Moses Inaugurated the Judges with Both Flattery and Warnings

The inauguration of Israel's first judges was not a ceremony of pure celebration. Moses had something more complex in mind: an opening that made the new judges feel the weight of their honor and the weight of their obligation at the same moment. You cannot do one without the other. The tradition knew this, and the speech Moses gave is one of the most psychologically precise pieces of leadership rhetoric in all of ancient Jewish literature.

The account comes from Legends of the Jews, Louis Ginzberg's vast compilation of rabbinic tradition from 1909 to 1938, drawing on sources ranging from the Talmud to the great midrashim. Ginzberg's retelling of the judges' inauguration preserves both the warmth of Moses' opening and the sharpness of his warnings, and it is the combination that makes the scene remarkable.

The Flattery That Was Also Truth

Moses began with what could be called strategic kindness, but it would be a mistake to dismiss it as mere flattery. He told the new judges: “Blessed are ye, that are judged worthy of being leaders of the children of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, of a people whom God called His friends, His brothers, His flock, and other titles of love.”

Consider what Moses was doing here. He was telling the judges that the people they would rule over were not just any subjects. They were a people loved by God with a specific, documented intimacy. God had called Israel His friends. He had called Israel His brothers. These were not abstract honorifics. They were descriptions of an actual relationship, and every man sitting in judgment over a member of this community would be sitting in judgment over someone God loved personally.

Midrash Tanchuma, compiled in the 5th century CE, returns repeatedly to the theme that judgment of Israel is not a neutral act. To judge an Israelite unjustly is to wrong someone under divine protection. Moses was not just making the judges feel important. He was explaining to them why their failures would matter more than ordinary failures.

What Self-Interest Does to a Court

Ginzberg's account is candid about the motivations among the Israelites who had championed their preferred candidates for these positions. Each person in the crowd had been calculating: eighty thousand officials were about to be appointed, and if a relative or an ally received one of those positions, future legal disputes could be resolved favorably. The self-interest was open, undisguised, practically cheerful.

Moses saw it and said nothing about it directly, at least not to the crowd. Instead he addressed it indirectly, through the warnings he gave the judges themselves. Do not show favoritism. The Hebrew tradition behind this phrase, lo takiru panim, do not recognize faces, means specifically the kind of recognition that distorts judgment: seeing in the person before you not their case but their wealth, their connections, their family, their power over you.

The Talmud Bavli, compiled in Babylonia in the 6th century CE, records an extensive discussion of how lo takiru panim applies in practice. You may not even favor a poor man out of pity, because pity is not justice. You may not favor a scholar out of respect, because respect is not justice. The court is a space where the social architecture of the outside world is supposed to fall away entirely, and only the facts of the case remain.

The Specific Corruptions Moses Named

Moses did not speak in generalities. He named specific scenarios that would have been immediately recognizable to every man in the room. What if a rich man and a poor man both appear before you with a legitimate dispute? Do not imagine you can rule secretly in the rich man's favor and then broker a private arrangement so the poor man receives some compensation on the side. Justice cannot be administered through backchannels. The verdict matters precisely because it is public and on the record.

And the reverse: do not rule for the poor man simply because you tell yourself the rich man can absorb the loss. Compassion for poverty is a virtue. Allowing that compassion to override an honest assessment of the facts is a corruption of the court, even when it feels like mercy.

Sifre, the tannaitic midrash on Deuteronomy assembled in the 3rd century CE, frames this warning in terms that Moses himself used: justice is described as tzedek tzedek tirdof, justice, justice you shall pursue (Deuteronomy 16:20), the double language suggesting that even the pursuit of justice must itself be just. The means cannot be separated from the end.

What Was the Hardest Warning Moses Gave?

Moses saved the most difficult instruction for last. A judge who looks at the losing party and calculates what retaliation might follow has already lost his independence. The judgment he renders under that shadow is not his honest assessment. It is the product of his fear, and fear is the most corrosive element that can enter a court.

This warning was not abstract. Judges in the ancient world held positions of real social exposure. The man who lost his case before you would know your name, know where you lived, know your family. Moses was telling these judges that they had to be willing to accept that exposure, to render the honest verdict and live with the consequences, because the alternative, a court that shapes its rulings to protect its judges from retaliation, is not a court at all.

The Legends of the Jews preserves this scene with all its complexity intact: the pride of the occasion, the impure motives in the crowd, the imperfect candidates, and the extraordinary speech that tried to transform ordinary men into something the community actually needed. Moses could not give the judges virtue. He could only tell them what virtue required, and then watch to see whether they rose to meet it.