Context No. 2570 of 4322 · Deuteronomy

Deuteronomy 17:14-20: in context

14When you have come to the land which the LORD your God gives you, and possess it and dwell in it, and say, “I will set a king over me, like all the nations that are around me,” 15you shall surely set him whom the LORD your God chooses as king over yourselves. You shall set as king over you one from among your brothers. You may not put a foreigner over you, who is not your brother. 16Only he shall not multiply horses to himself, nor cause the people to return to Egypt, to the end that he may multiply horses; because the LORD has said to you, “You shall not go back that way again.” 17He shall not multiply wives to himself, that his heart not turn away. He shall not greatly multiply to himself silver and gold. 18It shall be, when he sits on the throne of his kingdom, that he shall write himself a copy of this law in a book, out of that which is before the Levitical priests. 19It shall be with him, and he shall read from it all the days of his life, that he may learn to fear the LORD his God, to keep all the words of this law and these statutes, to do them; 20that his heart not be lifted up above his brothers, and that he not turn away from the commandment to the right hand, or to the left, to the end that he may prolong his days in his kingdom, he and his children, in the middle of Israel.

Deuteronomy anticipates the day Israel will want a king, and hedges the office with striking limits. The king must not accumulate horses, or wives, or great hoards of silver and gold, the things kings always grasp for. And most tellingly, he must write out for himself a copy of God's law and read it all the days of his life, so that he learns to fear the LORD and his heart is not lifted up above his brothers.

The safeguard against power's corruption is a book. The king, the one man with the least accountability, is told to hand-copy the law and keep reading it every day, precisely so that authority does not go to his head. Power's natural drift is upward, toward pride, accumulation, and contempt for those below; the daily discipline of sitting under God's word is what keeps the heart from being lifted up above his brothers. Whatever authority or influence any of us holds tends the same way. The remedy is the same: to keep ourselves, daily, under the word rather than above the people.

Does whatever authority or influence I have sit daily under God's word, keeping my heart from being lifted up above the people around me?

Sources

Deuteronomy 17:18: when he sits on the throne of his kingdom, he shall write himself a copy of this law in a book.
Deuteronomy 17:19: he shall read from it all the days of his life, that he may learn to fear the LORD his God.
Deuteronomy 17:20: that his heart not be lifted up above his brothers, and that he not turn away from the commandment.