In 17:8-13 we have a word concerning the judgment of a complicated civil suit.
The first requirement in the judgment of a complicated civil suit was to bring the case to the place which Jehovah God would choose (v. 8b).
"You shall come to the Levitical priests and to the judge who is presiding in those days and investigate the matter; and they shall declare to you the sentence of judgment" (v. 9). The case was investigated mainly by the priest. First, the priest investigated the case by going to God and staying with God. Second, in the presence of God, the priest would consider God's holy word. Third, as 33:8 indicates, the Levitical priests had the breastplate with the Urim and Thummim, which provided instant enlightenment. (For the details regarding the Urim and Thummim, please see the life-study on Exodus 28:15-21.) Eventually, through the presence of God, the word of God, and the Urim and Thummim, the priest would gain a clear understanding of the divine judgment and then pass on this judgment to the presiding judge. The judge would then make a judgment according to what the priest had received from God and passed on to him. The judgment of the case, therefore, came through man, but it was of God and according to God. It was truly a matter of theocracy.
The government in the church should be neither autocratic nor democratic but theocratic. It should be like the government in 17:8 and 9. All the saints are priests, but the elders are the leading priests. As such priests, they should stay in the Lord's presence with God's holy word and with today's breastplate—the mingled spirit with Christ and the church. As they remain in the Lord's presence with the word and the mingled spirit for the church, they will receive an understanding that is according to the Lord's thought, and this will become a decision as a kind of judgment. The elders should then administrate according to this divine judgment. Thus the elders function first as the leading priests and then as the administrators.
The people were to do according to the word of the sentence declared by the priest and the judge. "You shall do according to the word of the sentence that they declare to you from the place which Jehovah will choose; and you shall be certain to do according to all that they instruct you. You shall do according to the word of the instruction with which they instruct you and according to the judgment which they speak to you; you shall not turn aside to the right or to the left from the sentence that they declare to you" (17:10-11). The Hebrew word translated "instruction" here is torah, the word used elsewhere to designate the entire law (cf. v. 18).
If one would not listen to the priest or to the judge, he was to be put to death. "The man who acts presumptuously by not listening to the priest who stands to minister there before Jehovah your God, or to the judge, that man shall die. Thus you shall utterly remove the evil from Israel" (v. 12).