Deuteronomy 25:1 — meaning, Hebrew and Greek word study, commentary
Deuteronomy 25:1
If there be a controversy between men, and they come unto judgment, that the judges may judge them; then they shall justify the righteous, and condemn the wicked.
Strong's Exhaustive Concordance (James Strong, 1890/1894), public domain; digitized by Open Scriptures (CC BY-SA). KJV word tagging: eBible.org (public domain). Original-language text, parsing and brief lexicon: STEPBible.org data from Tyndale House, Cambridge (CC BY 4.0).
Cross-references
Proverbs 17:15 He that justifieth the wicked, and he that condemneth the just, even they both are abomination to the LORD.
Deuteronomy 1:16-17 And I charged your judges at that time, saying, Hear the causes between your brethren, and judge righteously between every man and his broth…
Deuteronomy 17:8-9 If there arise a matter too hard for thee in judgment, between blood and blood, between plea and plea, and between stroke and stroke, being…
Exodus 23:6-7 Thou shalt not wrest the judgment of thy poor in his cause.
Deuteronomy 16:18-20 Judges and officers shalt thou make thee in all thy gates, which the LORD thy God giveth thee, throughout thy tribes: and they shall judge t…
Deuteronomy 19:17-19 Then both the men, between whom the controversy is, shall stand before the LORD, before the priests and the judges, which shall be in those…
2 Samuel 23:3 The God of Israel said, the Rock of Israel spake to me, He that ruleth over men must be just, ruling in the fear of God.
2 Chronicles 19:6-10 And said to the judges, Take heed what ye do: for ye judge not for man, but for the LORD, who is with you in the judgment.
Cross-references from OpenBible.info (CC BY), in the lineage of the Treasury of Scripture Knowledge (public domain).
Commentary
Matthew Henry on Deuteronomy 25:1-4
Here is, I. A direction to the judges in scourging malefactors, Deu 25:1-3. 1. It is here supposed that, if a man be charged with a crime, the accuser and the accused (Actor and Reus) should be brought face to face before the judges, that the controversy may be determined. 2. If a man were accused of a crime, and the proof fell short, so that the charge could not be made out against him by the evidence, then he was to be acquitted: "Thou shalt justify the righteous," that is, "him that appears to the court to be so." If the accusation be proved, then the conviction of the accused is a justification of the accuser, as righteous in the prosecution. 3. If the accused were found guilty, judgment…
If there be a controversy between men,.... Between two or more:
and they come unto judgment; into a court of judicature, bring their cause thither:
that the judges may judge them; who were never less than three; the great sanhedrim at Jerusalem consisted of seventy one, the lesser court was of twenty three, and the least of all three only:
then they shall justify the righteous, and condemn the wicked: acquit the one, whose cause is good, and condemn the other to punishment, who is guilty of a crime, and as that deserves; which is to do righteous judgment; the contrary to this is an abomination to the Lord, Proverbs 17:15.
John Calvin on Deuteronomy 25:1-3
Deuteronomy 25:1-3
1. If there be a controversy between men, and they come unto judgment, that the judges may judge them; then they shall justify the righteous, and condemn the wicked.
1. Si fuerit lis inter aliquos, et accesserint ad judicium, et judicaverint eos: justificaverintque justum, et impium condemnaverint:
2. And it shall be, if the wicked man be worthy to be beaten, that the judge shall cause him to lie down, and to be beaten before his face, according to his fault, by a certain number.
2. Si quidem caedendus fuerit impius, tunc prosternet eum judex, et caedere jubebit illum coram se secundum iniquitatem ejus ad numerum.
3. Forty stripes he may give him, and not exceed: les…
If there is an altercation between two men, that they come to trial and judge and agree with the righteous. It is assumed that judges are the ones who must judge, not those who are said to have had the altercation. Then he goes on: And they will take it away from the wicked, and it will come to pass that, if he is worthy of stripes, who has done wrong, you will put him before the judges and scourge him according to his impiety. He will be flogged with forty lashes, no more. But if they continue to whip you with many more lashes, your brother will be debased before you. You have to pay attention. Although the Scripture has commanded to punish with scouring the sins that do not deserve to be punished with the death penalty and with so few, nevertheless the one who is scourged called him impious or worker of impiety, so that we know that the Scriptures do not speak as they do Many. We read the Scriptures with little attention, if we think that adultery is not an impiety, because it seems that whoever has committed it has sinned against man, while the law orders that sin be punished with the death penalty (Cf Dt 22,22) and we say that impiety they are more serious than these sins, because some of them belong to those who are punished with only forty lashes. So, there is a slight impiety worthy of the scourge, and there is another serious impiety that deserves the death penalty. In the same way, the sins that seem to be directed, not against God, but against man, some are worthy of the death penalty, and others, of a correction, which can be by whipping or by an easier forgiveness. It is evident that the Seventy have said the same thing, since they, too, have called impiety the sin of him who is worthy of the punishment of flogging.
The Church Fathers: public-domain translations (Ante-Nicene and Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers), verse-indexed by SermonIndex (CC BY 4.0).
Dictionary and topics
Stripes — As a punishment were not to exceed forty (Deut. 25:1-3), and hence arose the custom of limiting them to thirty-nine (2 Cor. 11:24). Paul claimed the privilege of a Roman citizen in regard to the…
Court · JUSTICE REQUIRED OF — JUSTICE REQUIRED OF
Courts Of Justice · Both the accusers and accused required to appear before — Both the accusers and accused required to appear before
Judge · CHARACTER OF, AND PRECEPTS RELATING TO — CHARACTER OF, AND PRECEPTS RELATING TO
Justice · General scriptures concerning — General scriptures concerning
Dictionary: Easton's (1897) and Smith's (1863), public domain. Topics: Nave's Topical Bible (1896) and Torrey's Topical Textbook (1897), public domain. Both as parsed by NEUU (CC BY 4.0).
Keil & Delitzsch on Deuteronomy 25:1-3
Corporal Punishment. - The rule respecting the corporal punishment to be inflicted upon a guilty man is introduced in Deu 25:1 with the general law, that in a dispute between two men the court was to give right to the man who was right, and to pronounce the guilty man guilty (cf. Exo 22:8 and Exo 23:7).
Deu 25:2
If the guilty man was sentenced to stripes, he was to receive his punishment in the presence of the judge, and not more than forty stripes, that he might not become contemptible in the eyes of the people. הכּות בּן, son of stripes, i.e., a man liable to stripes, like son (child) of death, in Sa1 20:31. "According to the need of his crime in number," i.e., as many stripes as his crime…
כי יהיה ריב IF THERE BE A QUARREL [BETWEEN MEN] they will in the end have to approach the judges (because of a bodily injury inflicted by one on the other, since Scripture goes on to state, “and if the wicked man be worthy of lashes”, a punishment that can only follow, in the case of a quarrel, upon one of the parties receiving a blow). You must thus come to the conclusion that nothing good can come out of a quarrel. Just think: what was it that caused Lot to leave the righteous man (Abraham)? You must admit it was a mere quarrel (cf. Genesis 13:7—11; Sifrei Devarim 286:1).
והרשיעו את הרשע THEY SHALL CONDEMN THE WICKED — One might think that all who are found guilty in a law-suit are punish…
