Parshas Shoftim
Rabbi Yissocher Frand
The beginning of the parsha contains the positive commandment: “Judges and officers shall you appoint in all your cities – which Hashem, your G-d gives you – for your tribes; and they shall judge the people with righteous judgment.” [Devarim 16:18]. The positive commandment to appoint judges is immediately followed by the negative commandments associated with perverting judgment, showing favoritism to one of the disputants in a court case, and taking bribes. The Torah warns that bribery has the ability to blind a person and render his judgments subjective, unfair, and illegal.
I saw an insight quoted in the name of a disciple of Rav Chaim Vital (himself a disciple of the Ari z”l). The disciple questions the grammatical structure of the Torah’s prohibition against taking bribes: “...And you shall not take a bribe (which is written in the singular) for the bribe will blind the eyes of the wise (Chachamim – plural) and pervert the words of the righteous (Tzadikim – also plural). [Devarim 16:19] Rav Chaim Vital asks why the pasuk switches in mid-sentence from the singular form to the plural form.
Typically, in the Jewish system of justice, a court case will have more than a single judge. Either there will be 3 judges (e.g. – in most monetary cases) or there will be 23 judges (e.g. — in capital cases) or there will be a full Sanhedrin of 71 judges (See Mishna Sanhedrin 1:1 for examples). We would rarely have a case involving just one judge. Given this judicial structure, if one judge takes a bribe, we really should not need to worry about corruption, because he will in any case be over-ruled by at least two other judges who have not been tainted by receiving a payoff. The principle of “majority rules” should provide a fail-safe system to protect us from individual corrupt judges!
The Torah is teaching us that this is not the case. The power of subjectivity is such that this one partial judge, who is so bent on throwing the case on behalf of the person who paid him off, will use his powers of persuasion to influence the other judges as well. The Torah is telling us: “You shall not take a bribe lest your corrosive influence will blind the eyes and pervert the words of your fellow judges, who may themselves be wise and righteous.” This explains why the prohibition to take a bribe is formulated in the singular while the phrase “for the bribe will blind the eyes of the wise and pervert the words of the righteous” is expressed in the plural.
