Biblion Bible Commentary
Read the introduction to Deuteronomy · About this commentary
I Am Not Able to Bear You Alone
Deuteronomy 1:9-18
9 I spoke to you at that time, saying, “I am not able to bear you myself alone. · WEB
The first thing Moses recalls is delegating his own authority, and the charge he gave the judges makes their court God's.
Of everything in forty years, the first episode Moses chooses to retell is an administrative reform. That is a deliberate choice, and it says something about what he thinks the next generation will need.
His admission is unguarded: I am not able to bear you myself alone Deuteronomy 1:9. And the reason he gives is a blessing rather than a complaint — the people have multiplied as the stars of the sky Deuteronomy 1:10, which is the promise to Abraham arriving as a workload.
What he says next is the finest thing in the passage. Faced with more people than he can manage, he prays for more: may Yahweh, the God of your fathers, make you a thousand times as many as you are and bless you Deuteronomy 1:11.
He asks for a thousandfold increase of the problem, and then solves the problem. The two impulses sit in consecutive verses without any sense of contradiction.
The question that follows names the work honestly: how can I myself alone bear your problems, your burdens, and your strife? Deuteronomy 1:12. Three words, and the third is the heavy one. Disputes between people are what wear out whoever has to settle them.
The qualifications he asks for are not offices or bloodlines. Wise men of understanding who are respected among your tribes Deuteronomy 1:13 — competence, judgment, and standing with the people who will have to accept their rulings. And the appointment is put to the assembly first, who agree Deuteronomy 1:14.
The charge to the judges is the part worth carrying away, and it has four clauses.
Judge righteously between a man and his brother, and the foreigner who is living with him Deuteronomy 1:16 — the resident foreigner has the same access to the court as a member of the family.
You shall not show partiality in judgment; you shall hear the small and the great alike Deuteronomy 1:17. Partiality toward the powerful is the obvious danger, and the wording forbids it in both directions.
You shall not be afraid of the face of man — because pressure on a judge usually arrives as a person rather than as an argument.
And the reason underneath all three: for the judgment is God's. The court is not the judge's to dispose of. He is handling somebody else's business, which is exactly the ground a later king gives when he appoints judges in the same country 2 Chronicles 19:6.
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