Deuteronomy 17:10

Hebrew Bible

8 If a matter is too difficult for you to judge—bloodshed, legal claim, or assault—matters of controversy in your villages—you must leave there and go up to the place the Lord your God chooses. 9 You will go to the Levitical priests and the judge in office in those days and seek a solution; they will render a verdict. 10 You must then do as they have determined at that place the Lord chooses. Be careful to do just as you are taught. 11 You must do what you are instructed, and the verdict they pronounce to you, without fail. Do not deviate right or left from what they tell you. 12 The person who pays no attention to the priest currently serving the Lord your God there, or to the judge—that person must die, so that you may purge evil from Israel.

Matthew 23:3

New Testament

1 Then Jesus said to the crowds and to his disciples, 2 “The experts in the law and the Pharisees sit on Moses’ seat. 3 Therefore pay attention to what they tell you and do it. But do not do what they do, for they do not practice what they teach. 4 They tie up heavy loads, hard to carry, and put them on men’s shoulders, but they themselves are not willing even to lift a finger to move them. 5 They do all their deeds to be seen by people, for they make their phylacteries wide and their tassels long.

 Notes and References

"... The Pharisees are mentioned many times in the New Testament. In Matthew 23:1–2 Jesus speaks of the teachers of the law and the Pharisees as sitting in the seat of Moses. Very likely this expression does not refer to the actual seats in the synagogues but to the central legislative authority. This pertains to the succession of the position of Moses and the juridical authority “in the place the Lord shall choose” and the central legal institution in the days of king Jehoshaphat. The normal name of it was ‘High Court’ of ‘Great Court’, but in that Roman time the designation ‘Sanhedrin’ was usual, taken from the Greek word synedrion. In the time of Jesus, the Sanhedrin resided in Jerusalem. After the destruction of Jerusalem it moved to Tiberias. The Sanhedrin was a Jewish agency with juridical authority; it was made up of seventy members in accordance with Numbers 11:16, with the high priest serving as chair. In Matthew 23:3 Jesus gave the surprising encouragement referencing the leaders sitting in the chair of Moses: “You must obey them and do everything they tell you”. This concurs with the words by Moses in relation to the central juridical office: “You must act according to the decisions they give you” (Deuteronomy 17:10). However, Jesus also adduced the reproach that these leaders do not practice their own rules ..."

Paul, Mart-Jan "Oral Tradition in the Old Testament and Judaism" in Burger, Hans (ed.) Sola Scriptura: Biblical and Theological Perspectives on Scripture, Authority, and Hermeneutics (pp. 123-136) Brill, 2018

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