Alastair's Adversaria - Good Authority in Deuteronomy

Episode Date: November 18, 2025

The following was first published on the Anchored Argosy: https://argosy.substack.com/i/175732579/good-authority-in-deuteronomy. Follow my Substack, the Anchored Argosy at https://argosy.substack.com/. See my latest podcasts at https://adversariapodcast.com/. If you have enjoyed my videos and podcasts, please tell your friends. If you are interested in supporting my videos and podcasts and my research more generally, please consider supporting my work on Patreon (www.patreon.com/zugzwanged), using my PayPal account (bit.ly/2RLaUcB), or by buying books for my research on Amazon (www.amazon.co.uk/hz/wishlist/ls/3…3O?ref_=wl_share). You can also listen to the audio of these episodes on iTunes: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/alastairs-adversaria/id1416351035.

The following reflection is entitled Good Authority in Deuteronomy. It was first published on the anchored Argosy. Near the beginning of Deuteronomy, Moses recalls the appointment of the elders at Sinai, Deuteronomy chapter 1, verses 9 to 18. The prominence given to this incident in the ordering of Deuteronomy hints at the importance of the figures of elders and rulers in the book more broadly. The book of Deuteronomy is in no small measure concerned with accomplishing, the transition from the prophetic leadership of Moses to that of Joshua and the elders.

The book also explores the character of authority more broadly and equips the elders in the judgment required for their task. Moses had intermediated between the Lord and the people. As Moses was removed through death, the people would be able to mature and the office of Israel's elders in particular would come to the fore. The removal of Moses was essential for Israel to attain a great, greater stature as their elders began to act as the people's representatives. In recalling the appointment of the elders, Moses outlines the character of their judgment in verses 16 and 17.

And I charged your judges at that time. Hear the cases between your brothers and judge righteously between a man and his brother or the alien who is with him. You shall not be partial in judgment. You shall hear the small and the great alike. You shall not be intimidated by anyone, for the judgment is gods. And the case that is too hard for you, you shall bring to me, and I will hear it. The law of Sinai is addressed to the people as a body, not merely to detached individuals. The elders would have a peculiar responsibility to interpret, to teach, to administer, to uphold, and to judge according to the law. If the law were to have its proper centrality for the people, the ministry of the elders would be essential.

The law is certainly not exclusively addressed to rulers. It speaks to every member of the Covenant people, and all are encouraged and charged to meditate upon it. It is no mere dry legal code for judges, being presented as a source of wisdom and life for all. The whole people are responsible to uphold the law, both collectively and severally, not merely their authorities. Nevertheless, it has an especial importance for the elders. There is much to be learned. There is much to be learned. from the ordering of the commandments. The ten words are refracted in the case law that follows in chapter 6 to 26 of Deuteronomy. I would order the material as follows. The first word, no gods beside the Lord, is unpacked in Deuteronomy chapter 6 to 11. The second word, not making a graven image, is unpacked in chapters 12 and 13. The third word, not bearing the name of the Lord in vain is unpacked in chapter 14 verses 1 to 21. The fourth word concerning the Sabbath is unpacked in chapter 14 verse 22 to chapter 16 verse 17. The fifth word concerning honouring father and mother is unpacked in chapter 16 verse 18 to chapter 18 verse 22. The sixth word do not kill is unpacked in chapter 19

verse 1 to chapter 22 verse 8. The seventh word do not commit adultery is unpacked in chapter 22 verse 9 to chapter 23 verse 14. The 8th word, do not steal, is unpacked in chapter 23 verse 15 to chapter 24

verse 7. The 9th word, do not bear false witness, is unpacked in chapter 24 verse 8 to chapter 25 verse 3. And the final 10th word, do not covet, is unpacked in chapter 25 verse 4 to chapter 26 verse 15

Meditating upon the interplay between the core principles of the ten words and its refracted and contextual applications in the case law that follows is a means by which one attains literacy in the law and learns wisdom and jurisprudence. The literary structure of the material invites and facilitates such meditation by juxtaposing the core principles in chapter 5 with their refracted expansion in the chapters that follow, the attentive hearer or reader will be caused to reflect upon the illuminating character of the relationship between the two.

Neither the ten words nor the case law are mere random aggregations of miscellaneous laws. Both are highly structured bodies of material, whose ordering and intertextual relations serve to disclose something of their deeper grammar. Many have debated the ordering of the ten words. The division of the ten words into two tables is a common approach with, a strong pedigree, that these two tables are summarised with the first and second great commandments. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind and your neighbour as yourself, seems quite reasonable.

However, the exact location of the division is disputed. There are literary reasons that might suggest that the division belongs after the Fifth Commandment, here following the reformed numbering of the commandments, the command to honour father and mother. The first five commandments all contain the name of the Lord. Each commandment of the first five commandments also has an accompanying rationale, warning or promise. By contrast, the second five commandments are short, with no such rationale, warning or promise. The problem is that the fifth commandment does not neatly seem to fit under the heading of the greatest commandment. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might. Deuteronomy chapter 6 verse 5.

To many, honouring father and mother would more naturally fit under the second great commandment concerning loving our neighbours ourselves. The material concerned with the Fifth Commandment in Deuteronomy, surprisingly, has little to say about our duties to father and mother. Rather, it concerns judges and officers, priests, kings, Levites and prophets. The principle of honouring father and mother largely focuses upon the duties of authority figures and of those subject to them. In describing the duties of these figures,

it is judicial rather than executive functions that are emphasized, even in the case of the king, who is charged to write out a copy of the law and to meditate upon it. Israel's government, as envisaged in Deuteronomy, is one in which the power of the executive and sovereignty is downplayed, and the task of judgment is elevated. Judgment must be an expression of truth and goodness, it must be righteous judgment, not just an expression of the autonomous will of the sovereign.

In emphasizing judgment according to the law, Deuteronomy accentuates that authorities are under God. They are authorities who are submitted to the law, who are subject to the law, and who must enact and establish and enforce the law in the life of Israel. Like fathers and mothers, these authorities are authorities under God's authority. Ultimately, the authority is gods alone. Moses charged to the elders in chapter 1 verse 17, wherein he reminded them that the judgment is gods should be remembered here. This both exalts and humbles those exercising judgment in Israel.

On the one hand, they must be confident in the act of judgment as it is grounded upon God's own authority. On the other hand, they must minister judgment as those who themselves are under and answerable to the law. Perhaps the most striking manifestation of this is seen in the treatment of the king's relationship to the law in chapter 17 verses 18 to 20. And when he sits on the throne of his kingdom, he shall write for himself in a book a copy of this law, approved by the Levittical priests, and it shall be with him, and he shall read in it all the days of his life, that he may learn to fear the Lord His God by keeping all the words of this law and these statutes and doing them, that his heart may not be lifted up above his brothers, and that he may not turn aside from the commandment, either to the right hand or to the left, so that he may continue long in his kingdom,

he and his children in Israel. Israel's king is not to be a god king, like those of some other ancient Near Eastern kingdoms, nor is the king the law himself. The king is not even the lawgiver, the one who makes up the laws and teaches the laws as his own wisdom. Rather the law is, the Lords and the King comes under that law. He is a servant of that law, someone who is responsible to study the law, to understand it deeply, and then to rule in terms of it. Besides placing checks upon sovereignty through the separation of powers between king, priest and prophet, there is also a challenge to uncheck sovereignty in the way that the king comes under the law of God. The king

is not elected by the people. He is the servant of the Lord. He represents the Lord's authority in his law to the people. He is supposed to be a minister of the law of God to the people of God, but he is supposed to remain one of his brother Israelites, and that will happen as he is humbled by submission to the law. He is neither over the law nor the source of it. As he rules by and in submission to the law, the king is a sort of every man, not lifted up above his brethren. In the portrayal of him in the Psalms, David appears as such an every man who delights in the law of the Lord. The king is required to write his own copy of the book of the law for the purpose of his own meditation throughout his life,

something he must do under the supervision of the Levittical priests, the stewards of the house of the Lord. The supervision of the Levites is a further sign that the king comes under the authority of another. The king is not the absolute authority within the land of Israel, but both priests and prophets can represent the authority of God relative to the king. The prophet can rebuke the king, challenged the king in the name of the Lord as we see Nathan challenging David after his sin with Bashiba.

The king's relationship with the law is even more intimate than that of the typical Israelite, as he is supposed to write it out all for himself. These are all ways in which the king is supposed to take the law into himself, to internalize in himself, the law that he will rule in terms of. The king's self-mastery according to the law is the basis by which he will rule the nation. In places like the Psalms in the book of Proverbs, we see the result of this. The faithful king is the archa-tipal Israelite, who has become wise through meditation upon the law day and night. He can think and speak about the world with wisdom, as he has internalized the principles of wisdom in the law. Earlier in the book of Deuteronomy, we were told that the peoples around would see the wisdom of Israel in the law and come to hear that wisdom.

We see that happening in the story of Solomon, someone who meditated upon the law, and as a result could speak with wisdom into the world so that people would come to hear Israel's king. Now ideally, what was true of Israel's king would become true of the people as a whole. The king then is a model for the rest of the people. We see the same thing in the Psalms. The Psalms are the songs of the king, the king who has meditated upon the law of God day and night. He is like a tree planted by streams of water giving forth its fruit in season. Psalm 1.

He is wiser than all the Lord. his teachers because he meditates upon God's law, Psalm 119, verse 99, and as the law has been taken into him, he can be someone who rules wisely within the world in the name of the Lord. If the priest is a steward and a servant, the king is more of a son. Returning to the question of the ordering of the ten words, I think that if we follow the literary indicators for their division, the classifying of the 5th commandment under the heading of the Great and First Commandment is not difficult to understand, especially when we consider the broader unpacking of the 5th commandment in the case law in its treatment of figures such as the King. If the Great and First Commandment concerns our loyalty

and submission to the Lord, placing the 5th Commandment under its heading underlines how divinely established authorities manifest and mediate God's authority in our lives. In relating to such authorities, we are not merely relating to our neighbours, but also to God. The placing of the Fifth Commandment under the Great and First Summary Commandment highlights the derivative character of human authority, and consequently both its weightiness and its responsibility. If you have been given authority, you have been called to symbolize and enact the judgment of the Lord. To exercise authority is a fearful responsibility, one in which you are charged to minister the Lord's judgment, rather than to serve your own ends.

The other side, of course, is that where you are yourself under human authority, you must relate to such appointed authorities as ministers of the Lord's own authority. Even where such authorities are unfaithful, you must show honour to their appointed office. Faithfully to minister the Lord's judgment, you must yourself be subject to it. Such submission to the Lord's judgment on the part of authorities ensures humility and unites the good authority figure with those over whom they have been given rule, instruction or oversight. A good parent must, like the king, first devote themselves to the law of God, allowing themselves to be mastered by and instructed by it.

Authority flows from submission, as the law of the Lord is internalized in obedience, delight, wisdom and authorization. From such a position of humility and submission, authorities will be equipped to exercise effective and good rules, over others, the sort of authority that does not vaunt itself over others, seek its own ends, or act capriciously, or autonomously, but ministers God's life-giving rule to them. As the end of the authority they minister will be manifested in their own lives, as they have subjected themselves to it, their effective exercise of authority more closely unites others with them, rather than heightening some hierarchical opposition. So understood, faithful ministering of authority is grounded in and can also produce a sort of brotherhood. This can often be powerfully illustrated in the

relationship between parents and their children, where a more hierarchical relationship at the outset gradually develops into something more of a sort of brotherhood. In placing the Fifth Commandment under the heading of the Great and First Summary Commandment, the weightiness of authority will better be understood. All authority flows from God. Faithful exercise of authority requires humble and attentive submission to divine authority. True authority comes through submission. Indeed, true leadership is found where authority and submission meet. This reflection and many others like it are available for free on the Anchoredogacy, the substack I share with my wife Susanna. Take a look over there. The link will be in the show

notes below, along with links to the Patreon and PayPal accounts that I use to support my work there, here and elsewhere. Thank you for. very much for listening. God bless.