seventeen times, which indicates that while the act of judging and distinguishing is a relatively common thing, having the position of a judge is a relatively rare thing. It is, indeed, such a rare thing that it would be worthwhile to examine all of the passages that refer to someone as a judge, and to come to an understanding of what the Bible means by the position itself, while we also undertake a more selective view of the far more common situation of people engaged in distinguishing between right and wrong, or between better and best, that marks the way that we improve our critical thinking and discernment, which makes us better judges of situations.

Having taken a bit of time to explain our terms, let us turn our attention to the issues of judging that we learn from the life of Moses. In many ways, Moses served as the template for the ideal view that God had for how Israel was to be ruled by judges. We ordinarily think of the judges as being somewhat informal deliverers who God raised up to deal with Israel’s problems and to provide charismatic leadership, but the judges as an institution spring from the example of Moses. Yet Moses’ example did not begin very auspiciously, and Moses’ experience as a judge over Israel demonstrates the problems that are faced when the righteous govern over the unrighteous, and why it is that authority is not all that it is cracked up to be. The unwise seek after authority because they imagine that it will give them power over others, but the wise person understands that having a great deal of responsibility does not always mean having the sort of power to shape the world and to shape people as we might wish.

We first find Moses being referred to as a judge in a revealing passage that helps us to better understand the difference between contemporary views of justice and biblical views of justice and authority. We find this passage in Exodus 2:11-25, and it shows Moses as a person concerned with justice, but where it does not exactly work out as he would expect (or as similarly inclined people nowadays would expect either). Exodus 2:11-25 reads: ”Now it came to pass in those days, when Moses was grown, that he went out to his brethren and looked at their burdens. And he saw an Egyptian beating a Hebrew, one of his brethren.  So he looked this way and that way, and when he saw no one, he killed the Egyptian and hid him in the sand.  And when he went out the second day, behold, two Hebrew men were fighting, and he said to the one who did the wrong, “Why are you striking your companion?” Then he said, “Who made you a prince and a judge over us? Do you intend to kill me as you killed the Egyptian?” So Moses feared and said, “Surely this thing is known!”  When Pharaoh heard of this matter, he sought to kill Moses. But Moses fled from the face of Pharaoh and dwelt in the land of Midian; and he sat down by a well. Now the priest of Midian had seven daughters. And they came and drew water, and they filled the troughs to water their father’s flock.  Then the shepherds came and drove them away; but Moses stood up and helped them, and watered their flock. When they came to Reuel their father, he said, “How is it that you have come so soon today?” And they said, “An Egyptian delivered us from the hand of the shepherds, and he also drew enough water for us and watered the flock.” So he said to his daughters, “And where is he? Why is it that you have left the man? Call him, that he may eat bread.” Then Moses was content to live with the man, and he gave Zipporah his daughter to Moses.  And she bore him a son. He called his name Gershom, for he said, “I have been a stranger in a foreign land.” Now it happened in the process of time that the king of Egypt died. Then the children of Israel groaned because of the bondage, and they cried out; and their cry came up to God because of the bondage.  So God heard their groaning, and God remembered His covenant with Abraham, with Isaac, and with Jacob.  And God looked upon the children of Israel, and God acknowledged them.“

There’s a lot going on in this passage relating to issues of judgment and justice, so let us start from the beginning. When Moses got to the age of forty years of age, he identified with his native people of Israel and thought (correctly) that because of his privileged place within the Egyptian royal family, he surely must have a divinely appointed place leading his people to freedom. Unfortunately, he went about it the wrong way, and (incorrectly) thought that Israel would instantly recognize his fitness for the role of leader and that God would at that time deliver Israel through him. He also appears to have thought, as do many people today, that oppressed subaltern groups themselves are always just in their dealings, but he finds out after having killed a cruel taskmaster that Israelites could be just as unjust to each other as the Egyptians were to them. He also found out that while he had tried to keep his killing of the Egyptian overseer secret, that obviously this secret spread and he was in danger. Recognizing, belatedly, that God had not blessed these efforts at bringing about justice and deliverance for Israel, Moses fled, and found his way to Midian.

When Moses found himself at Midian, he immediately found himself in a situation where his sense of justice was provoked, in defending a group of young women, the daughter of Jethro, from the harassment of shepherds who did not think such women had anyone who would defend their interests. The young women seemed to notice the generosity of Moses at the well–a common place in the Bible concerned with issues of marriage for gallant single men–but appear not to have been the brightest crayons in the box. When they returned home far earlier than usual, their father asked them what had happened, and when they told him that some single Egyptian man had helped them and their flocks out, Jethro rather sensibly asks them why they did not bring the man home to become part of their household. Belatedly, they do so, and Moses is content to marry one of Jethro’s daughters, Zipporah, and spends the next forty years of his life tending to his father-in-law’s flocks until God “remembers” His people and also remembers that He had prepared Moses to deliver them, and that it was time for that deliverance to take place.

Let us continue looking for one more layer of this passage as it relates to the subject of judging. When Moses had first sought to deliver his people through his own hand and thought that Israel would recognize his fitness to rule, the unjust Israelite asked him rather pointedly, and presumably sarcastically, who had made Moses judge over them. The answer, of course, was that God had, but though this was obvious (at the time) to Moses, it was not something that God wanted to make obvious at that time, but rather later on, when Moses would approach the task of leadership with the humility of having spent forty years cooling his heels in the heat of the desert rather than in viewing himself to be God’s gift to Israel and something special as a leader. God does not want arrogant blowhards who trumpet their own skills and abilities to be in charge of His people, but rather those who have been humbled by the challenges and struggles of life and who look to God as the source of their opportunities to rule and as the true recipient of any glory that results from their leadership. Let us also note here that Moses’ experience mirrors that of later judges in that God raises Moses up at the time when he remembers the suffering of His people and decides to bring that oppression to an end. This is precisely the timing of the rise of the judges as we would see later on, and yet it is striking that so few people see Moses as being a model for the sort of leadership that God provided to Israel in Judges, likely because we see the time of the Judges as a failure, and because most people want strong leaders who build more lasting institutions than the rather personal leadership that the Judges provided to Israel in their own time.

When we next see Moses as a judge, we also find it in an interesting situation, one that also has a lot to say about our own view of judges as well as our own view of authority and its structure in the divine economy. We find Moses acting as judge just before God gives Israel the ten commandments and the laws of the covenant that immediately follow it, and it is an instructive if often overlooked passage. We find this passage in Exodus 18:1-27, indeed, the whole chapter of Exodus 18. Exodus 18:1-27 reads: ”And Jethro, the priest of Midian, Moses’ father-in-law, heard of all that God had done for Moses and for Israel His people—that the Lord had brought Israel out of Egypt.  Then Jethro, Moses’ father-in-law, took Zipporah, Moses’ wife, after he had sent her back, with her two sons, of whom the name of one was Gershom (for he said, “I have been a stranger in a foreign land”) ⁴ and the name of the other was Eliezer (for he said, “The God of my father was my help, and delivered me from the sword of Pharaoh”); and Jethro, Moses’ father-in-law, came with his sons and his wife to Moses in the wilderness, where he was encamped at the mountain of God.  Now he had said to Moses, “I, your father-in-law Jethro, am coming to you with your wife and her two sons with her.” So Moses went out to meet his father-in-law, bowed down, and kissed him. And they asked each other about their well-being, and they went into the tent.  And Moses told his father-in-law all that the Lord had done to Pharaoh and to the Egyptians for Israel’s sake, all the hardship that had come upon them on the way, and how the Lord had delivered them.  Then Jethro rejoiced for all the good which the Lord had done for Israel, whom He had delivered out of the hand of the Egyptians.  And Jethro said, “Blessed be the Lord, who has delivered you out of the hand of the Egyptians and out of the hand of Pharaoh, and who has delivered the people from under the hand of the Egyptians.  Now I know that the Lord is greater than all the gods; for in the very thing in which they behaved proudly, He was above them.”  Then Jethro, Moses’ father-in-law, took a burnt offering and other sacrifices to offer to God. And Aaron came with all the elders of Israel to eat bread with Moses’ father-in-law before God. And so it was, on the next day, that Moses sat to judge the people; and the people stood before Moses from morning until evening.  So when Moses’ father-in-law saw all that he did for the people, he said, “What is this thing that you are doing for the people? Why do you alone sit, and all the people stand before you from morning until evening?” And Moses said to his father-in-law, “Because the people come to me to inquire of God.  When they have a  difficulty, they come to me, and I judge between one and another; and I make known the statutes of God and His laws.” So Moses’ father-in-law said to him, “The thing that you do is not good.  Both you and these people who are with you will surely wear yourselves out. For this thing is too much for you; you are not able to perform it by yourself.  Listen now to my voice; I will give you counsel, and God will be with you: Stand before God for the people, so that you may bring the difficulties to God.  And you shall teach them the statutes and the laws, and show them the way in which they must walk and the work they must do.  Moreover you shall select from all the people able men, such as fear God, men of truth, hating covetousness; and place such over them to be rulers of thousands, rulers of hundreds, rulers of fifties, and rulers of tens.  And let them judge the people at all times. Then it will be that every great matter they shall bring to you, but every small matter they themselves shall judge. So it will be easier for you, for they will bear the burden with you. If you do this thing, and God so commands you, then you will be able to endure, and all this people will also go to their place in peace.” So Moses heeded the voice of his father-in-law and did all that he had said.  And Moses chose able men out of all Israel, and made them heads over the people: rulers of thousands, rulers of hundreds, rulers of fifties, and rulers of tens.  So they judged the people at all times; the hard cases they brought to Moses, but they judged every small case themselves. Then Moses let his father-in-law depart, and he went his way to his own land.”

This passage may not strike us as unusual, but there are a lot of elements of this passage that teach us about how God operates and how He wants judging to take place. In this passage, we see Moses as a judge, and the text literally says that he sat to judge the people in a way that we would be familiar with seeing judges, sitting on a chair and pronouncing judgement on the people of Israel. Just as Moses served as a type of the judge in the way that he delivered Israel as God’s servant from the oppression that they suffered in Egypt, so too he serves as a model for the judge in the way that we are familiar with, interpreting the law of God for a people for whom that law was not particularly clear, and spending all day dealing with the many disputes and questions of Israel. There are many people who have incorrectly thought that Moses made a great model as a one-man leader over God’s people, and the sight of Moses serving as the judge over Israel, solving all of their problems and exercising the gift of God’s spirit and insight that had been given to him to deal with their issues, might be viewed as a good thing. 

The Bible, however, views it as a bad thing. Jethro says that this thing is not right and that Moses would wear himself and Israel out if he kept up this autocratic role of being the sole human judge over Israel. What Jethro recommends is the exact opposite of a top-down approach, where Moses would teach others God’s law and set up a bottom-up appeals court procedure where godly individuals were equipped and trained to enforce God’s law and deal with the little matters, rather than relying on Moses’ supposed insight in knowing what people are doing wrong and need to do better, letting him handle only those big matters of legal interpretation that are too difficult to resolve and that need God’s own wisdom to determine properly. There would be enough of these issues, like that of Zelophehad’s daughters and their inheritance, without having to deal with all the petty matters that come up on a continual basis and can be dealt with by the lesser judges of five, ten, fifty, or a thousand. Far from one-man rule and a leader who seeks to gratify his own ego as being something special in insight, Exodus shows Moses willing to share authority widely to help other people develop their capacity for rule and interpreting and enforcing God’s law as well as humility in accepting the advice of someone else rather than stubbornly doing what he had been doing.

Interestingly, just as we earlier saw Abraham interceding for Sodom and Gomorrah with God, so too we find Moses engaged in precisely this role of appealing to God’s mercy rather than encouraging God’s harshness of judgement at the time when Israel had sinned in the manner of the Golden calf.  Exodus 32:7-14 gives us a look at Moses’ intercessory role, which is an important aspect of how judges are to behave. Exodus 32:7-14 reads: ”And the Lord said to Moses, “Go, get down! For your people whom you brought out of the land of Egypt have corrupted themselves.  They have turned aside quickly out of the way which I commanded them. They have made themselves a molded calf, and worshiped it and sacrificed to it, and said, ‘This is your god, O Israel, that brought you out of the land of Egypt!’ ”  And the Lord said to Moses, “I have seen this people, and indeed it is a stiff-necked people!  Now therefore, let Me alone, that My wrath may burn hot against them and I may consume them. And I will make of you a great nation.” Then Moses pleaded with the Lord his God, and said: “Lord, why does Your wrath burn hot against Your people whom You have brought out of the land of Egypt with great power and with a mighty hand?  Why should the Egyptians speak, and say, ‘He brought them out to harm them, to kill them in the mountains, and to consume them from the face of the earth’? Turn from Your fierce wrath, and relent from this harm to Your people.  Remember Abraham, Isaac, and Israel, Your servants, to whom You swore by Your own self, and said to them, ‘I will multiply your descendants as the stars of heaven; and all this land that I have spoken of I give to your descendants, and they shall inherit it forever.’ ”  So the Lord relented from the harm which He said He would do to His people.”

Given the constant complaining and griping and negativity of the Israelites, it could not have been easy for Moses to urge God to be merciful to Israel when they had sinned so catastrophically while Moses was in the process of bringing the law to them that they had sworn just days before to obey with all their heart, all their soul, and all their strength. God had promised to bless the descendants of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, not because of their righteousness but because of the righteousness of their fathers. How many of us would be able to urge God to be merciful to those who were sinning rather than to wipe them off the face of the earth? God is slow to anger, quick to forgive, longsuffering, showing mercy to thousands. Of how many of us can the same be said? How many of us, if we were given the power to judge by God’s laws and ways, would be able to engage in this task with mercy and intercede for the guilty rather than use our power to throw the book at those people who bothered and irritated us and whose sinful behavior violated God’s laws and ways?

We have already seen the appeals court system that Jethro urged Moses to establish in order to reduce his own burden in judging, but that was still not enough, and throughout the book of Numbers we find Moses driven to distraction by the rebellion of Israel against the minority report brought by Joshua and Caleb, their constant griping for water and meat, for example, as well as the rebellion of Korah, and even the disrespect shown to him by his own brother and sister who all fancied themselves to be someone special. In light of these problems, in Numbers 11:16-30, God gave Moses another means by which to reduce his own authority and spread the burden of leadership broader on the people of Israel so it would not lie so heavily on himself alone. Numbers 11:16-30 reads: ”So the Lord said to Moses: “Gather to Me seventy men of the elders of Israel, whom you know to be the elders of the people and officers over them; bring them to the tabernacle of meeting, that they may stand there with you.  Then I will come down and talk with you there. I will take of the Spirit that is upon you and will put the same upon them; and they shall bear the burden of the people with you, that you may not bear it yourself alone.  Then you shall say to the people, ‘Consecrate yourselves for tomorrow, and you shall eat meat; for you have wept in the hearing of the Lord, saying, “Who will give us meat to eat? For it was well with us in Egypt.” Therefore the Lord will give you meat, and you shall eat.  You shall eat, not one day, nor two days, nor five days, nor ten days, nor twenty days, but for a whole month, until it comes out of your nostrils and becomes loathsome to you, because you have despised the Lord who is among you, and have wept before Him, saying, “Why did we ever come up out of Egypt?” ’ ” And Moses said, “The people whom I am among are six hundred thousand men on foot; yet You have said, ‘I will give them meat, that they may eat for a whole month.’  Shall flocks and herds be slaughtered for them, to provide enough for them? Or shall all the fish of the sea be gathered together for them, to provide enough for them?” And the Lord said to Moses, “Has^[g] the Lord’s arm been shortened? Now you shall see whether what I say will happen to you or not.” So Moses went out and told the people the words of the Lord, and he gathered the seventy men of the elders of the people and placed them around the tabernacle.  Then the Lord came down in the cloud, and spoke to him, and took of the Spirit that was upon him, and placed the same upon the seventy elders; and it happened, when the Spirit rested upon them, that they prophesied, although they never did so again. But two men had remained in the camp: the name of one was Eldad, and the name of the other Medad. And the Spirit rested upon them. Now they were among those listed, but who had not gone out to the tabernacle; yet they prophesied in the camp.  And a young man ran and told Moses, and said, “Eldad and Medad are prophesying in the camp.” So Joshua the son of Nun, Moses’ assistant, one of his choice men, answered and said, “Moses my lord, forbid them!” Then Moses said to him, “Are you zealous for my sake? Oh, that all the Lord’s people were prophets and that the Lord would put His Spirit upon them!”  And Moses returned to the camp, he and the elders of Israel.”

It interesting to note that Moses’ humility was such that he did not see the giving of the Holy Spirit and the placing of some of His authority and the burden of leadership on seventy elders as a diminishing of God’s favor of him. When Joshua is zealous for Moses’ sake and the sake of Moses’ leadership when some apparently unauthorized people who had remained in camp, despite being chosen among the elders, themselves prophesied when given God’s Holy Spirit, Moses responds that he wished that all Israel was given God’s Holy Spirit and would be able to take the burden of leadership and service upon themselves. How many of us, if we had Moses’ authority and position, would be so willing for others to step up to share in the burden of service and leadership, and how many of us would seek to hoard and protect those offices and that authority for ourselves? I do not pretend to answer this question for everyone, but it is worthwhile for us to answer this question for ourselves.

In today’s message I introduced the subject of the power of being a judge, and showed how it was that the Bible introduces the subject and what issues are brought up concerning being a judge when the title is first brought up in scripture with regards to God and to others. After that, we discussed the words that are used to describe judging and being a judge in both the Old and New Testament, and noted that while the Hebrew scriptures are uniform in considering judging to be a verb, the Greek has a lesser known noun, which we will discuss in the future, God willing, when we return to this subject. It should also be noted that while the Hebrew views judging as a verb uniformly, the English language translations that we read tend to translate this verb as a noun in many cases. We then discussed Moses’ role as being a foundational model for how it is that a judge should deliver Israel, interpret God’s law, intercede for a sinful people before a just God, and help build up godly leadership within Israel as a whole rather than seek autocratic rule over God’s people as is the way of the corrupt heathen rulers of human history and contemporary experience. When we return to this subject next, we will look at the way that judges are portrayed in the book of Judges, and it will end up being a lot different than we imagine. But that is a subject for another time.