Deuteronomy 17:8-20

Administration of Justice

⁸“If a case is too difficult for you to decide, between one kind of homicide or another, between one kind of lawsuit or another, and between one kind of assault or another, that are cases of dispute in your courts, then you shall arise and go up to the place which the Lord your God chooses. ⁹So you shall come to the Levitical priests or the judge who is in office in those days, and you shall inquire of them and they will declare to you the verdict. ¹⁰Then you shall act in accordance with the terms of the verdict which they declare to you from that place which the Lord chooses; and you shall be careful to act in accordance with everything that they instruct you to do. ¹¹In accordance with the terms of the law about which they instruct you, and in accordance with the verdict which they tell you, you shall act; you shall not turn aside from the word which they declare to you, to the right or the left. ¹²But the person who acts insolently by not listening to the priest who stands there to serve the Lord your God, nor to the judge, that person shall die; so you shall eliminate the evil from Israel. ¹³Then all the people will hear and be afraid, and will not act insolently again.

¹⁴“When you enter the land which the Lord your God is giving you, and you take possession of it and live in it, and you say, ‘I will appoint a king over me like all the nations who are around me,’ ¹⁵you shall in fact appoint a king over you whom the Lord your God chooses. One from among your countrymen you shall appoint as king over yourselves; you may not put a foreigner over yourselves, anyone who is not your countryman. ¹⁶In any case, he is not to acquire many horses for himself, nor shall he make the people return to Egypt in order to acquire many horses, since the Lord has said to you, ‘You shall never again return that way.’ ¹⁷And he shall not acquire many wives for himself, so that his heart does not turn away; nor shall he greatly increase silver and gold for himself.

¹⁸“Now it shall come about, when he sits on the throne of his kingdom, that he shall write for himself a copy of this Law on a scroll in the presence of the Levitical priests. ¹⁹And it shall be with him, and he shall read it all the days of his life, so that he will learn to fear the Lord his God, by carefully following all the words of this Law and these statutes, ²⁰so that his heart will not be haughty toward his countrymen, and that he will not turn away from the commandment to the right or the left, so that he and his sons may live long in his kingdom in the midst of Israel.