Shoftim: truth

The mandate to apoint judges and that they judge righteously inttroduces  the difficulty of finding and confronting truth.  Special people are needed to see this truth, ordinary people  are not reliable to the task  Even the judges must be reminded to persue the path of justice. 

The parsha deals with several authorities, several sources of reality: beyond the judge:  the king (the government), the prophet ( the expert), the priest ( the aristocrat).  All of these are potential sources of truth, authors of instruction, 

The parsha moves on to paradigms of ambiguity,  Which trees can be used to build ramparts? Is the tree a warrior, that it should be felled?  The tree has a complex role  in the world.  It is the product of time and soil and rain and survival.  It is a potential source of food and other benefits.  How much more so the warrior that will be felled. 

The parsha ends with the ceremony of the decapitated calf.  The ritual of frustration that the truth cannot cannot be found.  The murderer cannot be found, but the homicide certainly happened.  The exact circumstances are hidden, but every murder is, in part, the fault of the society as a whole  The elders wash their hands over the useless copse of the beheaded calf, admitting their failure to protect the citizen that came under their jurisdiction.  

Some truths cannot be discovered.