Deuteronomy 17:9, commentary and pictures

The verse belongs to Moses's repetition of the law given before Israel crossed the Jordan into the promised land, rehearsing the wonderful things God had done and the chief laws, to recall the lessons of forty years of wandering in the wilderness and to impress the sacred import of God's holy law and the necessity of keeping it. It concerns matters too hard for local judgment arising as controversy within the gates, between blood and blood, between plea and plea, and between stroke and stroke, to be taken up to the place the Lord chooses, to the priests the Levites and to the judge in those days for inquiry, who shall show the sentence of judgment. It establishes a system for referring difficult cases to a higher authority for final judgment, in which a local officer encountering a matter too difficult to settle was to take it to the Levitical priests and the judge serving at that time for inquiry and decision. Difficult cases under this order could be carried to Moses and the seventy elders.

It provides a higher court above the elders at the gate of a city of refuge, whose decision only admitted the fugitive for protection while the regular trial came later before the higher court after witnesses were summoned and accusers had time to appear. The sentence of judgment shown from the law must be done exactly as taught, without turning to the right hand or to the left, without declining from what is taught from the law. Anyone who acts presumptuously by refusing to listen to the priest ministering before the Lord or to the judge must die to put evil away from Israel, so that all the people hear and fear and do no more presumptuously.

The elders are the judges to lead, teach, oversee, and decide all matters of difference according to the Bible, while the church has power to execute the penalty, and the people were to abide the decision while carrying out the punishment themselves. Putting evil away requires telling, hearing, diligent inquiry, certain truth, and the testimony of two or three witnesses, with the witnesses acting first and then all the people. The same order continues in the New Testament, where the church enforces discipline in all cases. Rule by judges through the Levitical priests and the judge then serving was God's plan for governing ancient Israel, and the system itself was sound; Israel's disorder came from the people's failure to govern themselves, not from a need to replace the system.

Bringing cases requiring judgment before the priests for them to give judgment is the duty meant by judging God's house. The duty of the priest is to teach the knowledge of God, to show forth His praises, and to minister of His goodness, exemplifying what God designed all Israel to do as a kingdom of priests knowing Him so thoroughly that they could teach the nations the way of life. When the priests give the people true instruction in the way of the Lord, the people are held responsible to carry out and perform what they have received. Whatsoever lawful rulers in Moses' seat bid to be observed must be observed and done, but their evil works must not be followed.