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Is it OK to mix the practices of other religions with the worship of God? How far must we go in following the instructions of leaders and judges? These are the sobering lessons on the standards of Heaven and earthly authorities raised in the Torah passage שֹׁפְטִים Shoftim (“judges,” Deut. 16:18–21:9).
Deuteronomy 16: Judges must judge justly
Judges 9: Abimelech the bad judge
What are his credentials for judgeship? In this case, is it a righteous judgment in the past? Has he made good judgments or good corrections or good righteous decisions in the past, being fair to people? No, his claim to fame was, “I am your own flesh and bone.” The people then agreed with him.
So, a judge must not only only be just but the people themselves was actually enforce the just requirement. If they fail to do so, they get what they deserve.
In the parable of the trees by Yotam (Jotham) in this passage underscores that a “good” tree provides “good” fruit — right living, i.e., righteousness. Messiah Yeshua referenced this parable multiple times to those who knew the words of God (Matt. 3:10; 7:17–19; 12:33; Luke 3:9; 6:43).
A judge is only “good” if he pursues righteous justice. Drawing from Deut. 16:19, Yeshua appealed to Israel’s judges to come to a just judgment about Him.
“Do not judge according to appearance, but judge with righteous judgment.”
John 7:24 NASB
Deut. 16:19; 1Kings 3: Judges must be impartial
Judges should also must not be partial, to “recognize” people who come before them (Deut. 16:19). We call that a conflict of interest, and even in secular circles today the appearance of that is considered a corruption of the system.
King Solomon’s wise “splitting the baby” decision came across as dispassionate and even callous, but it was a deep pursuit of justice to turn back the injustice of the kidnapping mom.
Deuteronomy 16:20–22: Don’t mix the domain of Heaven and the pagan
We don’t get to mix the Do-Not-Dos and the Yes-Dos together — aka syncretism. Don’t mix the worship of other gods in your practice or your techniques of how you worship your God. He doesn’t like the mixture.
For example, mixing Sunday with Shabbat or mixing Easter, Christmas or Halloween with with God’s other appointed times gives you a perverted system. Some will say, “I worship my God like this over here,” even though He said to worship me like that over there. That’s trying to move worship from His Do-Not-Do column to His Yes-Do column.
Deuteronomy 19: Murder
Important in this discussion is the role of the sanctuary cities to act like modern-day “country club” prisons for cases where malice can’t be proved conclusively (“beyond a reasonable doubt” in U.S. judicial parlance) by at least two thoroughly interrogated witnesses. Tradition has it that capital punishment was rarely carried out in ancient Israel, for that reason.
And not to be overlooked is the importance of the independent accounts of Yeshua’s deeds and teachings recorded in the four Gospels.
Accounts of the corruption of witnesses in judicial system when it came to capital cases were Naboth (1Kings 21) and the trials of Yeshua (Matthew 26) and Stephen.
Deuteronomy 17:11, 20: Follow unjust judges?
If we’re not to deviate from Israel’s judicial rulings, what happens if the rulings are corrupt? Apostles Peter and Paul were subservient to wicked leaders of the High Council (and Paul also instructed obedience to civil authorities in Romans 13), but both had to object to rulings that they couldn’t follow (Acts 5:27–32).
There may come a sobering time when one must seek counsel to discover if breaking the command to follow judges is required to serve the higher goal of Heaven. When we see the prophecy in Revelation of the “mark of the beast,” we see there will be a time when the people of God must disobey authorities. That decision must be undertaken with humility to discover if we are mistaken or misled about the need to do so.