Law 7 of seven, the one that builds
Establish courts of justice
Six of the seven tell you what not to do. This one hands you a tool and tells you to build. It is the only positive commandment in the set, and everything about the shape of the seven turns on it.
OneIn one sentence
Every society is obliged to set up real courts, so that the other six are not merely opinions.
judgments
דיניםDinim
Judgments, or laws. The singular, din, means a judgment, a legal ruling, and also strictness. This is the only one of the seven phrased as something to build.
TwoWhere it comes from
All seven laws are read out of a single verse spoken to the first human being. This one is found in the words וַיְצַו vayetzav, which mean and he commanded, in Bereishis 2:16.
The Talmud finds courts of justice in the very first word of the verse, vayetzav, and He commanded, and supports it from a later verse about Avraham: that he will instruct his household after him to keep the way of the L-rd, to do righteousness and justice.
כִּי יְדַעְתִּיו לְמַעַן אֲשֶׁר יְצַוֶּה אֶת בָּנָיו וְאֶת בֵּיתוֹ אַחֲרָיו וְשָׁמְרוּ דֶּרֶךְ ה׳ לַעֲשׂוֹת צְדָקָה וּמִשְׁפָּט
ki y'dativ l'ma'an asher y'tzaveh es banav v'es beiso acharav v'shamru derech Hashem la'asos tzedakah umishpat
For I have known him, so that he will instruct his children and his household after him, and they will keep the way of the L-rd, to do righteousness and justice.
The Rambam rules that the sons of Noach are obliged to seat judges and magistrates in every district, to judge concerning the other six and to admonish the people. The Ramban, Rabbi Moshe ben Nachman, disagrees about the scope: he holds that this law requires an entire civil legal order, the law of theft and overcharging and wages and bailees and damages and lending and inheritance, together with the judges to administer it. This site carries both readings and does not resolve them.
Cited: Bereishis 2:16; Sanhedrin 56b; Rambam, Hilchos Melachim 9:14; Ramban on Bereishis 34:13. Every reference on this site is listed in full, with its status, on the sources page.
ThreeWhat it actually asks of you
That there be somewhere to take it.
A society is required to build a real forum where a wrong can be brought, heard, and decided by someone who is not one of the two parties. Not a mediator. A court.
That the judgment be true, including in the small case.
The Talmud says that a judge who gives a true judgment becomes a partner with G-d in the work of creation. It does not say a famous judgment or an important one. The matter can be trivial to everyone except the two people standing in front of you.
That you do the version of this that is in your hands.
Most readers of this page are not judges. Almost every reader of this page decides something: between two employees, two children, two accounts of the same evening. This law asks whether you actually hear the second one.
That the law be taught and not only enforced.
The Rambam's formulation includes admonishing the people, which is to say that a court whose only function is punishment has done half the job. The other half is that people know what is expected before the failure.
FourWhat it does not ask of you
It does not ask you to take the law into your own hands.
This law exists precisely to prevent that. It moves enforcement out of your hands and into a structure. Private vengeance is the failure this commandment was given to end.
It does not require a particular political system.
The commandment names courts, not a constitution, a party, or a form of government. Societies have built them many ways.
It does not require Jewish courts or Jewish law.
The seven are given to humanity and are administered by humanity. This law asks the nations of the world to build their own courts, not to import someone else's.
It does not license coercing anyone into the other six.
The Rambam's own words about a resident foreigner are conduct of decency and acts of kindness, and he cites that G-d is good to all, and that her ways are ways of pleasantness and all her paths are peace. A dwelling cannot be installed anywhere by force. Force produces submission, and submission is not a home.
FiveThe deeper layer
The deeper layer
Everything above is the plain law. What follows is the inner tradition's reading of it, and it never replaces what came first.
The tradition's first act of creation, as the Kabbalists read it, was not an outpouring but a withdrawal. A concealment that is not an absence: the light drew back, and what remained was a hollow and an impression. Nothing could be placed into a space that was already full.
Concealment, on that reading, is the making of room. And a prohibition does exactly that in a human life. Do not murder builds no hospital. Do not steal feeds nobody. What the six do is empty out the space that a person's appetite would otherwise occupy entirely, so that something other than the person can stand in their life.
Six of the seven hollow out a room. The seventh raises its walls.
And this is why courts are derived from vayetzav, the word of commanding itself. A court is nothing other than a command standing upright in a place where the One who commanded is not visible. That is also why the same word, on the Talmud's second reading, yields idolatry: a command from above is the root of justice, and a command a person manufactures and then obeys is the root of idolatry. The difference is not the content. It is the origin.
The Mishnah says the world stands on three things, on judgment, on truth and on peace. Not rises. Not shines. Stands, the way a house stands.
SixOne practice this week
Hear the second account.
Once this week, in a disagreement where you have already decided who is right, go and get the other account in full before you act. Not to be fair to them. To find out whether your judgment was true. That is the whole of this law reduced to something you can do on a Tuesday.
SevenQuestions people ask
I am not a lawmaker. What can I possibly do about this one?
Three things that are actually in your hands: use the courts your society has rather than settling matters privately, judge truthfully in the small disputes you are asked to decide, and support the existence of a real legal order rather than treating it as somebody else's furniture.
What if the courts where I live are corrupt?
Then the commandment is unfinished where you live, and it is unfinished in a great many places. The law describes what a society owes itself. It does not claim that every society has paid.
Does this mean religious law should govern the state?
No. The commandment given to the nations is that they build courts. It does not specify a religious legal system and it does not ask for one. This site takes no position on the politics of any country.
Why is the only positive law the one about courts?
Because a world is not built by refusals. Six laws clear a space; something still has to be raised inside it, and the tradition's answer to what gets built first is a place where the truth can be established between two people.
This site does not rule on Jewish law and cannot answer a question about your own situation. The about page says how to find someone who can.
Where this sits
- 1Recognise the One G-d, and worship nothing else
- 2Treat the Name of G-d with reverence
- 3Do not murder
- 4Guard the boundaries of sex and family
- 5Do not steal
- 6Do not eat flesh torn from a living animal
- 7Establish courts of justice
Six restraints and one construction. Law seven is the only one that asks a society to build something, and the other six clear the ground it stands on.