Shoftim שֹׁפְטִים - Judges
Deuteronomy 16:18-21:
Reading #2 - Deuteronomy 17:14–20
My Thoughts:
Hashem knew Israel would want a human king over their land. So, Hashem gives them the instructions for doing so. Particularly that the king would not be able to send them back to Egypt. That’s a promise. And that is the same Hashem we serve today. He has delivered us from a past of hurt and sin (our Egypt) and He does not want anyone taking us back there. There is only one requirement from Him that we acknowledge and that is to fear Him and follow His Torah. This message is repeated all throughout Torah. That is how important it is.
Challenge:
The king is required to read the Torah all the days of his life. He is even challenged to copy it! Here is a different kind of challenge for you today. As we approach a new Torah cycle in a few weeks, buy yourself a little notebook. Then every day, record something out of the Torah portion daily reading. Pick out something that really strikes you as important. Copy the Torah. Maybe not the whole thing, but let’s start with a verse or two every day. It seems like this would really bless us beyond belief! Get ready and get prepared to do this in the new Torah reading year. It will happen right after Sukkot. Let us choose to bless Hashem with writing down His Torah, and in return we will be blessed. Amen!
Reading #2 - Deuteronomy 17:14–20
17:14 When you have come to the land which Hashem your Elohim gives you, and possess it and dwell in it, and say, “I will set a king over me, like all the nations that are around me,” 15 you shall surely set him whom Hashem your Elohim chooses as king over yourselves. You shall set as king over you one from among your brothers. You may not put a foreigner over you, who is not your brother. 16 Only he shall not multiply horses to himself, nor cause the people to return to Egypt, to the end that he may multiply horses; because Hashem has said to you, “You shall not go back that way again.” 17 He shall not multiply wives to himself, that his heart not turn away. He shall not greatly multiply to himself silver and gold.
18 It shall be, when he sits on the throne of his kingdom, that he shall write himself a copy of this law in a book, out of that which is before the Levitical priests. 19 It shall be with him, and he shall read from it all the days of his life, that he may learn to fear Hashem his Elohim to keep all the words of this law and these statutes, to do them; 20 that his heart not be lifted up above his brothers, and that he not turn away from the commandment to the right hand, or to the left, to the end that he may prolong his days in his kingdom, he and his children, in the middle of Israel.
