Deuteronomy 29:9-30:20

Rulers and Tribes

 

“Today, you are all standing before the Lord your God,” this week’s reading opens, and continues:  “your chiefs, your tribes, your elders, your officials, every man of Israel.” But there’s something disturbing in this list (which continues on into the next verse, Deut 29:10): one chief is a single individual, and so is one elder, one official, and so on. But one tribe is by definition a group of people. So why this inconsistency?

 

Translators and commentators have long noticed the problem. Usually, they have “fixed” it by combining the first two terms into one: “the chiefs of your tribes” is how many modern translations read. (This goes back even to the translators of the old Greek version of the Torah, the Septuagint). But they all may be wrong.

 

In biblical Hebrew, the word shevet (“tribe” in our verse) was apparently confused with (or simply identified with) another, similar-sounding word, shofet. A shofet was indeed an individual—usually a judge, though sometimes this word had the more general sense of “leader.”[1]

 

Perhaps in keeping with this, shevet had a related meaning. It also designated a rod or staff, such as the staff that rulers hold in their hands as a symbol of power. So in the opening verse of this week’s reading, God is calling on all sorts of individuals, from the loftiest chiefs and leaders down to the lowliest wood-choppers and water-carriers, to stand before Him and receive His final instructions.

 

But the story of shofet and shevet goes beyond their implications for this week’s reading. When Jacob blesses his son Judah in the book of Genesis, he says: “The staff will not depart from Judah, nor the scepter from between his feet” (Gen 49:10). Clearly, staff (shevet) here, like scepter (meḥokkek) in the next clause, refers to the symbol of kingship. Interestingly, however, the targum of Onkelos treats staff in this verse not as a symbol of the ruler, but the ruler himself: “A ruler will not depart from the tribe of Judah…” (The same is true of the Septuagint translation of this verse.)

 

Later, of course, this proved not to be true: ever since the Jews’ return from exile in Babylon in the sixth century BCE, there had not been a king ruling Israel at all. As a result, this verse came to be reinterpreted as: “A ruler will not depart from the tribe of Judah forever.” (This modification appears already in Onkelos, as well as in later sources.) In other words, there may not be a king for a while, but eventually the promised ruler (also known as the mashiaḥ or messiah) will be established.

 

When will he come? We’re still waiting. The prophet Balaam proclaimed, “I see it, but it is not now; I behold it, but it is not near: a star coming forth from Jacob, and a shevet arising from Israel” (Num 24:17). What he meant, clearly, was that a future leader will arise in Israel. Not just any leader, but one who will come to set everything aright—no small undertaking!

 

Shabbat shalom!

[1] This meaning of shevet as “leader” is found in, among other verses, 2 Sam 7:7: “the words that I spoke with one of the leaders (shivtei) of Israel.”  When this verse was restated in 1 Chron 17:6, instead of shivtei the text reads shofetei of Israel—a pretty clear indication that the two words were confused or for some other reason identified with each other.