Parashat Shoftim (Judges)
D’varim (Deuteronomy) 16:18 -21:9
Haftarah: Isaiah 51:12-52:12

I titled this week’s commentary “Wake Up”, since I believe that we followers of Messiah need to wake up - wake up to the existence of God, the importance of His Word, and the seriousness of His warnings.  

A year ago, I wrote a commentary that I believe is important for us to be reminded of. Therefore, this week I will repeat some of what I previously wrote with some emphasis on the areas that I believe are important for us to pay attention to.

In this week’s Parashah, we read a well-known verse that clearly points to the fact that God will raise up someone who will be in the same position as Moses, to whom the people ought to listen:

The LORD your God will raise up for you a prophet like me from among you, from your countrymen; to him you shall listen. This is in accordance with everything that you asked of the LORD your God at Horeb on the day of the assembly, saying, ‘Do not let me hear the voice of the LORD my God again, and do not let me see this great fire anymore, or I will die!’ And the LORD said to me, ‘They have spoken well. I will raise up for them a prophet from among their countrymen like you, and I will put My words in his mouth, and he shall speak to them everything that I command him. And it shall come about that whoever does not listen to My words which he speaks in My name, I Myself will require it of him. But the prophet who speaks a word presumptuously in My name, a word which I have not commanded him to speak, or which he speaks in the name of other gods, that prophet shall die.’ And if you say in your heart, ‘How will we recognize the word which the LORD has not spoken?’ When the prophet speaks in the name of the LORD, and the thing does not happen or come true, that is the thing which the LORD has not spoken. The prophet has spoken it presumptuously; you are not to be afraid of him.”
Deuteronomy 18:15-22

I believe that it is important to pay attention to the fact that God will raise up someone who will be like Moses, i.e., a deliverer, and that we are to pay close attention to His instructions and apply them to our lives. As followers of the Messiah, we believe that person is Yeshua our Messiah, as Peter rightly referred to Yeshua in Acts 3:15-26.

In the second part of the verses from Deuteronomy 18:20-22, we read of some very serious warnings, which I personally believe may be a warning for us today:

But the prophet who speaks a word presumptuously in My name, a word which I have not commanded him to speak, or which he speaks in the name of other gods, that prophet shall die.’ And if you say in your heart, ‘How will we recognize the word which the LORD has not spoken?’ When the prophet speaks in the name of the LORD, and the thing does not happen or come true, that is the thing which the LORD has not spoken. The prophet has spoken it presumptuously; you are not to be afraid of him.

As I read these words, I thought about the account from Matthew 24, where the disciples wanted to have an “inside scoop” on when the end times will be. Yeshua’s answer, I believe, may have been taken from our Parashah:

And Yeshua answered and said to them, “See to it that no one misleads you. For many will come in My name, saying, ‘I am the Messiah,’ and they will mislead many people.”
Matthew 24:5-6

and later in Matthew 24:11:

And many false prophets will rise up and mislead many people.

We find an interesting connection in our Haftarah portion in the book of Isaiah. Let’s take a look at two specific verses; the first is Isaiah 51:17, where the prophet gives us stern wakeup call:

Wake up, wake up up, arise, Jerusalem! You who have drunk from the LORD’s hand the cup of His wrath and poison; the chalice of staggering you have drunk to the dregs.

And the second is Isaiah 52:1:

Awake, awake, clothe yourself in your strength, Zion; clothe yourself with your beautiful garments, Jerusalem, the holy city; for the uncircumcised and the unclean will no longer come into you.

While we can see the importance of "waking up" to the existence of God, repenting, and turning from our evil ways, I would like to suggest that this could also be a warning to those of us who follow Messiah Yeshua, against false prophets and teachers.

We live in a day and an age where many false prophets and teachers surround us. An interesting point that Yeshua Himself made is the fact that “many will come in His name”, and sadly we choose to ignore that if we let them, they will mislead us as well.

I believe our Parashah gives us a way to recognize false prophets in Deuteronomy 18:20-22; if they prophesy, and the words that they speak do not come to pass, they are false. According to this Scripture, we should consider them as dead so that they will not mislead us. I believe that a very similar principle applies to false teachers who pretend to teach God’s Word, but in essence what they teach misleads and confuses us, causing us to walk away from God.

It is our individual responsibility to examine closely the words that are spoken to us and always compare them with God’s Word to make sure that they do not contradict it. Our nature is to immediately lean into that which may sound right or makes us feel good; nowadays, we even seek out that which excites us, or feels like we’re getting the “inside scoop” from self-proclaimed prophets.

However, we must be careful, and guard our hearts with the truth of His Word. We need to make sure that what they say actually comes to pass, because the danger is that if the promises of the self-proclaimed prophets do not happen, we may blame God for that and walk away from Him.

I’ll close with what I opened with: We need to wake up to the existence of God, the importance of His Word, and the seriousness of His warnings.

Shabbat Shalom,
Moran